When I had a laptop, it's wasn't always connected to the internet and it certainly did not have a mobile internet connection - nor would I pay for another one when I have a perfectly good one in the form of my phone.
Most of the time, believe it or not I didn't need an internet connection - half the time I was sitting at a park or a restaurant and playing singleplayer games or writing code.
I never connected to the restaurants free wifi, as I have trust issues with it. And I used a cable to hotspot when necessary. (Either that or i use the browser in my phone, mainly for stack overflow purposes)
If this happens, and windows goes Cloud ONLY - it would necessitate an always on and active internet connection.
God forbid if you decide to move out of signal range with it - let's say, watch a movie on the laptop while camping in the outback. On top of that, what if your internet goes down - ISPs can and have been a-holes in the past, and this isn't going to stop them in the future.
I have to wonder why anyone on earth would go for this? It's inherently limiting, despite all the AI gimmicks they are touting.
I for one and not switching back to windows any time soon - I mean I wasn't anyway, but I'm definitely not now.
On the other hand, this makes sense, why else would they release a sub par ARM chip in a surface pro 9 for the only 5G model? I always thought that decision made no sense. Now it makes perfect sense.