The 4080 + i9-13900hx laptop has more total memory, more total bandwidth, and more total transistors, with the only real downside being that system resources are split across two processors on a bandwidth constrained bus. If correctly optimised, there are almost no multi-threaded workloads where I would expect the m3 Pro to actually outperform a 4080 + i9-13900hx in terms of performance itself.
I don't even nessecarily see the m3 pro as being a serious workstation processor. I see it as being almost a thin and light processor for people with moderate workloads like non-fanciful 4k editing or normalish development work. The battery life you're going to get from it compared to a system running two independent processors on less recent lithography is going to be a LOT better. The single threaded performance is a lot better. The performance is still good enough for a heavy task here and there.
I get the compulsion to compare roughly price equivalent laptops to eachother, but I don't even feel like these two machines aren't even really optimised for the same use case, so comparing their workstation performance since the computers are about the same price and being like "looks like Apple still has catching up to do" is almost missing the point. I feel like it makes more sense to compare this to the Max, even though the price isn't the same. I'd compare this laptop to a cheaper high end AMD APU laptop because those laptops are a lot closer to eachother philosophically.
A major problem with them is that most dual core chips floating around lack 4k h.264 hardware decode. So it's easy to basically bring the computer to its knees by selecting the wrong thing on YouTube. The lack of modern video codec decode in general in MOST dual cores tends to make these computers frustrating for the modern internet.
Generally, they obviously aren't fast and I'd generally recommend an upgrade, but the computers are perfectly usable. Especially if you just want to use an old laptop with a nice screen and keyboard for something like writing. It's hilariously more important to have an SSD than it is to have a quad core.
You would want to run a lightweight linux distribution like lubuntu. It's basically your only choice. Win11 will bring dual core machines to their knees.