Thurrott Daily: November 10

Good morning. What else is happening today?

11/10/2015 12:54:38 PM

Microsoft takes to the skies with Virgin Atlantic

Microsoft and Virgin Atlantic have announced a partnership. But it’s not about putting Windows 10 technologies on planes, as you might expect.

Together we created ‘Ida’, an interactive digital adventure that takes customers on a guided tour and shows them virtually what it’s like to be in upper class on an actual flight. The experience starts by checking in at the airport, moves through the fabulous Clubhouse at London Heathrow and takes you through what happens on the aircraft, either at the bar or in your seat, and then ends with you waking up refreshed and ready to land.

Here’s a video.

11/10/2015 9:55:33 AM

Thurrott.com visual refresh is coming soon

Sometime this week, hopefully, we’ll launch the first part of a multi-stage effort to improve the experience on Thurrott.com. And that first step is to make the site better looking. Here’s a quick peek at the general idea.

Anandtech weighs in on Surface Book battery life

I get a lot of questions about Surface Book, key among them what the battery life is like. The thing is, I only have questions myself: My results are all over the map. So this morning I was chatting with Anandtech’s Brett Howse, and as it turns out, he’s seeing the same thing. Here’s what he’s found.

The Surface Book has a 70 Wh battery, split into 18 Wh in the Clipboard, and 52 Wh in the base.

The Core i5 Surface Book set a new record for battery life. The amazing part of this is that it did it with a high resolution display, which normally impacts battery life quite a bit. For some contrast, the Dell XPS 13 was our previous battery life leader, but it was the 1920×1080 model. The 3200×1800 version, as seen in the graph above, was quite a bit less. The Core i5 Surface Book got 15.6 hours of battery life in this test. The dGPU + Core i7 model took a big hit here, coming in over three hours behind … Despite the lower score, at over 12 hours it still did very well on our light test.

Very interesting. Be sure to read the whole review.

Retro video format Betamax finally dies

What the hell, seriously? 🙂 From CNBC:

Sony has finally killed off its analogue video format Betamax after a thirty year tussle with rival VHS (Video Home System).

More like a three year tussle.