Thurrott Daily: August 9

Thurrott Daily: August 9

Tech tidbits from around the web.

8/9/2016 2:05:16 PM

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

“Dolphin snatches iPad at SeaWorld Orlando”

He later commented, “Sorry, I’m a Windows guy. And I can’t stand when people use a 10-inch tablet like it’s a digital camera.”

As expected, NuAns fails to meet its Kickstarter goals

A few weeks back, I noted that the NuAns NEO would never succeed on Kickstarter, making it yet another also-ran. Well, that happened, as expected.

Neowin writes:

After 45 days of its campaign, it has failed to achieve its Kickstarter goal of $725,000, managing to reach only $142,368 from 489 backers around the globe.

Wow. Less than 500 people. Way to go, Windows phone fans. But inthe comments section of its Kickstarter page, NuAns hinted that there might still be a future for this intriguing device.

We are still planning some other ways. We will keep you updated.

Microsoft releases August 2016 evaluation Windows developer virtual machines

Microsoft has released the August 2016 editions of its evaluation Windows developer virtual machines (VM) on Windows Dev Center.

The VMs come in Hyper-V, Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMWare flavors and will expire on 10/31/2016.

These installs contain:

Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation, Version 1607
Visual Studio 2015 Community Update 3 (Build 14.0.25425.01)
Windows developer SDK and tools (Build 14393)
Microsoft Azure SDK for .NET (Build 2.9.1)
Windows Bridge for iOS (Build 0.1.160728)
Windows UWP samples (Build 3.0.0)
Windows Bridge for iOS samples

HP.com will start selling Elite x3 on September 5 in the US

Neowin has received a statement from HP about the availability of the Elite x3 on HP.com:

The US HP.com website is one of many channels we use for our commercial solutions. So the August 29th date is accurate. But for the US HP.com site, orders will begin on September 5.

Big sale on the Google Nexus 6P

Speaking of Neowin, they also have info about a great sale on my favorite Android devices.

With new phones on the way, Google’s current models have been picking up generous discounts in recent weeks, as retailers clear stock to make way for the next generation.

The Nexus 6P has just received a hefty price cut at two of America’s largest retailers, Amazon and Best Buy.

Here’s the pricing (yes, affiliate links).

Obviously the 64 GB version is the sweet-spot, pricing-wise.

Google will finally start exorcising Flash from Chrome

Google reports that it’s finally getting serious about Flash. Sort of.

Adobe Flash Player played a pivotal role in the adoption of video, gaming and animation on the Web. Today, sites typically use technologies like HTML5, giving you improved security, reduced power consumption and faster page load times. Going forward, Chrome will de-emphasize Flash in favor of HTML5.

Today, more than 90% of the Flash on the web loads behind the scenes to support things like page analytics. This kind of Flash slows you down, and starting this September, Chrome 53 will begin to block it. HTML5 is much lighter and faster, and publishers are switching over to speed up page loading and save you more battery life. You’ll see an improvement in responsiveness and efficiency for many sites.

In December, Chrome 55 will make HTML5 the default experience, except for sites which only support Flash. For those, you’ll be prompted to enable Flash when you first visit the site. Aside from that, the only change you’ll notice is a safer and more power-efficient browsing experience.

Good riddance.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation

There are no conversations

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC