PCWorld August 2016

FOR OVER A year, Windows 10 customers have wondered whether Microsoft will offer Windows 10 as a service. Recently, Microsoft confirmed that it would—though just for enterprises at the moment. Beginning this fall, Microsoft will offer Windows 10 Enterprise E3, a special enterprise tier of Windows 10 that will cost $7 per user per month. Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of the Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft, said cloud providers would now be able to offer three premier Microsoft services on a subscription basis: Microsoft’s Azure, Office 365, and now Windows 10. ‘For the price of a cup of coffee and a donut per day, you can get enterprise-class security on a per-user subscription basis,” Mehdi said onstage at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, Canada. “If you’re a cloud…

DISPLAYS THAT CAN be folded and rolled up have been shown in prototype smartphones, wearables, and other devices—but when will such products be available? Advances in technology suggest they aren’t too far off in the future. Such devices could start showing up as early as next year or 2018, said Jerry Kang, senior principal analyst for emerging display technologies and OLED at IHS. Manufacturers are trying to launch them in devices like tablets that can fold into a smartphone-size device. It’s possible to use these displays in wearable devices, but reliability, weight, and battery life need to be considered, Kang said. Manufacturers are trying to launch them in devices like tablets that can fold into a smartphone-size device. Small folding screens will likely come before larger ones, mainly due to the economics of making…

IF YOU WANT to watch true 1080p content on Netflix over your PC, you need to use Microsoft’s Edge browser. Recently, Microsoft claimed (go.pcworld.com/edge1080p) that its Edge browser was the only one of the big four browsers—which also includes Chrome, Firefox, and Opera—to offer 1080p resolution while playing Netflix content. A quick test of all four browsers by PCWorld proved this claim to be true, with the other three browsers capped at 720p. Why this matters: Microsoft’s been busy trying to rehabilitate the reputation of Edge, which suffered after the browser initially offered slower performance than its competitors, while also lacking the plug-ins and extensions that other browsers, particularly Firefox, have offered for years. Performance in Edge has since improved, and the browser now offers a few plug-ins for public use. These…

A SMALLER VERSION OF the popular Raspberry Pi 3 will go on sale in a few months. Raspberry Pi is developing a new version of its Compute Module, a single-board computer that plugs into specific on-board memory slots. The new Pi will be more like a mini-computer inside a computer, and it won’t come with a power supply. The Compute Module will have similar circuitry to that of Raspberry Pi 3, a wildly successful computer that can be a PC replacement. But it will be smaller, with the memory, CPU, and storage embedded tightly on a board. The differences between the Compute Module and the Raspberry Pi 3 will be subtle. While the Compute Module will have a 64-bit ARM processor like the Pi 3, it won’t have Wi-Fi, Eben Upton, founder of…

IT’S APPARENTLY RETRO month for Nintendo. After the insanely successful launch of Pokémon Go (go.pcworld.com/pokemongofaq), the video game company is dipping way back in the vault for the holiday season. Starting November 11, Nintendo is bringing back a miniaturized replica of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The $60 Mini Collector’s Edition NES comes with a single controller replica and 30 classic NES games built in to the system—no cartridge necessary. You can pick up an extra classic controller for $10. Don’t count on using your old NES controllers—if they’re still kicking—with the new system. The new controllers are designed to plug in to the mini NES as well as the Wii Remote Control. When paired with the Wii remote, you can use the replica controller to play Virtual NES Console games on your…

A FEDERAL AVIATION Administration reauthorization bill that was passed by the Senate in July has excluded key privacy provisions, including a requirement that commercial and government users of drones must disclose if they collect personally identifiable information of a person. The bill, which is a compromise short-term extension to ensure continued funding at current levels to the FAA, was passed by the Senate and then went to President Barack Obama to be signed into law two days before the existing authorization was set to expire. It was earlier passed by the House of Representatives. The new bill, called the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016, was “a missed opportunity.” But Senator Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, said that the…