Since no one wants a Wii U, Nintendo offers classic NES as modern stocking stuffer

Nintendo is a company in a bit of a quandary. Both Sony and Microsoft are bringing mid-cycle major refreshes of their hardware to market — Sony with the PlayStation 4 Neo, which is still expected to launch before Christmas 2016 and Microsoft with the Xbox One S, a smaller, slimmer Xbox One with a reduced price (and hopefully a decent trade-in value when the Xbox Scorpio arrives). Nintendo, on the other hand, has the Wii U and a minimal stack of new releases expected to ship between now and Christmas.

But Nintendo also has a death grip on some of the most beloved franchises in all of gaming — including classic titles that millions of gamers around the world first cut their teeth on. The company has announced that it’s building an NES Classic console that can fit in the palm of your hand and comes preloaded with 30 classic titles.

Here’s how Nintendo describes the hardware:

The classic NES is back in a familiar-yet-new form as a mini replica of Nintendo’s original home console. Plugging directly into a high-definition TV using the included HDMI cable, the console comes complete with 30 NES games built-in, including beloved classics like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, PAC-MAN and Kirby’s Adventure.

The Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System comes packaged with an HDMI cable, a USB cable for powering the system*, and one Nintendo Classic Mini: NES Controller. And whether it’s rediscovering an old favourite or experiencing the joy of NES for the first time, the fantastic collection of NES classics included with each and every system should have something for all players.

The slot on the console doesn’t actually appear to do anything, but it comes preloaded with 30 titles, all shown below:

As NES games go, this is an extremely solid list. I’ve got a few quibbles — Castlevania III is generally regarded as a stronger game than Castlevania II, and Balloon Fight is a forgettable inclusion, but Excitebike, Final Fantasy, Super Mario 3, Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man 2 are still considered some of the best games ever built for any console. Today’s kids might struggle with some of these games (the phrase “Nintendo hard” exists for a reason), but there’s a lot of good fun to be had here.

The big question left unanswered is what hardware Nintendo is using to handle the task. Nintendo notes that “Players needn’t worry about losing any hard-earned progress either as each game has multiple suspend points, allowing them to start where they left off at a later time, no passwords needed.” This implies that whatever the hardware inside this classic NES, it’s not the same as the original. Then again, there’s no company better suited to ensure a faithful emulation experience than the firm that designed the original console, and Nintendo’s Virtual Console releases of classic titles have generally been well-regarded.

The new NES goes on sale on November 11. At $60 with a 30-game inclusive bundle, the price is hard to argue with.  The ability to play Donkey Kong again is enough of a reason for me to get this device.  It's on......(you know the rest)

Netflix only streams 1080p to a PC if you’re using a Microsoft browser

Earlier this week, Microsoft released a blog post claiming that its own browser, Microsoft Edge, was the only option for streaming Netflix in 1080p on your PC. Websites set out to fact-check this claim for themselves, and found it true.

According to PC World, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera all cap at 720p in the real world while only Edge can stream up to 1080p. Netflix won’t stream 4K to any PC, even if you have a gigabit fiber connection and a 10-core CPU + GTX 1080 to decode it with. If you want the highest video quality in Microsoft Windows, you need to either use Edge, Internet Explorer 11, or the Netflix app itself to get it.

Why is this the case?

The short answer is that nobody seems to know. The slightly longer answer is that Netflix seems to be somewhat unique in this category. Amazon Prime doesn’t give any indication that it only streams in 1080p to specific browsers.

In the absence of official statements on the topic, viewers have theorized that it’s the result of specific DRM hooks in Netflix that only allow for 1080p streaming in Edge. Microsoft certainly promotes this view — the company’s blog notes that:

From video hardware acceleration to PlayReady Content Protection and the Protected Media Path, Windows 10 is designed to provide the highest quality, most secure, and most power-efficient video playback available on any version of Windows.

This, however, seems to either be an elaborate smokescreen or far less than the full explanation. The WayBack Machine offers a window to the same page from February 2015, before Windows 10 had ever launched. At the time, Windows 8.1+ and Internet Explorer 11 were listed as providing up to 1080p, as was Safari, while Chrome was still stuck at 720p. (Firefox isn’t even mentioned).

Microsoft also claims a substantial battery life advantage for its browser

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t still browser-level DRM protections that make the difference between supporting 1080p on IE11 and not supporting it in Chrome or Firefox — but it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with new protections baked into Edge or Windows 10. Other arguments we’ve seen online have centered around NPAPI or Silverlight support, but neither of these holds up under scrutiny.

If you’ve got insight into why Netflix won’t or can’t stream above 720p while the comparatively ancient IE11 has no trouble doing so, let us know. The fact that other streaming services seem to get around issues caused by DRM implementations has clouded the issue, and it’s not even clear if this is a problem related to continued support for older operating systems or for plug-ins and features that would require updates to the browsers themselves. Unlike Microsoft, Chrome and Firefox continue to support Windows XP — and it’s possible the DRM features in question aren’t baked into that operating system, leaving these options less secure for content streaming.

If the Microsoft store can't install Windows 10, they will give you a free Dell laptop

As July 29 gets closer and the free Windows 10 upgrade offer reaches its final days, Microsoft is pulling out all the stops in order to convince users to upgrade. It’s even willing to give you a new laptop.

As spotted by Neowin, Microsoft retail stores are offering to install Windows 10 on any compatible machine for free. If the store’s technicians don’t complete the upgrade by the end of that business day, they’ll give you a free 15-inch Dell Inspiron notebook.

The offer runs between now and July 29.

There is, of course, plenty of fine print. The free installation offer only applies to a single PC that’s capable of running Windows 10 (If it isn’t, you may be eligible for a $150 credit toward a new PC). You also need to check in your computer by noon for the offer to be valid. It’s also limited only to the US and Canada, so customers of the Microsoft Store in Sydney are out of luck.

The story behind the story: This free PC offer is the latest in a series of highly aggressive moves Microsoft has made to get its users onto Windows 10. Its deceptive, malware-like pop-ups in Windows 7 and 8.1 effectively trick users into installing Windows 10, whether they want to or not. Windows 10 spiked in market share in June, seemingly as a result of these forced updates, but the company has since admitted that it likely won’t hit its goal of having Windows 10 on one billion devices by mid-2018.

11 days left for your free upgrade to Windows 10

You have 11 days left before your free upgrade to Windows 10 expires.  Here are some reasons why you should take Microsoft up on the offer.    My favorite reason?  You're going to have to upgrade and use it at some point, why pay later to do it?

Some of the best customer service - Amazon

Recently I found out that the app that I used for my security token for Amazon Glacier was lost.  What this means is that I was locked out of my Glacier account.  For those who did not click on the link, Glacier is an Amazon online backup solution that costs pennies per GB for storage, primarily designed for long term backup storage.  Back to the story.  So I click on a link that would assist my into getting into my account, essentially removing the security token.  At 1:50 AM, I send an email requesting assistance.  The immediate reply is that somebody would call me within 15 minutes ( a feat that I seriously doubted).  I know why I doubted it, they called back within 5 minutes and less than 5 minutes later, my problem was solved.  Imagine, technical support that worked and that was quick and fast.  Oh, yes, the person was not from India either.

Everyone seems to be abandoning Internet Explorer/Edge

An estimated 33 million users deserted Microsoft's browsers last month, pushing the Redmond, Wash. company's browser strategy ever closer to the edge of irrelevancy, according to analytics data published today.

Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge combined to account for 36.7% of the global user share -- a stand-in for the number of desktop and notebook PC owners who ran those browsers -- in June, according to U.S.-based metrics vendor Net Applications. June's IE number was down 1.9 percentage points from May, the eighteenth straight month of losses.

In the last 12 months alone, IE has lost 17.3 percentage points, representing a loss of almost a third of what the browser controlled a year ago.

As recently as November 2015, IE accounted for more than half of the global browser user share.

Chrome continued to rake in former IE users, as Google's browser added 3 percentage points to its share last month, closing out June with 48.7%. Chrome took bragging rights as the most popular browser in April when it slipped past IE for the first time. Chrome's rate of increase has been astounding, doubling its user share in just over 12 months.

If Chrome continues on the blistering growth rate of the past year, it will reach the 50% mark this month.

Like IE, Mozilla's Firefox also lost user share in June, falling another nine-tenths of a percentage point to 8%. Unless Mozilla can arrest the flight, its desktop browser could drop under the 5% mark as early as October, threatening the organization's long-term survival, which relies on search revenue from the likes of Yahoo to pay the bills.

Other top browsers, Apple's Safari and Opera Software's Opera, remained flat and showed a small gain, respectively.

But the big browser story remained the shocking shrinkage of IE.

In June, 41% of all Windows users ran a Microsoft browser, a figure that was down from 43% the month before. The difference between May and June: A decline of 33 million when calculated using Microsoft's oft-expressed claim that 1.5 billion PCs run Windows worldwide. The only consolation for Microsoft was that June's losses were less than May's, when an estimated 48 million users ditched IE.

During the last 12 months, almost 300 million users dumped IE. But the majority of those losses -- just over two-thirds -- have taken place since January.

It was no coincidence that IE's losses accelerated in 2016: That was when a Microsoft mandate kicked in.

Microsoft told IE users in August 2014 that they must upgrade to a newer version by January 2016. But while Microsoft probably made this decision to reduce support costs -- supporting one version rather than six -- the move had a side-effect that the company could not have foreseen. (For if it had, it wouldn't have followed through.)

Faced with Microsoft's demand to upgrade to the newest edition of IE, people instead rethought their choice of browsers.