After rocking a Google Pixel 2 as my primary smartphone for the past three years, I took advantage of a Google Fi Black Friday promotion and traded in my phone for a brand new Pixel 4a 5G for $298 after trade-in. There were two reasons I decided the time was right to upgrade. First, my […]
windows on arm
Lilbits: Porting apps to ARM
The list of companies jumping on the Apple Silicon bandwagon is growing. Google just released a version of Chrome for Apple’s new computers with M1 processors, and Mozilla is developing a version of Firefox that will support the new chips as well. Meanwhile, Adobe’s recent move to release a beta version of Photoshop for both […]
Apple’s new chips could be good news for Windows on ARM (Adobe release Photoshop Beta for both platforms)
The Apple M1 processor powering the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini is getting rave reviews for performance and power efficiency. Since the chances of Apple selling its chips to other PC makers are close to zero, you might think that this is only good news for Mac users. But there are a […]
Surface Pro X gets a minor spec bump with Microsoft SQ 2 processor option
The Microsoft Surface Pro X is a Windows 10 tablet powered by a custom ARM-based processor. First released about a year ago, the tablet is thin, light, offers long battery life, and is reportedly hampered a bit by software compatibility and performance issues. Now that Microsoft is bringing support for x64 emulation to Windows on […]
Microsoft is bringing x64 emulation to Windows 10 on ARM
Windows 10 can run on computers with x86 or ARM processors. But up until now Windows devices with ARM chips have had one major limitation: they couldn’t run 64-bit apps designed for computers with Intel or AMD chips. Now Microsoft has announced it’s bringing support for x64 emulation to Windows 10 on ARM, which means […]
Microsoft ports Sysinternals utilities to run on ARM PCs
Sysinternals has offered a suite of Windows utilities for power users for more than two decades. First developed as an independent suite of apps for managing, monitoring, and troubleshooting Windows, Sysinternals was eventually acquired by Microsoft, which has continued to update and support the tools. Recently the company has also started to expand them to […]
Report: 2nd-gen Microsoft Surface Pro X coming this fall (with SQ2 processor)
The Microsoft Surface Pro X is a thin, light, and fanless Windows 10 tablet powered by a Microsoft SQ1 processor (which is a custom 7W chip made by Qualcomm for the tablet). It went on sale almost a year ago for $1000 and up, and arrived to somewhat mixed reviews. Now Microsoft is reportedly getting […]
The Surface Duo’s unlockable bootloader could make it a hacker-friendly phone
The Microsoft Surface Duo is now available for pre-order for $1400 and up, and while that’s a steep price to pay for a phone with mediocre specs, there are number of things that make the Surface Duo an interesting phone. It’s Microsoft’s first phone since the company gave up on Windows Mobile. The Android-powered phone […]
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Plus chip may bring faster performance to Windows on ARM computers
There are only a handful of Windows laptops and tablets powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx processor, including the Samsung Galaxy Book S and the Lenovo Flex 5G. Now it looks like Qualcomm may be planning to launch a new version of the chip which could speed up future Windows on ARM devices. WinFuture reports that […]
Lilbits 400: Google’s problematic auto-policing of the Play Store and Chrome Web Store
Google has a long history of using computers to do thing that… quite honestly could probably be done better by humans. But it’s easier to scale an algorithm than it is to hire more people. And that leads to situations where an algorithm makes an obviously wrong decision that stays in place until a human […]