December 2016

Network Meter is a free portable software program for devices running Microsoft Windows that displays network statistics in its interface.

The program is designed as a basic tool to monitor network traffic. While it does offer a history function, it is not a full blown network monitor as it keeps to the basics.

The program opens with a near-blank screen which can be quite confusing on first start. You need to select one of the available network adapters under the Monitor menu to start monitoring traffic.

Mozilla announced some time ago that it would move away from the add-on system that played a role in making Firefox the browser it is today, to WebExtensions.

I have to admit that I'm not a big gamer on mobile. While I did try a couple of free to play games on various Android smartphones that I owned over the years, I never really enjoyed the tiny screen experience that much.

This has not really changed all that much. I guess it would be different if I would own an Android tablet, but I don't.

Dopamine 1.2 is the latest version of the popular audio player and music management software for the Windows operating system.

The new version of the program is offered as a portable version and installer on the official project website. Please note that Dopamine requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 or higher, and that it is officially only compatible with Windows 7 and newer versions of the Windows operating system.

Microsoft stated recently on the official Microsoft Edge Twitter channel that the company's Edge web browser was the only browser that supported a pin & preview feature for tabs.

Most web browsers support pinning of tabs. This is a useful feature to keep sites that you visit regularly open all the time and at the beginning of the tab bar for quick access.

Microsoft released Windows 10 Virtual Machines on December 23, 2016 on the company's windows Dev Center website where they are listed as public downloads.

The machines are intended for companies and individual developers, but are not limited to that. This makes them interesting for testing purposes among other things as well.

I had some time at hand recently to run a couple of tests regarding the purchase of Windows licenses on eBay, and upgrades of said licenses to Windows 10.

As you may know, Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 licenses are sold on eBay for next to nothing. There is lots of talk about these licenses, how they are not legitimate, that they will not work, or that they will expire after a short period of time.

A leaked build of Windows 10, version 14997,suggests that Microsoft will introduce a new pause updates feature in the Creators Update.

Updating has changed significantly with the release of Windows 10. Not only did Microsoft switch to cumulative updates which bundle updates in a single update package, it also removed options to control the updating process itself.

Microsoft is working on the last bits of the Windows 10 Creators Update which it plans to release in March 2017 to the public.

The name of the update reveals a major focus of what is coming, and that is introducing new options to "create things" on Windows 10.

While that is the focus, it is clear that other changes will come along as well. If you are a gamer, or play games on your Windows 10 PC, then you may be interested in something called Game Mode that may be coming along with the update.

Mozilla plans to integrate better font fingerprinting protection in Firefox 52; the new version of the web browser is scheduled for a March 7, 2017 release. The changes are already live in pre-release versions of the web browser.

Font fingerprinting refers to one of the many fingerprinting options that websites and services have when users connect to them.