More tidbits on the upcoming Windows apps for Chromebooks surface

A few days ago, after Google announced its partnership with Parallels to bring Windows apps to Chrome OS, I did a little digging in the repositories to see if I could find any more details about it — oh, the benefits of open source!

Obviously, I know that this is targeted to enterprise users only at the moment, but I found that the feature might land with Chrome OS 85, is codenamed “Plugin VM,” and was running on a dev’s Pixelbook Go. Funnily enough, the devs also made all the bug reports I used private in less than 24 hours of publishing the post. At any rate, today, I discovered some more small details.

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Parallels for Chromebooks might arrive as soon as Chrome OS 85

Earlier this week, Google announced a joint partnership with Parallels, a company that specializes in OS virtualization, to bring full-featured Windows applications such as Microsoft Office to Chrome OS. The announcement, however, indicated that this feature will launch on Chrome Enterprise devices, and we don’t know if at all it will ship to consumers as well, but we certainly hope so.

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As a longtime Windows user, I made the switch to Chrome OS: How does it fare?

I’m a Google fan, but there has always been one product that I’ve been hesitant to try: Chrome OS, Google’s desktop operating system that powers all Chromebooks on the market. If you’ve ever heard anything about Chromebooks, chances are that you’ve heard the stereotype that it’s just a “glorified web browser.” I’ve been following Chrome OS for years and I know that there is so much more to it now—Android apps, Linux support, etc. But I never actually ditched Windows and exclusively used a Chromebook as my only laptop—until now.

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How to use your Android phone’s fingerprint sensor to unlock your Windows PC

The best part of the Apple ecosystem is how all their products work together. If you have a MacBook and an Apple Watch, you can use your Apple Watch to unlock your MacBook. However, Windows and Android are increasingly tying in better too. Now, you can easily use your Android phone’s fingerprint scanner to unlock your Windows PC.

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How to reduce the amount of blue light emitted from your tech devices

Unless you’ve been living under a rock all this time, I’m sure you’ve seen or at least heard of by now the recent study conducted by researches at the University of Toledo in which everyone is freaking out about. Apparently, the blue light people encounter—from laptops, televisions, phones, and even the sun itself—prompts a chemical reaction that kills photoreceptor cells thus damaging your eyesight and slowly making you blind when you reach your 50s or 60s. Fortunately, all is not lost, and there are several things that you can do to reduce the blue light emitted from your tech devices. Biohackers Lab has created a useful guide for techies who want to test blue light filter levels.

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Google Chrome will now use more RAM to fix the Spectre vulnerability

Spectre and Meltdown are catastrophic vulnerabilities that affected all modern processors. They were so severe that Intel decided to pay out a $100,000 bug bounty. Software patches for it are available, but they impact system performance. Google is fixing the vulnerability for Chrome, but it will make it use more RAM than ever before.

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