Windows Weekly Episode 753 Transcript

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for windows weekly. Paul Thurrot's here, Mary Jo Foley's here. So are the barbarians at the gate. They've got pitch forks. They've got torches. They're howling for blood. Why? Because Microsoft keeps messing with Edge. We'll also find out why sat solds. Half of his Microsoft stock. Mary Jo Foley has the reason plus questions from the audience. We've got some good ones. It's all coming up next on Windows Weekly.

New Speaker (00:00:27):
Podcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:38):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley episode 753 recorded Wednesday, December 1st, 2021. By now pay later. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by ESET. Nobody wants their organization to be patient zero in a cyber attack. Right now, ESET protect complete is 20 off and you can try it before you buy it. Get your free ESET business trial and an interactive demo at business.Eset.com/twit. And by Melissa, the US postal service processes more than 98,000 address changes every day is your customer contacted up to date. Try Melissa's APIs in the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. In fact, to get started, you can get 1000 records cleaned for free today at melissa.com/twit and by ITProTV start or advance it career with the wonderful instructors at ITProTV, visit it pro.tv/windows for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription.

Leo Laporte (00:01:54):
Just use the code WW30 at checkout. It's time for windows weekly. The show we cover the latest news for Microsoft with is all about Microsoft's Mary Jo Foley. Hello, Mary Jo.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:08):
Hello, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:02:09):
Happy Wednesday after Thanksgiving. Thanks. <laugh> if that's a holiday, actually first it is. It's a holiday now. Sure. First day, December, it's called fracking day fracking day. It's the day day we hit temp. We pump water underneath our, our turkeys in attempt to find gas. That's Paul Thurrott, at thurrott.com. We are gonna talk tech with Paul and Mary Jo. And we should say at the beginning of this show at the very, very outset, there's hardly anything to talk about. I'm paraphrasing pretty much. So actually the first item, I'm gonna have many things to say about, but we are gonna open up the line. So if you're a Club TWiT member in the discord, head to the special room, we've just created called open mic, M I C. And if you're in the IRC irc.Twit.tv, and of course everybody can go there. We'll take your textual questions and I will put a higher train announcer to read those for you. <Laugh> and I promise not to use my nerd voice. So in a few minutes we will be, oh, opening up the lines for caller number three <laugh> before we do that, though, I suspect you mm-hmm <affirmative> and Mary Jo may wanna talk about something we're calling edge gate <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:03:33):
Yes. For lack of a better

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
Term. Yes. Yeah. I have to say I, when Microsoft in the, that they were gonna put a buy now pay later engine into my edge. Yep. I finally said that's enough. Yeah, this must end.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:50):
Yeah, I did too. Yeah. I, this is one of the rare things I was kind of on board early with two weeks ago, I wrote about this now that it has finally appeared in the stable version of edge. The whole world has woken up to it. It's been reported everywhere and I mean, not just tech publications, like the register, ours Technica Gizmoto et cetera, but also the BBC, you know mainstream publications too. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
Because of course when windows 11, they kind of force you to use edge unless you have, are willing to take extreme UNC. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:22):
These are the two things that's, I'm glad you mentioned that these two things to me are tied together. So windows 11 makes it much harder to switch from your, from edge to another browser. In some cases, impossible, people have figured out workarounds and Microsoft said, no, we're gonna stop those workarounds. This is how we want it to work. And now edge, which, you know, I dunno, how long ago was it? Two, three years ago this month that they announced that they were switching edge to chromium spent the last couple years developing it. Obviously when a, a product is new, you have to spend a bunch of time adding new features to it, getting it up to par with the market leader in this case, Google Chrome. And then also adding back some of those most used features from legacy edge of people still really like, and police support this, this notion of a a version of Chrome that has all the Google stuff stripped out of it.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:08):
And you use a Microsoft account in the backend, or now an AAD account is very compelling to me as a, as a Microsoft guy, I guess it would be. But the thing we've seen over the past year, especially, and probably for longer or than not, is just this kind of feature artist set again, that, that teams deification, if you will, of Microsoft edge. And a lot of this stuff is super superfluous. Nonsense is what it is. It's. And there's some indication that this by now pay later, may in fact, literally be malicious and have serious problems. It's not a Microsoft service. It's a third party service.

Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
Wait a minute. It's not even a Microsoft service. They, they just said to some third party, go ahead, put your crap in our, our browser or what?

Paul Thurrott (00:05:52):
So here here's okay. You have to forgive me if, for not remembering which publication did this, but Microsoft in its blog post said, you know, we don't get like a kickback on all of the, the, the buy now, you know, pay later sale. Like, like if you buy something, it's a thousand dollars Microsoft doesn't get like a dollar on the backend or something. What they didn't say though was, oh, but we do get paid in other ways, you know, like they're getting paid for this. So one publication, then I actually asked them, well, okay, but are you getting paid in other ways? And they said, yeah, we don't have any comment on that. Oh, in other words, yes. <Laugh> oh, right. So this is, this is a problem. It's a problem. Yeah. And I, you hate to see something good. Become something bad. I hate to see it happen so quickly too. I mean,

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:40):
I know. So I, today I shut off shut all shopping and edge because yeah. Op I got a couple deals from having it. Like it would find a coupon. No, I did too. Say, you know, but now I have to shut it off because there's so many intrusive things like rewards are coming up and this price trends over the past month. And I'm you see this

Paul Thurrott (00:07:01):
One? I got one that said you can print out coupons on paper from this site. Oh, wow. You really now, now we talking, if you go to target.com, you'll see that. Now that I'm 65, I think I'm going to print out all my coupons and bring yes, exactly. I said, Dannys in this put 'em in an envelope sort. Is it possible to turn this off in such a way that it's really not there? Like you, they're not collecting data. It doesn't bother you. Is it like an extension? Can you remove it?

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:27):
It's not an extension. Right? It's it's like built in.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:30):
It's built in, well, it's shopping features built in. You can talk all these things off. The problem is what's next Dayday loans. You gotta crying out loud. That's that's so I, I, in a private conversation with Rael, that's what I compared it to, you know, we had gone to this town called Redding, Pennsylvania. Most places in Pennsylvania are pretty. Even if they were a little downtrod and Redding is not one of those places, it's like the one place we went to was like, there were four bills, bondsman store, like a like storefronts and one block. And then payday loan places sounds. I was like about Redding right there. <Laugh> yeah, it's unfortunate. But they, well, it used to, it used to have it doesn't matter. Anyway, it's just, it's on the way out. But you know, Microsoft edge has turned into the Redding, Pennsylvania browsers, you know, it's it's wow. Sad. Wow. I know it's wow.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:15):
It's, there's a new marketing slogan who should be more

Paul Thurrott (00:08:17):
Insulted by that, Microsoft. Wow. By the way, if you Google Redding, Pennsylvania, you'll find that the top searches are, is Redding, Pennsylvania. The poorest place in the United States is Redding, Pennsylvania. The ugliest city. <Laugh> like this had to be a steel town. What was it? What, what happened? It wasn't a steel town. It a mill town. It was some something else. I don't remember. Do remember it was a still town. It was something like that. It was a, you know, it was one of those towns that had, I think it was just the nexus, by the way, Redding, not the one that subject Redding, Pennsylvania is the Redding railroad of yes. It's a railroad town mono. No, it used to be a big railroad thing. Yeah. So Redding Redding, the railroad coal

Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
Was yeah. Yeah. Transporting Anite coal from the Pennsylvania coal region using trains east to United States. Yep. On the Redding railroad. Yeah. I

Paul Thurrott (00:09:06):
Know it wasn't steel for some reason, but yeah. So Redding eventually was sold and, and you know, that train conglomerate a guy anyway. There's nothing there anymore. There's a nice theater where you can see a concert and there's a good little Irish restaurant, but mostly <laugh>, there's not a lot going on there. Anyway, let's get off of Redding. I don't need to install Redding, but no, it's no. And

Leo Laporte (00:09:24):
You know, it's it's a nice town. I've they just gone through a tough time.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:29):
<Laugh> yeah. The 20th century. So the

Leo Laporte (00:09:33):
Back 1825, I finished this sky kill canal, man. Things were happening, happening

Paul Thurrott (00:09:39):
Civil war days. That place was hot bopping. Yeah. Anyhow. I don't even remember what I was talking about. So <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:09:47):
Well, you were just saying edge is turning into the Redding PA of browsers is what you're saying. Yeah. It's kind of like a bail bondsman on every corner now.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:55):
Exactly. So here's the thing I, I, the argument I would make and I have made actually would be that if Microsoft wants to add this functionality to its browser, it should a consider, well, a, these should be extensions. And if they're extensions, they can be brought to any browser. So if this is a useful feature that someone might want, they might want it. Even if they're using Chrome, you know, or whatever, mm-hmm, <affirmative> the other approach, and this is the thing I think I brought up two weeks ago when this first came up was, you know, you could have a screen right in the beginning and says, Hey, edge offers all this great functionality, which of these do you want? They could all be on by default, but you could, before you even open the browser, you could say, no, I don't want shopping.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:31):
No, I don't want buy now pay later. No, I don't want whatever. And of course, Microsoft would never do. What I do is described is trying to, you know, get you to use these services. <Laugh> but I think when you clutter a thing up a, a product in this case or whatever, with too much junk people eventually just get irritated by it. And they go away. It's like the way that the widgets interface and windows 11 was like that, it's, you know, we joked about hell Berry a couple weeks ago, whatever, but like, there's just too much stuff about bikinis and women in short skirts and blah, blah. And it's like, how many times do I have to tell you? I don't wanna see this. And apparently the answer is infinite times because it never really goes away. And I just turned it off, you know? And I think a lot of people have that reaction. So it's kind of the opposite of what Microsoft was shooting for. Do you think they've

Leo Laporte (00:11:14):
Turned into the poorest company and in, on the internet? It, and maybe they just need the money now and

Paul Thurrott (00:11:20):
Even the biggest company in the world. <Laugh> yeah. That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:24):
What makes us weird. It's all about ads and Bing, isn't it? I mean, that's what this comes back to every single time. It's they wanna become a bigger advertising. Stop it. That's what they wanna

Leo Laporte (00:11:34):
Do. Stop. It is this. So now it's Google envy, by the way, Apple's doing the same thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:39):
Yeah. I was literally just thinking this exact thing. I, yeah, that's exactly right. Microsoft has long suffered from a case of apple envy, and obviously they suffer from Google envy as well. It's understandable. I mean, this is, you know, Google, it's understandable, but it's still terrible. And someone mature should say, no. I mean, Google, I don't remember the exact number, but every quarter I look at their earning statement and every quarter advertising is some 80 something percent of their revenues. And if they advertising didn't exist, neither would Google, you know, all those enterprise services, all the search. Well, not search, I guess, but all, you know, the photos, the Android, everything they do, none of it could exist. The only thing that makes money there is, is advertising. It's an advertising company. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> even if Microsoft made 10% of what Google does on ads, it would be a huge advertising company. It would. And I, you know, I know they look at consumer facing products like windows and edge and whatever else. And they say, you know, how can we strip mine this as much as we can not to beat the Redding, Pennsylvania, anything to death. But you know, they started adver adding advertising to windows back in 2012, with windows eight, you know, and it's the slipper

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:45):
Slope. You, you know, I never found those ads that offensive, cuz I never even noticed them. Like you, you notice them a lot more than I noticed them. Yeah. This is a whole other thing because when you're using edge and you're on a shopping site, it's not like a little, like thing shows up a small ticker, it comes down and it takes up like a third of my screen, right? I'm like, it's not, I can't even, it's not much see what I'm doing.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:07):
<Laugh>, it's not so much that I noticed them, you know, nine years ago or whatever, it's that I became a aware of them. And what I, my appraisal at the time was you don't make these little encouragements and stop mm-hmm <affirmative> you, you keep going and it gets worse and worse over time, you know, Samsung found itself in some hot water over the last year, people spend $1,300 on a new note or a new S 1 21 ultra or whatever it is. And their apps have ads in them, you know? Yeah. Samsung's apps. I mean, so the Samsung feed, whatever that piece of junk is called has ads all over the place in it. And a lot of users were like, what are you doing? We, we paid a lot of money for this product. You know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> now in Microsoft's case, by the way, those ads are gone.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:45):
Right. So if Samsung finally woke up in Microsoft's case, I'm sure someone will make the point or argue that, well, you just got windows, you know, 11 for free. What are complaining about mm-hmm <affirmative> well I can get Chrome for free too or brave or Firefox or whatever. And yeah, look, none of these browsers are perfect. They all have whatever issues they have, but mm-hmm <affirmative> this is just so in your face. And so awful, there was a, there's a, a Pluto TV ad in the what's new and edge screen that comes up when you upgrade the browser. I mean, Pluto's fine, but why I don't want that exactly. Why would you diminish this product like this? You know, it just doesn't make any sense.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:26):
No. And we heard Paul and I got a note on Twitter the other day from somebody who said, when he clicks on the new tabs page and edge, he, you know, it shows your most free used apps along that Bo the bottom of that page. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, he's now seeing apps. He's never used show up in that list. Oh, so they're

Paul Thurrott (00:14:44):
Selling that real estate too. Right? So they do well, they, they do the same thing in windows, right. So if you open the windows, the 11 start menu, you'll see icons for things like Spotify or picks art.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:56):
Yeah. Disney plus, think about all the things you don't they're have. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:00):
You don't even have them. So they're just stubs and those are basically advertising spots. So you click on that, the store launches, and then you can install it. Thank God. It doesn't just auto install. Well, actually, maybe it doesn't. I think it's, I think it goes to the store, but it's it's just these little, I, I think it's aside from just the general terribleness of such things, it's the sly way they do it. Cause I think a lot of average users would click on a Spotify icon and think, well, mm-hmm <affirmative> maybe I install that. I <laugh>, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:30):
I know I just saw TikTok on mine. I'm like, did I install TikTok? And I'm like, no, I didn't <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:15:36):
No, they just in windows 10 as well. You know it's

Leo Laporte (00:15:38):
So I guess then we must ask the meta question. Why? And I think the answer is cuz you don't have any, so what you know, I mean, I, I left when know a long time ago for Monex just cuz I can't take this. And I think Microsoft's attitude is, well, most people use windows cuz they have to and too bad,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:02):
Which is yeah. I don't think that's how PR would describe it. No, but

Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
That's sad

Paul Thurrott (00:16:06):
Clearly that's

Leo Laporte (00:16:07):
Clearly that's what's going on. Yeah. And

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:10):
Also that normal people don't I won't understand that they cannot not have to have a

Paul Thurrott (00:16:18):
Oh yeah, yeah. That's a key part of the strategy. Yeah. Yeah. That people don't understand, they have other choices. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> you mean other offers

Leo Laporte (00:16:25):
Turn things off. Yeah, yeah. Or no, or other browsers or,

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:28):
Or whatever, or even just to do it, we just were saying UN you know, click on the Ike con that you see and get rid of it. Right. And they don't even know. They're like, oh I guess I have that app. I didn't, you have other

Leo Laporte (00:16:37):
Stuff that pops up. I mean, it's there really, isn't a way to remediate it. I think norm I think that must assume either one of two things, normal people don't care or normal people have no choice. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:48):
And that's part of what, you know, you mentioned this earlier, Leo, this system of they have in windows 11 and making it very hard or now impossible to switch default browsers is designed to thwart the next level of people. Cuz there are people who do know there are people who want another browser and in windows 10 you could install, you know, Chrome or Firefox or whatever it would try to make you stay an edge. But if you click no, and off you went and everything would go through that browser. So in windows 11 they said, well, let's be a little sneaky and well a, we will make it really hard. So if you really, if you really want to use Chrome, you gotta sit there tediously and go through a giant list of you know, document types and protocols and whatnot. And even then they're gonna slightly run edge in the background, access MSN access, Bing because it's all part of a churn where they're trying to generate revenues in kind of a googly fashion, I guess we'll call it.

Leo Laporte (00:17:41):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:42):
Have you, I meant to ask you this, Paul, have you done anything like a cheat sheet for people who get windows 11 and they, and just to kind of warn them, like if you wanna use Chrome, here's what you need to select when you're setting yourself. No, so

Paul Thurrott (00:17:59):
Right. So two things to, I, I wrote an article very early on about the default app thing with browsers and explained, but you had to do to make that happen now. And I also have written about things like edge deflect or, or, and mm-hmm, <affirmative> the problem is in some coming version of windows 11, whether it's something that ships midstream or next fall or whatever it is, they're gonna really literally bypass that stuff. That's terrible. The, the other issue is the book, right? So I'm sure some PE I I'm sort of working on a windows 11 book, where is it? Well, part of the problem is windows 11 shipped in October in a very incomplete it. And I don't want to just keep updating this over and over and over again. So I'm, I'm trying to wait in some ways to see how this kind of thing kind of clears out.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:36):
Yeah. I'm expecting and hoping maybe is the wrong word, but before next fall, sometime in the spring or something, there'll be like a, a cumulative update that adds a bunch of stuff and make some changes. Maybe this browser stuff will change, whatever it is mm-hmm <affirmative> but you, yeah. Some of the things I've wrestle with are there are ways to get around installing windows 11 on unsupported hardware. And now this browser thing has entered that same area. Is this something I should be covering in the book? And I think the answer has to be yes. <Laugh>, you know, I have to. Yeah. But the problem is Microsoft keeps changing the rules, you know? Yeah. I don't, you know, we had this conversation maybe August, September timeframe, whatever it was, you know, what if I installed windows 11 on a seventh generation Intel processor or whatever mm-hmm <affirmative> and my answer at the time would've been, look, they're never gonna stop giving you security updates.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:24):
That's insane. But then since then you see some of the things they've done, some of the things they've said, and you're like, I don't know. I think it's all up for grabs. I don't know that we can trust these guys to do the right thing in any instance. And, and to Leo's point, you have to go to why, why, why this company used to be, I'm talking like two weeks ago, the shining light in big tech, right? The one big tech company you could kind of trust, you know, and they they've been that way for a while. And I feel like at least on the client side, they're kind of eating away at that trust by doing things like this. So mm-hmm,

Leo Laporte (00:20:02):
<Affirmative> somebody in the discord made a, made a point JT said for a contrarian point of view, I'd rather see these windows 11 ads than for Mike Microsoft to go back to charging a hundred bucks for windows. We're getting windows for free now, is

Paul Thurrott (00:20:17):
That why they always got windows? No, we always got windows for free. So I, the, the issue was people used to buy more computers, right. Or, or more computers were sold. That's how

Leo Laporte (00:20:27):
You would get your next version of windows. You'd buy.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:29):
People were not buying. No one was, I mean, I don't mean knowing literally, but people were not going into a best normal box bringing home, installing. Yeah. That didn't really happen that much. Not since like windows 95. I mean the, the instances in which something like that happened, I think you could, it was probably a linear line down to nothing since then, you know, with, but here's the, the thing, like if Microsoft decides Microsoft decided to give away windows 11, right? This wasn't in response to user feedback or anything like Microsoft didn't come out and say, look, we could charge 50 bucks for it. Or you'll get this thing. That's full of crap where a junk, you don't need, we're gonna clog up internet or a Microsoft edge. You can choose between a, they didn't give us a choice. This was their business strategy. I mean, this is, I, I think they understood that if they relied on people to get this with new computers or charged individuals 50 bucks a pop or whatever the number might be. Yeah. That no one would do it. <Laugh>, you know, that the uptake would be a lot slower. So that was their decision. I don't, I mean, I, I think by and large, most people weren't paying for windows per se. I mean, it was included in the cost of the computer you purchase for sure. Yeah. so the savings were, yeah, it wasn't a hundred bucks more or maybe it was, I don't know whatever who knows. I mean, you know, Microsoft charged a certain price per license, whatever. I don't know.

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:43):
Yeah. There's a lot of people in the discord saying I remember paying 159 upgrade, blah, blah. Okay. Yeah. That, that was a time when that was a thing. Right. But people didn't do that for

Paul Thurrott (00:21:53):
Sure. For the most part. Oh, you guys did it. We did it. We're in this. We're the weirdest, the people

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:57):
In this tech enthusiast, people listening to the show DIDNT. Right. My me I've never did that. I had never, I never had purchased an upgrade ever.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:06):
Oh, interesting. I used to purchase as multiple versions just so I could write about the experience. Yeah. You had to, because I had to part of the deal. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:13):
Yeah. Right. I stayed on it. As long as my PC still worked and it was fine. I, I never felt the need to get the new version.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:21):
Right. That's a, that's a curiously normal outlook on life. Mary Jo. It is. Right. So <laugh>, that's a,

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:28):
It must be, must be. That's why I'm here to balance the perspectives. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:22:32):
Right. Balance the crazy <laugh>. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:36):
Yeah. But I don't, I don't even think that I don't believe that Microsoft thinks about it the way we're talking about it. Like, because we make this free, now we can do whatever you want to junk up the operating system. I don't think they think that, you know, like, oh, now we can offset the cost by showing you ads. I don't think that's why they're doing it. I think the reason they're doing it is to try to build up Bing advertising and usage of the Bing and search engine. Right. I don't think it's because that makes them money by doing that. They're hoping somewhere down the line, if they have enough people using and seeing Bing ads, that it will offset the cost. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:11):
But you have to, I agree. I think you're right. But I, you not, you Mary Jo, I'm sorry. Microsoft has to balance the, the impact of the user experience on, on the user experience when they make these changes, you know, it it's incredible to me. Like I keep bringing this up, but you know, we have these off the, I'm sorry, they're off the record conversations. I guess they called it not a tribute bull to a specific Microsoft spokesperson. Right? Well, they'll tell us stuff, you know, we talk and they say things and you come away feeling pretty good about it. But you know, when windows 11 was coming out in early October, someone, not me or you, someone brought up from another publication, I don't remember who it was. The issue we were all wondering about, which was this unsupported thing and what are you gonna do?

Paul Thurrott (00:23:51):
And, you know someone brought up their follow apps and how complicated it was. They were, they were shocked to discover mm-hmm <affirmative> that we thought this was malicious. That we're good. We're good. People we'll look into that. Don't worry. We're gonna fix it. And then a couple weeks ago by a month or whatever was, and then they're like, no, we're doing that in purpose <laugh> and, and we're gonna make it worse. So thanks for bringing it up. You know, they actually went on record and said something like that. I mean, that, that's just a paraphrase obviously, but yeah. I just, it's just, it's depressing, you know, it's, it's look, we've Mary show and I have covered Microsoft for what it feels like a hundred years between us and <laugh>. There are obviously periods of time, big, huge swaths of time where this was a pretty terrible company, you know?

Paul Thurrott (00:24:34):
Yeah. And I went through some awful moments during the antitrust stuff. The more you learn about their business practices in the 1990s, I mean the less you want to have anything to do with this company. So there's been some ups and downs, but I feel like the last several years we'll call, call it the sat and Adela era or whatever has been largely positive, not just from a wall street, you know, cloud computing perspective, but just that Microsoft seems like a good corporate citizen. You know, they say all the right things about recycling and the environment and climate change, their data centers are gonna be run net zero and blah, blah, blah, whatever, and great, you know, and they're not as terrible as apple or Amazon or Facebook or Google. They're not, but man, they're trying real hard to be that terrible. Aren't they <laugh>, it just, it just feels like that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:21):
Yeah. And it's hard. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I'm very curious if this it's, it's not like a ground swell of a pushback or like people all coming out publicly and saying, okay, that's it. I'm not gonna use edge. I, but I'm curious if this negative publicity does have any impact or doesn't or if they just go, you know what, most people aren't gonna care or know how to fix this. And we're just going forward. That's too bad that too bad, everybody,

Paul Thurrott (00:25:51):
You know, I just, from a usability standpoint, I, I, the two sides of the coin here, I guess, are that most people don't move between different computers anyway. Yeah. And, and they don't upgrade often. So when I complain that you have to go in and mainly turn these things off, whether we're talking about something in windows 11, like the stupid buttons that are the task part by default, or whether I'm talking about these new features in edge, most of which, like I said, are superfluous and useless for most people. So you have to turn 'em off, you know, big deal. Like, what am I complaining about exactly. I mean, you can turn 'em off, you know, but again, I, I ha I always go back to the slipper slope thing from windows eight and the advertising. This is just the beginning. You know, you, you gotta understand that, that they don't get to a point and stop.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:34):
We're not gonna hit January or February. And they're like, oh, we're done adding features to edge. You know, this is just something that continues. And at some point it becomes like that college humor ad about, I designed windows seven or whatever that was where it's like this robot that fires Panda bears or whatever, you know, that stupid thing. Yeah. Because everyone had a little bit of an input and, and every idea went in, you know, and it becomes this kind of kitchen sink thing. And I, I already don't like where it is now. It's already not that thing. They promised two or three years ago, and it's only gonna get worse. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so yeah, people you're right. I agree. Most people, my wife, normal people like you or your, your mother or whatever, they're probably not gonna be like, whatever, if they use that they don't care, but they're gonna reach a point where that's not the case.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:15):
And I, that reminds me of windows eight. And I remember my good friend called me, got a new computer. And never, we never talked about windows. We never talked about computers. Never. He says, how do I get rid of this thing? What are you talking about? <Laugh> he said, windows a it's terrible. He said, is there I, how do I go back to windows seven? I'm like, did you buy this thing on a new computer? And he's like, yeah. I said, you can't. And he's like, I'm returning this. I don't, this is not, this is not even slightly usable. And that's you to feel like that's where edge is heading, you know, I'm hoping where it will impact normal

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:49):
That bad <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:51):
Yeah. I mean, for me, it already is that bad. You know, I already don't want to use it. And that's terrible. I was so excited for this product.

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:57):
Yeah. The shopping stuff I at first was like, oh, you know what? I didn't think I would like this or use it. And then I did and I'd save me of money. And, but now that they're adding more and more and more stuff and things are just popping up all over the place. I'm like, wait a minute. I, now I can't even have it on at all because there's too many things popping up all the time. And I can't, I can't even go to like the cart checkout of my cart because the Banner's covering the checkout thing. Oh God. And IM like, I don't see it. Its terrible. Yeah. So I just shut it off today. I'm like, oh well maybe it would, would've saved me a little money, but it's so, so interesting. At least you

Leo Laporte (00:28:33):
Can shut it off. It's I mean, thank

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:35):
Goodness you can do that. Yeah. I don't know how much of this it'll shut off. I'm curious cuz I unclicked the shopping stuff, but I'm like, I bet some of this is still show up.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:42):
Well I hope you're still doing Microsoft rewards. Mary Jo, because oh yeah. You get like a that's threw me over the edge, Xbox credit every <laugh> every 50

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:49):
Years or whatever saying what I'm like, I'm not even in being rewards. Why am I even seeing this right. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:28:55):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:57):
Yep. Yeah. Not good. Not a good experience. Like you guys who care about user experience at Microsoft and care about fluent, you should care about I'm sure are

Leo Laporte (00:29:06):
Complaining. I bet I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:09):
She is complaining in

Leo Laporte (00:29:10):
They're now I'm sure there's tons of complaints, but whoever is doing this obviously has more the market people. Yeah. And they're getting well. And also

Paul Thurrott (00:29:19):
I, there's probably a corporate onus for this business to make money in new ways and to fit into this kind of, of cloud model. And it's like you said, Mary Jo, not to be malicious necessarily, but how do we drive more revenue through? Yeah. You know, being an MSN and all that kind of stuff. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, I, it just, it, it, I don't know that anyone really sat back and thought, well, are we ruining this thing when we do this? I mean, is the it's it's very easy to look at some kind of me, Microsoft loves telemetry and they can say, Hey, Bing traffic was up 11% last month. Cuz the windows 11, which is never gonna happen, whatever. And you can look at that and say, see, we did it. But what you don't see are the people who walked away from windows forever, mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Because they're never gonna contact you and tell you they did it. They're just gonna drift away. And you know, five years is gonna go by and you're gonna be like, Hey congratulations, spin traffic is up 11%. But now you don't have any windows users, you know, out in the world. I mean, you're gonna have businesses I guess, for a long time, but it's just, I, I just don't think they, I think when you too dated driven, don't see the human side of it. Well enough agree or

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:23):
At all agree, you know? Yep. Yeah. Just the, you know, the, I haven't gotten one of these in a couple weeks, but I kept getting the popup that said, do you wanna change your search engine to Bing or don't use Microsoft recommended settings? You know, that popup that comes up sometimes. Oh

Paul Thurrott (00:30:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know when, by the way. So at that when you upgrade edge. Yeah. And, and it's a, it, that itself is a, is a deceptive kind of a dialogue. It is the

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:48):
Wording of it because by the way is very tricky and very deceptive.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:52):
Right? Well here, by the way, here's one of the only one of the things that will happen cuz it's it's innocuous. Right? You kinda look at it and you think, well, yeah, maybe the M Microsoft knows best smart you security and everything. It takes you several minutes to go through that entire list of even if you could figure it out. Even if, if somehow you even knew what you were doing, it takes a long time to go through and change every document type, every protocol, whatever. But if you agree to that thing, it's all gone in one click. Yeah. Cuz you can do it. They could do it quickly, but it takes you forever to put it back. So if you make that mistake, you know most people would never even know they did it and that's the point and that's what makes it terrible. They're literally, it's literally designed to deceive. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:31:35):
It's too bad. It's a dark pattern. That's what we call it. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:38):
It is. It's not, it's not good.

Leo Laporte (00:31:40):
<Laugh> 

Paul Thurrott (00:31:41):
You know, yeah. It's evil by the design

Leo Laporte (00:31:44):
Is what it is. There's another reason besides the fact that your users hate it. They've got now and the chairman of the FCC, Lena Conn, who is not only savvy, but is aggressively taken on big tech. And one of the things they've even said we're gonna take on is dark patterns. I don't think the prior FTC even knew what that meant. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:32:09):
No, I don't. And I don't think Microsoft is number one on the list either, but no,

Leo Laporte (00:32:13):
But it could be.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:15):
Yeah, it could be. I don't know. I, I, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I, we talked about this stuff, antitrust, whatever. I mean one point, what is it? 1.5 or 1.3 billion, whatever the figure is. I think windows 10 is 1.3 and the overall thing is two, 1.5. Something like that. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, it's a big audience. And it's a big enough audience that this product probably needs to be regulated or oversaw in some way. It, it doesn't mean, you know, this is the department of the government that controls it. I don't mean it like that, but it's, it, it impacts enough people that it, you know, it needs to be part of regulatory oversight, even if it just means reviewing what they're doing regularly.

Leo Laporte (00:32:57):
I don't know. I just I don't know what to say. It's hard. Take a break. We'll come back. Don't forget. We are gonna open the lines to questions. People are getting their microphones ready, Paul, you know, putting powdering their nose, getting ready for their

Paul Thurrott (00:33:12):
Appearance. And if you wanna say, you know, Paul, you ignorant, you know, whatever, that's fine. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:33:16):
Feedback this topic for sure. This is a chance to vent. Perfect.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:20):
Yeah. Maybe you like Microsoft rewards. You got a lot of shopping discounts. There are people who do you took advantage of buy now pay later,

Leo Laporte (00:33:28):
But that's why your answer, which is to make it an extension and let people choose it is exactly the right answer.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:34):
Yes. I mean, in some ways just advertising that this exists would put it in front of more people and would probably get usage. Like people might not know there's a honey

Leo Laporte (00:33:42):
Plugin or whatever. It's honey. She, you know, the, the check from RCU 10 comes in. She says she waves it in my face. <Laugh> she says, see,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:51):
See, yeah. Yeah. Well, we take advantage. We get cash back from Costco. You know, we do, we do stuff like this. So I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:33:56):
It it's, but give me the choice is what I'm saying. Exactly. Right. Give the, if you're gonna spy on me, gimme the choice. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:34:04):
Yeah, yeah. Spy or no spy.

Leo Laporte (00:34:09):
<Laugh> on a show today brought to you by our friends at E set, the global leaders and cyber security. One of the things I really appreciate about E set is their commitment research. They put out a threat report three times a year. E's threat report is a 40 page plus report. It's free. You could download it right now. We live security.com search for threat report great stuff, whether you're an it pro or just somebody who's kind of interested, a tourist, fascinating stats, lots of interest insights on topics like info, Steelers and ransomware and stalker, where it's a great way to keep up with what's going on and what's coming down the pipe. This is why Eun does this. It's I mean, it's, it's a good thing to do. They've got the research team, but they're always looking for the next threat. And that's really the important thing.

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It's easy for most security endpoint security solutions to find the, you know, last year's threat and, and believe me, they're still around. So you gotta, you gotta do it. But the thing you should be worried about in any business should be worried about is the next threat. The one, no one knows about the zero day. That's about to hit, about to come in over the transom is an attachment. The answer to this is E's dynamic, threat defense. So clever. This is brilliant. What they do is when they see something coming in, they use their cloud-based sandboxing technology to detect and isolate new and never before seen types of threats, they just assume every, this is the right thing. It's called zero trust. You just assume everything coming in is a threat. But so before they pass it along and, and let you open it, they open it, not on your network, in their sand inbox.

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Leo Laporte (00:36:58):
It's included in S protect complete, which is by the way, a great deal right now, 20% off, you'll get endpoint security, you'll get full disc encryption. That's nice. You'll also get advanced security for Microsoft 365 to close the gaps in native protection. And you get this dynamic threat defense E D T D. And I, I think that's brilliant. It's part of E protect complete right now, 20% off. You could try before you buy, get your free E business trial and an interactive demo at business.e.com/twi. Please do, do go to that address. So they know you saw it on on windows weekly, cuz we wanna get credit for it. Business.E.Com. So, and you will get credit for 20% off. It's a limited time offer business.e.com/twi. Thank you E for keeping us safe and for supporting Paul and Mary Jo and windows weekly. Let's see, let me go back to the show notes. Speaking of Microsoft 365, by the way, are they putting these kinds of things in teams? <Laugh> do they put ads in teams? Do they put like no. So

Paul Thurrott (00:38:12):
Teams is no, right. No. Well, no, but team teams is a, an enterprise product for the most part. Right? So to date it's a feature of a subscription you're already paying for. But the thing we're about to talk about, I mean, no, not the thing. I'm sorry. That's not true. There's another, there's a teams for consumers that's built into windows 11. I, I don't think there's any reason to believe it won't happen. Right? It's a free product, essentially. I'm afraid to

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:39):
Turn that on. I'm afraid to turn that I'm like <laugh> yep, yep. No. The first thing it says, when you click on it is do you wanna open all your Skype contacts and your phone contacts? That it really,

Paul Thurrott (00:38:55):
I don't like that in Skype, either Skype will say, Hey, you know, life would be easier if you just connected to connected this with all of the contacts already on your device, whatever your phone or whatever. It's like, well, I

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:04):
Don't want that <laugh> yeah, I don't that <laugh>. Yeah, no, like right now my Skype is a very small subset of all my contacts and my phone numbers. Right. And it says is right in the app. If you, if you do use this consumer teams, your email is visible in the client to anybody who gets it. So if you sync it with all your email contacts and all your phone contacts, everybody automatically has your email. Right. Because it's out on your profile. <Laugh> I'm just like, I don't know, like, I guess I just feel squeamish about this teams consumer thing, plus I don't know anyone else using it. I don't know anyone else using it, not even one person. So I sure

Paul Thurrott (00:39:42):
Guess, I mean, most people in our little industry have looked at it and said, yeah, I don't think so. <Laugh> yeah. You know? Yeah. Maybe it gets there, but I mean, as of today, I mean, if you want that kind of thing, I think Skype is still the better yeah. Solution or whatever. Yeah. But anyway, that's not what we're talking about.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:59):
<Laugh> no. Then today they introduced something that I am a little bit surprised about, but I guess I shouldn't be there's so here's a new version of teams that is a standalone version of teams because that doesn't exist right now. Right? Like the way you get teams is you have a, to Microsoft services,

Paul Thurrott (00:40:18):
There's a free, there is a free version of teams

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:20):
Except for the free version, right? Yeah. But this is a paid version. It's $4 per user, per month or $48 per year per user. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's for small and mid-size businesses. It is called team essentials and it ha it has some decent features like support for up to 30 hour meetings. And as someone said to me today, who does a 30 hour meeting?

Paul Thurrott (00:40:46):
Oh, you should join my company. I can tell you the Thursday meeting, I have feels like it last 30

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:51):
Hours. Oh, okay. 30 hours meetings with up to 300 people and everybody gets 10 gigs of cloud storage per user, as part of it. You're gonna have Google calendar integration quote, soon, in addition to outlook, calendar integration, you get all the regular tools like together mode meeting lobby. You get, you're gonna get a small business group chat template also coming soon. Right. And, and I guess I was a little surprised they did this, but then someone else said to me, well, this is what they're doing to compete with zoom.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:25):
I was like, okay. So I have, I have an alternate theory about this. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. I actually think a standalone version of teams makes plenty of sense. Yeah, because it's grown enough that people will, you know, want it legitimately. It's fine. But teams is like the one Microsoft product that actually has started to receive some regulatory scrutiny. Right. There we go. There been complaints against it. Well, I mean, there have been 

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:50):
Yeah. I'm agreeing with you. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:52):
<Laugh> <affirmative> and one of the ways you can bypass that complaint because the complaint literally is you're bundling it for free with this other thing. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> they can say, well, we'll just charge for it. <Laugh> yep. You know, and the charge look nothing for it, you know?

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:04):
No, because when I looked at the zoom plans, it doesn't really compare, right. If this is $4 per user, per month, the zoom has a, has a free tier, but then they go to like 19 or 14, 50 a month. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:16):
Cuz it gets expensive. Yeah. Very quickly.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:18):
It, it does. So I'm like, it's not really meant to head off zoom that way. I don't think, I think you're right. I bet you are right. That this is kind of to head off the Salesforce. That's my theory slash slack.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:30):
The other interesting tidbit, by the way, and this announcement I, for you saw this, but right. At the very end, they said, if you're an individual and you're paying for Microsoft 365 family or personal, you get all this stuff as part of your subscription <laugh> so it even kind of applies to

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:45):
Like consumers, all the features that they add back in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. It is. Yeah. And then the other team related news this week is loop, which is the thing that is largely fluid framework and fluid framework rebranded. Plus a standalone app is starting to get integrated into teams as they promised at ignite. So, you know how loop is, has three components, they have components page workspaces. So what they're doing is taking the components piece of it and they're starting to embed that into teams chat. So you'll be able to do things like send tables, send tasks, lists paragraphs to other people in the chat. And because it's automatically up synced really fast when you may could change in any of those pieces that are inside the team's chat, it will update everywhere and be all in sync in theory, at least.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:43):
So, yeah. So what do you think about experimenting with loop as a, we should potential replacement for OneNote.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:51):
I think we should try it.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:53):
I'll see if I have it yet.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:55):
Yeah. <Affirmative> no, we're gonna get it last. Just so we can't try it. Wait, great. <Laugh> I thought you said

Paul Thurrott (00:44:02):
Loop was the fluid framework.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:04):
It, yeah. It's fluid framework, but it's also a new app that it's a note is totally based on the fluid

Paul Thurrott (00:44:10):
Framework note taking app based on the fluid framework.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:12):
It's like, it's like a collaboration slash project management kind app. Okay. Yeah. You know what notion is? That's just like, I use notion just exactly like oh, interesting. Pretty

Paul Thurrott (00:44:22):
Much. Well, exactly like notion, but awesome. You mean <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:26):
Exactly like notion except not acknowledged by

Paul Thurrott (00:44:29):
Microsoft. We wanted to use for

Leo Laporte (00:44:31):
For iOS today. We did use it for a while, so yeah. Look at it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Loop. I would consider that too. There's is there a web interface or do I have to have windows? We have to go look at it. I don't know. I'm sure there is honestly, I'm sure it's gonna be web native client and then mobile as well. I am not a fan of the word fluid. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:51):
Well that's why they went to fluid and fluent. Right? <laugh> fluent.

Leo Laporte (00:44:54):
Okay. But fluid. I don't know. It's like moist. I don't want they moist in the face either. I just it's like, yes you do. Don't it's just one of those words. Moist, like melted butter. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:07):
Now remember, remember during windows eight, everything was fast and fluid. That was their tagline on everything, which I hated. And I still hate it's still way the rest of the

Leo Laporte (00:45:15):
Industry still uses this term. Apples used it. Google's used it. Yeah. Yeah. Fluid. That's a thing. Yeah. Fast and fluid. Yes. Fast

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:22):
And fluid. Fast and fluid. Yeah. How about fast? I'm excited about fluid framework. I am very, I'm excited about this. <Laugh> good.

Leo Laporte (00:45:30):
Well, let's I mean in, in, so when is that?

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:33):
Yeah, because co-authoring is so terrible in one note, as we say,

Leo Laporte (00:45:36):
So the only problem with it is it's in the commercial skew. And we, Mary Joe and I both have that account. That's fine. Oh, I don't though. I'm not like a home. No, but I, I suspect we could invite others. Well, I'm gonna look at it as the point. So yeah. Let's and I also think a year from now or whatever, this will be coming to consumer. You don't have to lie to me. I know this is what you've always wanted is some way, keep me

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:56):
Out, lock you.

Leo Laporte (00:45:57):
Yeah. What we're gonna do is we're gonna print you the notes and then mail it to you. What's it's like a good, I can print it out. Envelope. How exciting I still cuz I do the radio show. I still get snail mail usually from older listeners. Yeah. It's always in a kind of a spidery cursive. They don't even do it on a computer. Oh God. No.

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:25):
Oh, that's amazing. Some on postcards and stuff. That's cool.

Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
<Laugh> I couldn't my, my wrist is not strong enough to make it through a letter. If I had to handwriting it. Here's one. I think yeah. I can show you this one. It's just, I don't know why it is. It's just like maybe they think they're gonna Leo. They're gonna somehow get it through to me because the PO the mailman brought it. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:51):
You'll sure. You're sure to see it

Leo Laporte (00:46:53):
Attention to it. Email. Yeah. And well, they're keeping those people employed. It's they're not long. I mean, I get a lot of email. I know.

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:01):
It's not long. I look at, I look at print still way more thoroughly than I look at my email. Yeah. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:47:08):
The email. I just I've. I've conditioned people to the notion that I just don't even answer email. So don't even try. Yeah. Don't even try. Oh, that's the problem is you get too much spam and it's yeah. Even legit emails don't look legit anymore. After a while. Nope.

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:25):
I got spam. I got spam this week from the Idaho fish and game. Advising me, my license was ready for renewal and <laugh> I like, I kept looking at it over and over. I'm like, wait, like how did this even get through the spam filter? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:47:39):
It's probably malware malicious. Right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:42):
I I guess it would. Yeah, that is, that is amazing. My email, my personal email is a very common thing. So I get a ton of spam in it.

Leo Laporte (00:47:51):
Yeah. Me too. I'm Laport at Gmail. Boy. That's a good idea. What was I thinking? Right. I should have been Leo 38, 99, 44. And I used my nogging but I thought, oh no, I get my last name is gonna be cool. Yeah. I did the same thing. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:11):
Bad idea. Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:48:14):
Let's talk about windows. Yeah. Why not? Why not? What about

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:19):
This is a little good news. We've had kind of a downer news show so far happy

Leo Laporte (00:48:23):
News. Let's get some happy news. Yeah, this is good. We get some happy

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:26):
News. You know, we've been complaining about the start, you how it was very rigidly controlled in terms of what you could pin to it. How many rows you could pin to it. They're, they're listening and they're making some changes that are rolling out with today's test build for the dev channel. So now you're gonna be able to pin more to it, more pens as they say <laugh> I'm like, okay, good. And also more recommendations now, you know, like when we were talking earlier in the show about the things that are in the list and we always talk about why do they call it recommendations? Now we see why, because there are a lot of things in there that aren't even apps that you have. Right. There are things they are recommending you get, or you try, but now you're gonna be able to yeah. Recently added things. Yeah. Yeah. Recently added things, but also things you don't even have right. And don't own. And may never,

Leo Laporte (00:49:26):
It sounds like an ad,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:27):
But

Leo Laporte (00:49:29):
It does

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:30):
Now the day I Xbox the world, Xbox and halo show up on mine. I'll be like, guys, your recommendation engine is not working

Paul Thurrott (00:49:36):
That day's one week away. Mary Jo

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:38):
<Laugh>. Yes, it is. <Laugh> yeah. So it's good. They're letting, they're letting you start to make some modifications. There. That's a good sign that they're listening that people think it was too small, too rigid. And they're gonna let you customize it. A bit the other thing that I've heard, a lot of people talk about is the secondary monitor limitation, where you can't see the clock and the date on your secondary monitor when it's hooked up to windows 11 and that they are starting to enable that now. So the clock and the date will show up on your secondary monitor. So

Paul Thurrott (00:50:07):
Let me just dump on the start anything a little bit, because yeah, everything I see is negative. Okay, good. I'm glad they, no, I'm glad they're making this change. They're letting you choose between layouts, right? So there's the stock layout where the the pins and the recommended section of the same size. So depending on the height and resolution, all that could be like two or three rows of icons in each, whatever it is. So now they're gonna have two other layouts. They're gonna have one that's more pins and which means fewer recommendations mm-hmm <affirmative> and then they'll have one that's more recommendations and fewer pins, you know, and that's fine. It, it's not particularly sophisticated. And it's not exactly what I was asking for right in window is 11, but I would rather, I, I don't mind, actually, I don't mind this, this can stay.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:50):
This is a good idea. It's better than the 1.0. Version of the start menu. Yeah. But what I'd like to see added to this is this notion that I choose whatever layout I choose, but then I go into the pin section and I actually, I want even fewer pins. I, you know, I start manually deleting icons. Like the other section should just fill in the void. And right now it just leaves an empty space. So I dunno, maybe, maybe this will work that way. I don't know. You know, we'll see, I haven't tried it yet, but yeah, it's a step in the right direction. It's it's crazy how unsophisticated the start menu is windows is 11 today. Yeah. Yeah. So the it's, you know, it's in the right direction. It's, it's not exact, I don't think it's exactly what I was asking for, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:32):
It's not, it's not exactly what you're asking for, but it's something I'm, I'm just taking it as a win, right? No, you're right. It's still not, it is not the right click on the task bar thing that everybody wants to come back, you know? <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:51:45):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:46):
Well, you know, maybe that will

Paul Thurrott (00:51:49):
Yeah. Six bucks I think is the cost. Exactly, exactly. Start 11 can fix a lot of problems.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:54):
It can. Thank you, Brad Sams. Yes. <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:51:58):
Well, yeah. I mean, yes. There's I think a preview

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:01):
Of Brad Sam's. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. There's a few other kind of more minor things in today's build. Yes. That's one thing. One thing that I think people will like is if you turn on Bluetooth or wifi, when you're in airplane mode, your, your machine now will remember that. So if you wanna, you know, listen to music on a plane or something, it won't make you redo that every single time when you're in airplane mode. So that's a nice little gesture, right? Yep. They're doing some things with notifications. So three high priority notifications will show up as stack together. Altogether, I I'm still like struggling with the notifications part, windows 11. I have to say 

Paul Thurrott (00:52:43):
I just don't feel it's it's it's because it's combined with a calendar and it doesn't make any sense. It's

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:47):
So weird. No. Yeah. And notifications sometimes show up there and sometimes don't, even though I have, I've like rechecked and checked my settings to make sure I have it set the right way. Sometimes things don't show up. Sometimes they do. And it's so not consistent that it makes me crazy. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:53:04):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:05):
Yep. I wanted to ask you though, Paul and, and anyone else who's running windows, windows 11. I don't have Skype notifications working almost at all in my task bar with windows 11. It religiously worked with windows 10. Like I would see how many unanswered Skype conversation it doesn't ever show up on windows 11. It just doesn't even show up.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:24):
So yeah, I turned all that stuff off. I, I was getting the thing is in Skype that always bugs me is you'll be having a, like, maybe you and I are chatting. And every single time you hit enter for a new, you know, character return to whatever it makes a notification sound. It does. So I might be in another app doing something and you're over there going. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:43):
You know, so the way that works is like, it works on a phone. You go in and you turn it off <laugh> so I shut it off. I turn off, I shut, I turn off all Skype notifications, except for, I think I see a, I guess the app high of the button, the highlights, I guess, but I don't see like a little number. Is that what you mean? Like a number with a, yeah. The little number or something unread. I don't notifications that. I think it's not even therem mail on the built-in mail app. I see a number show up all the time of like some made up number. Like right now I see four, even though I have read all the mail in my inbox, I'm like, where's that?

Paul Thurrott (00:54:17):
But if you, but if you open it and look at your inbox, it will disappear. Yeah. Like it's not connected. I've

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:22):
Already read all of them. Right? Yeah. I don't know. Those little things kind of bug me, you know, I, I was saying even like the little underline underneath the apps and windows 11 on the task bar showing you that something is, you know, not closed. I I'm like, why does that have to be there? That's just so annoying and weird. <Laugh> the,

Paul Thurrott (00:54:39):
The, in, in many ways teams has improved in this annoyance because teams yeah. Will also give you the little notifications if someone chats with you. But sometimes mm-hmm <affirmative>, the notification is in the activity view and you have to manually navigate to it and clear it out by just viewing the thing, even though it's mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, somebody mentioned you in a comment and you already read the comment, but you, you didn't clear it out in activity. It's like guys, I, yeah. Yeah. Why, why? Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:07):
Anyway, I didn't wanna get off on a negative tangent <laugh> cause I think it's good. What they're doing with the test build it's and, and I don't know if you saw this in today's blog post at that very end. I believe it says some of these features that we're adding here are gonna show up earlier than next release of windows 11. Yeah. So actually

Paul Thurrott (00:55:27):
Not until the fall. Right. I I've always that's I've always kind of, so I I've always suspected that I, I feel like they said that at some point or whatever, but this has always been my expectation, the problem I have with the insider program, the problem, one of the problems I have with the insider program right now is it's not clear how, when those things will appear. And that's why every time we talk about this, I'll say something like this will appear in the next version of windows 11 or sometime in the coming months. And we, I mentioned the book and how I'm thinking about the spring. Like, I think a bunch of this stuff does appear January, February, whatever. And maybe, maybe it's quarterly, maybe it's twice a year or whatever. But I, I, I, I do expect a lot of the stuff that's being tested in the dev channel in particular mm-hmm <affirmative> to event, well, I guess particular, but the dev channel, these things will they'll appear eventually. Yeah. And in many times, many cases before the next release of windows 11. So I'm glad, I'm glad for that little bit of yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:26):
You know, but I think the uncertainty is just, he don't know which features will they'll decide are baked enough to make it out before.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:34):
And I guess some, some might not even make it right. I mean, that's, they may

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:38):
Not, not even show up. That's what that's dev chin is

Paul Thurrott (00:56:41):
A possibility. Yeah. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:43):
Mm-Hmm

Paul Thurrott (00:56:43):
<Affirmative> anyway. Yeah. No, I did notice that. I'm glad they I'm glad they said that. Cause I feel like that had been said in the past, but I'm not, I can't find it. You know what I mean? I feel like someone said it, but I, I, I haven't been able to find it. So anyway, that's good. Yeah. I agree. That's good. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:57:01):
Wow. That was exciting. 

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:05):
You know, we're, we're working the week after Thanksgiving to find something, something, anything, well, huge. Oh, we got anything, huge news

Leo Laporte (00:57:13):
Windows 11 now on a whopping 9% of these actually is that, that feels like a big number. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:21):
There's no urgency close to. Right. Right. I, they have turned up, opened the pipe a little bit more. That was a little mini announcement they made fairly recently. It was I think it was 4.8, six. We'll call it 5% about a month ago. But I actually the one little detail, this is like one of those things that's obvious, like we've talked about this, but it is very interesting. Duplex said, this is the first time in modern history where an older version of the OS has entered the market later than a newer one. <Laugh> right. Meaning windows 1121 H two shipped in October windows, 10 21 H two shipped in November, November. And that's, that's actually kind of interesting. Yeah, that is. But yeah. So, you know, I look a lot of people always cool with this data. It's it's based on a survey, I think in this case it was 60 or 80,000 computers.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:10):
Yeah. 60,000 mm-hmm <affirmative> you know, it's based on mobile app usage. It's fair to say a lot of people that use windows never use these apps. And so, you know, what are we really measuring here? But until, and unless Microsoft provides us with a, any data regarding windows 11 adoption and I don't, you know, I don't know. I think they will eventually, but I don't think it's gonna be like the beginning of windows 10 where it was a real regular drum beat. I mean, this just gives a little bit of insight into, you know, what we're seeing out in the world. Yeah. so I don't know, maybe is the real figure, half that or something, you know, I don't know. Right. If there are 1.3 billion windows, 10 computers, this is still a lot of computers.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:50):
No. And you know what complicates it as, not every PC can get windows 11.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:55):
Right, right. That's true.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:57):
That's true. Right. So it's not like just they're holding it back artificially. It's like a lot of people can't upgrade who want to, and

Paul Thurrott (00:59:04):
We don't even know what those numbers are. You know, it's not like Microsoft has never come up and said, Hey we're making it available to 17% of the windows, 10 computers. Right. Well, they'll never say that, you know, you'll never get that data mm-hmm

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:15):
Yep. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:17):
Well, okay. Here we are.

Leo Laporte (00:59:20):
I was hoping we'd get more out of that piece, but okay. <Laugh> maybe this will be the story of

Paul Thurrott (00:59:26):
The day. The new paint is getting a update. You know, I'm glad this has come up because I need something to complain about and I gotta tell you,

Leo Laporte (00:59:36):
You haven't had anything. Nothing at all.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:37):
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. The new paint is it's terrible. Paul

Leo Laporte (00:59:42):
Says it as a user and that's important.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:45):
I use paint every single day and this stupid thing, first of all, it's only support it's it's not just light mode. It's stark white. It is as white as white can be. So it's the brightest affront to your eyes imaginable. I use the computer in dark mode, three, you know, 24 hours a day. There is no dark mode in this thing. I don't understand releasing a modern version of an app and not supporting the thing your OS supports, but that's what Microsoft did. But the other thing it did was it screwed with some of the keyboard shortcuts. So there are things like control E brings up like the the size of the documents. You can change that the control w gives up the it's like skewing and, and changing the percentage of sizes and things. Those work fine. But alt F usually doesn't work.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:31):
<Laugh> alt if, if you haven't saved anything yet, or if, I guess if it's been saved, you can do control S and that still works, but you can't do like, you can't do like alt F a, which is save as, because the save as menu has like a, like a menu off the side with like types of documents. You can save it as, and there's no keyboard truck. It's like, guys, you're killing me here. Like, I, I rely on these keyboard truck to be efficient and they anyway, so they're testing a new update to paint and they didn't fix anything I just described, which is maddening to me. Instead the, they have switched over some of the dialogues to the new windows, 11 style. So actually let me bring up paint, watch my face light up by the way, when this happens. Whew.

Leo Laporte (01:01:11):
<Laugh> now I know how we could have got you don't need to buy a red light, just paint. You've got paint. Yeah. Jesus it's nuclear

Paul Thurrott (01:01:19):
Control E which is actually image properties which is the width and height of the document is the old style it's it's rendered with rounded rectangles because it's windows 11 control w is reci and SKU. So these things look exactly like the dialogues and paint have looked, I think dating back to possibly windows 95, but they're really old. Those are the dialogues they're updating that's in the dev channel. So it to that start menu customization thing, we just talked about. It's a feature that will probably, well it's actually, this is just in an app so they could ship this at any time. It's a minor update at best. It's not, it's not, it's not that like really basic stuff I was looking for. Doesn't even have rib it anymore, by the way, it doesn't matter. Just they really screwed this app up. And I, God, I, I rely on this thing. This to me is the equivalent of the, of them screwing up Mar notepad for Mary Jo. It's like, I just,

Leo Laporte (01:02:15):
This is your

Paul Thurrott (01:02:16):
App. Yeah. I can't tell you how often I use, I use this all day long, all day long. Oh man. And every day it's like, it's like using a Mac, like where everything's a little different and you're like, I know this app. Why isn't this working? And it's, it's just frustrating. Huh? But it's new. It's new.

Leo Laporte (01:02:34):
It's new. It's the new and improved.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:36):
No, you know, new is always better.

Leo Laporte (01:02:39):
Right? Well, something, I dunno, there's a few things they could do to make it better. You should write your.net paint.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:45):
Well, there's already a paint.net, right. So, oh yeah. I guess the thing is, that's a good, I just, I use things for very specific. Well, so I've tried, obviously I've tried paint.net, right? Yeah. there, there are certain things it's kind of hard to explain, but like tools like Photoshop and paint net both suffer from this where you, the, the repetitive task you have to do. You're resizing a document you're trying to crop it to a certain aspect ratio. The types of things I do, like every day, like that those settings need to retain for this thing to be useful to me. And they're just, these things are just difficult. I don't paint is just really good at certain things. And it's gotten a little less good because they released this new version, which aside from blowing up my retinas, doesn't support a couple of things it used to do. This is why

Leo Laporte (01:03:30):
Or easily back in the day, George Morrow said, if you want to use software, you should write it yourself. Yeah. That way, it's just what you want. Nothing more. You only have you to blame. You only have you to blame. Let's take a little break, Xbox news coming up and prepare your questions. We're gonna open the lines in just a few minutes. Paul and Mary Jo Foley have consented to taking your <laugh> your irate questions, your, your ran. Well, they

Paul Thurrott (01:03:58):
Don't, they don't have to be irate.

Leo Laporte (01:03:59):
You're bloviating anything you want to do. You could do in just a little bit if, if people are in the discord, we have a special open mic channel for you. Don't go in there. Of course, unless you have a question for the IRC, I will be reading your questions. I will be doing a dramatic reading of your questions. So go ahead and start posting those make, make sure you see music there won't be music mm-hmm yeah, I can. Yeah, whatever you want. I can like sit

Paul Thurrott (01:04:26):
By a fire or something and you got, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:04:28):
Smoke a pipe, little, have a sniffer of branding. <Laugh> yep. And then Paul, Mary Jo tow slot ask <laugh>. If you have a question for Paul, Mary Jo, if you would do me a favor in the, I put my name first, cuz then I get a little highlight and I know that that's for them. Our show today brought to you by Melissa. The address experts having customer data that's accurate is vital for the success of your business, right? For bills, for mailings, for catalogs, for calling everything thing. But how accurate is your customer data? Did you know that last year 36 million address changes were processed by the postal service? And that's just addresses about 30% of customer data goes bad every year, but Melissa can make sure your data's current and accurate, not just addresses, but emails, phone numbers. Names can all be verified with Melissa in real time.

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The typical ROI from Melissa customers, 25%. How could there be an ROI? Well, because you're wasting money. If you're content, if you can't reach customers, you're sending catalogs the wrong address. If you're sending duplicate catalogs, yeah. Melissa can, can get rid of duplication in your customer information database. Their data matching eliminates. Clutter eliminates duplicates, increases the accuracy of your database and reduces per hostage and mailing costs. You're also gonna be able to do identity verification, which means you reduce your risk. You ensure compliance. And most importantly, you keep customers happy. They have some geocoding enrichments, which will convert addresses. I, I I'm, I'm not sure how this gets used, but I take people need it. They actually will convert an address into a latitude and longitude. That's cool. I'm sure there's something. Maybe if you're delivering by drone, I don't know. They will also verify email and they can remove up to 95% of bad email addresses from your database.

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That's huge cuz nowadays you probably that's. That's the main way you stay in touch, right? Melissa's flexible deployment op options offer different platforms to suit any preference, business size or budget. They've got flexible. On-Prem web service. There's a secure FTP site. You can upload and then download from software is a service. They also have that new lookups app that's on iOS and, and Android to search addresses names right there in your phone. And another thing I'm sure you care about and, and certainly should know is Melissa continually undergoes independent security audits to reinforce their commitment to your data's security privacy. And of course they know you have compliance requirements, their SOC two and HIPAA GDPR compliant, the best support sign up for a service level agreement. You'll get 24 7 world renowned support. And I should say that they co the, the pandemic's not over.

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Paul Thurrott (01:09:16):
Also, I have, I have a, a first question remember from, oh, that's right. From someone who interviewed that's right. So, but anyway, so just two two quick things for Xbox news. It is December 1st. I don't know how that happens so quickly, but here we are, as we record this, I should say. And Microsoft has announced the first Xbox game pass titles that we to coming this month, right? So the, the first are coming tomorrow and then several on the seventh, eighth, ninth, 14th, et cetera, this, some big stuff in here. None bigger than halo, infinite, which arrives on December 8th. And halo is always kind of a big deal, obviously. I mean, it kind of enters a very different market, right. You know, from what it used to be back in the day, call a duty war zone, Fortnite, et cetera.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:04):
So we'll see how that goes. But you know, the feedback from the multiplayer be, has been mostly positive, I would say. And for once I'm interested to play a single player game, so we'll look forward to that. Nice. but a lot of other stuff in there as well. So that's always good if you're a game pass subscriber and this is <laugh> otherwise, this is one like I'm gonna view in a slightly negative light. Other people will see it differently. But if you're familiar with Xbox cloud gaming, which used to be called cloud, which is a feature of Xbox game pass allt of it, and I'm always amazed, I'm able to spit that out. You may know, or you may not know, I don't know. You can play it a couple of different ways if you have a windows computer.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:45):
So if you have a windows 10 or 11, there's a native app called Xbox, you can play it through there. I, my understanding is that would typically be the best experience, but you can also play it through a web browser. And of course the benefit of that is that it works on any platform. You can do that on Linux, if you wanted the Mac, whatever. They announced that Xbox cloud gaming will feature will include a feature called clarity boost, but only in Microsoft edge. Right. And it's basically a set of client side scaling improvements that improves the visual quality of the stream. Hmm. So I, I think you could make a pretty good argument, but maybe this is something they should contribute back to chromium and it should benefit any browser, I guess, but they're making this kind, I don't know, lock and thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:34):
I, I guess the good news is if you look at the image differences between non clarity boost and clarity boost, they don't look that different to me. In fact, in the image that I scale down, they don't look any difference to me. It's almost like I'm spoofing people with this image, but if you want to test it, you have to get the Canary build of Microsoft edge for now, obviously. And then in new enable it in Microsoft version of what's it called you know, edge flags or whatever. It just enable clarity boost in there and it'll turn it on, but I dunno.

Leo Laporte (01:12:06):
<Laugh> are you getting, are you getting kind of tired of the whole thing? Are you just like done with, well, I just,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:13):
I, you know, yeah, I wish I had, I wish I had more PO I don't like to be negative. I, you know, I, I guess I just look at things like this and I think why don't they just do the right thing? Okay. I guess, you know, look, they are, they're a company. They need to have a competitive advantage. It is their service. Why wouldn't it run best in or on browser except windows only windows best is <laugh> failed strategy from 20 years ago. Got it. I don't know. Okay. It's okay. At least Xbox cloud gaming is available basically everywhere. So if you do want to play it on an iPhone, an iPad, an Android device, a Mac, a Linux computer, you can, so Xbox consoles, obviously not in the PlayStation or the switch, but basically every where else. So

Leo Laporte (01:12:56):
Do you want to do your first question and then we'll get to our discord and

Paul Thurrott (01:13:01):
IRC question. I just think this is, and I think people listening on discord, or just to show kind of wanna think about this one a little bit too. This is a really good question. So last month a student from Knoxville, Kentucky Gus Wolski, I don't think he would mind me identifying him, asked me if I asked Mary Jo and I actually, if we would be interested in being interviewed for a school project and I ended up doing it. And like I said, I think before the show started recording, I, I didn't really research any of his questions. He did send me the list of questions. I kind of read through him to make sure they were in the right, you know, know the, you know, right area. But there was one right in the middle that really, I, it really, it really caused me to, I thought about this for a lot. And I came up with the answer, but I'm curious what you guys have to say about this, which is this every year, the PC's power increases with each iteration. At what point, or what year do you think that the PC's power became more than what the average worker required?

Leo Laporte (01:13:57):
What an interesting question.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:59):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. I, I, I was fascinated by this. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about this. I didn't research it, like I said, but I really thought about it and I did come up with an answer. But before I get to that, I'm curious, just off the top of your heads, what you guys think about that.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:13):
I don't even know how I would answer that because I feel like there's some people who think PCs are really underpowered still for what they need to do. And for me, it's always been well,

Paul Thurrott (01:14:23):
Average office worker. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:25):
For me, it's always been overkill cuz I, I mean, I don't do a lot of pro productivity apps. Like I don't yeah. I don't even run word in Excel regularly. Right. So, right, right. I don't know how, I don't even know how I would answer that. I guess also cuz there are first line workers and like all different people who are in the productivity worker box. This is why you did this interview. And not me <laugh> cause I'm like just thinking I, I don't even know how I would quantify the question.

Leo Laporte (01:14:51):
Here's how you pun. Yeah. Here's how you punt elegantly Mary Jo. Yeah. Well, there is no answer to that question exactly. As you know exactly. The people's needs have grown with the capability of hardware. So you wouldn't sit down in a, on a 1986 PC running Lotus two, three or worship

Paul Thurrott (01:15:13):
Marriage. Jo probably could honestly

Leo Laporte (01:15:15):
I could probably use CPM still. Oh no, you might. But you wouldn't, you wouldn't try to calculate, you know the primes up to 8 million or whatever it is you do in business. I don't really understand business, but the point is that you, you know, you kind of have an

Paul Thurrott (01:15:28):
Expectation. Wait, wait, wait, you think you think that business, they need to the, the primes to a certain number? Well, I'm trying to think hard is this problem.

Leo Laporte (01:15:37):
You wouldn't calculate science problem. You wouldn't calculate, you know, the, the you know, the cost per item of a million items or whatever, you know, in other words, as always you adjust the problems you assign to the computer based on what the computer's capable of as it's become more capable, you, you may ask more of it. Although I think Mary Jo you're right in the sense that it's been a long time since people said, oh, you know, I don't have enough computer to answer that question. Exactly. <laugh> and in fact, really it's not even whether it could answer it. It's more like, well, do you have to go get a cup of coffee or go to lunch or go home to get it, to answer it? You know, you it's just a matter of time. Yeah. So I, I think it's kind of actually the question with all due respect is, is kind of nonsensical because

Paul Thurrott (01:16:25):
Hold on, hold on. So actually, what

Mary Jo Foley (01:16:28):
Was your answer? I'm

Paul Thurrott (01:16:30):
Curious. Yeah, I think you'll, I think you will. I love this question. Cause of course in my mind what I'm thinking of is windows and PCs and what the traditional relationship has been between hardware and software. And I think you guys will both remember this in the 1990s, especially in the beginning of the 1990s, the conversation about windows was always that windows, the hardware that windows ran on had needed time to catch up to the features that Microsoft was adding in every version, right? The windows was always really slow, but the canonical excuse for that was, oh, well just waiting for the hardware to catch up, you know? Yeah. You may think windows like three is terrible and you 2 86, but wait until you get a 3 86 that's it's gonna be awesome. You know, however, and before you go on, okay,

Leo Laporte (01:17:09):
<Laugh> in that time period, I sat down with Andy gross at, at then CEO of Intel who said, God darn bill gates and Microsoft. They refuse to update windows to 32 bit. We're doing 32 bit. They're not. So

Paul Thurrott (01:17:26):
I, so I right. You're right. I should, hardware

Leo Laporte (01:17:27):
Manufac might have had the same, have the same feeling in the other direction. Right?

Paul Thurrott (01:17:33):
I, I, I actually, I, if you're gonna argue that Microsoft software was poorly written and inefficient in the early to mid 1990s, I'm not gonna argue with that. <Laugh> this was it's terrible, but I do it. But the reality is we had whatever versions of windows, we had, we, whatever processors we had at the time and they ran, however they ran it, it, it, you know, we can blame whoever you wanna blame. But the, the, at some point that changed. And I, in thinking about this, I think that point was windows Vista because when windows Vista came out, it was the last time. I, I think where windows require had more of the computer than the computer had. And it specifically for the display, because this was the version that had hardware, accelerated graphics with ALA, well, they didn't call it AAS at the time.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:20):
I don't think. Or did they? I don't remember anyway, what if it wast AASS it became AASS. But most computers of the day had Intel integr graphics, which return airable and they couldn't run Aero glass. So you got Aero basic, which looked miserable. It looked like mud. And over time they improved the drivers. My Intel came up with a, a better version of the Intel integrated drivers or integrated graphics. And then by S SP one, and certainly by windows seven, the transition had occurred. And basically by that point, anyone who a GLA get glass. And I think that was the end of it. Because if you think about what's happened since windows eight, which went back to kind of a, a matte kind of flat appearance you know, windows 10 now in windows 11 there's no version of like the UI and windows 10 or 11, that's like downgraded and looks terrible because your computer isn't fast enough to run it. Everyone has a computer this so asked enough to run it. So that was my answer. My answer was that windows Vista was the dividing line between the terrible past and the 

Leo Laporte (01:19:18):
That's, that's, that's reasonable. Yeah. Kinda in a broad rush way of, of thinking about it. But it's certainly the case that it's been a long time since people's hardware wasn't up to the task of

Paul Thurrott (01:19:30):
Day office. Right. And I think that will, was the thing, like, you know, that was, that defined the personal competing experience, whether you had like one of the early max, I remember had a, like a commod 64 with GIS on it was terrible. Right. incapable of running that software you know, in windows like windows, you know, my early experiences with windows on, you know it was a two 80 say, I guess 2 86 first, and then a 3 86 SX were not great <laugh>, you know, but eventually, you know, the hardware, the hardware, like you said, the, you know, had already improved windows, took advantage of it and things got better.

Leo Laporte (01:20:05):
Yeah. I mean, there's always, you know, Adam processors or windows on arm on a Qualcomm, you know, 6 55 where no, no self-respecting office workers. Oh, when,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:15):
Well, this, this stupid little snap dragon, seven C thing you've got, which couldn't, I can't get out of its own

Leo Laporte (01:20:21):
Way for sure's. So there's no, I mean, it's not a linear

Paul Thurrott (01:20:24):
Thing. Well, mainstream, but mainstream computing,

Leo Laporte (01:20:26):
You know, if you, yeah. And I think maybe another tipping point was when you went, multicore like the core two. Yeah. The duos, because suddenly now you really have a lot of

Paul Thurrott (01:20:37):
Horsepower. Yeah. 32 64 bit. Multicore absolutely until doubled the core and the use series processor with generation eight from two to four, that was big

Leo Laporte (01:20:46):
Later on outta sync saying SSDs, but I would even say the hard drive speed has never been really an issue, but massive

Paul Thurrott (01:20:54):
Capacity. Well, it is, if you don't have enough REM <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:20:57):
You're doing swap this. So a lot of Ram and a lot of capacity, those made big differences too. Certainly the case, whenever it was we're in good shape, now you, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:09):
Yeah. And Mary Jo, listen, even you have a computer that could run Microsoft word if that's what you

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:13):
Want. <Laugh>. Yeah, no. And I was gonna say, and the other thing that kind of skews this question is people doing more and more in VMs, right. And like, well, that's right. As a virtual,

Leo Laporte (01:21:22):
That was my initial point, is your needs expand to fit what's available. They do. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:28):
Yeah. But you know what, the one maximum that says remained true over all these years is you'll never need more than 640 gig. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:35):
Exactly. That never changed.

Leo Laporte (01:21:38):
Question for Paul about halo, infinite. Yeah. And, and this gives you time to pat your cat Hey, get him to settle down, get SRA you to, to settle down. He hates these little questions. Yes. This is from Newman in our discord. Do you know what Microsoft's plans are for halo? Infinite? I see a separate app in the store for the campaign that costs 60 bucks. There's a multiplayer app. That's free. However, it's in beta, then I've heard there was a battle Royale component to infinite as well, which is going to be free. So there's different, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:10):
Is I guess

Leo Laporte (01:22:12):
The biggest question is, is the multi-player, which is currently free going be 

Paul Thurrott (01:22:16):
Not free. I, I think they're gonna roll it. I don't actually know. And, and I, I should say I'm, I'm on the beta. So I can't really, there's some things I can't really talk about yet, but I, my understanding, my belief I should say is that it will be like call duty. They'll roll it into like a, a, a one app stub kind of a thing where it launches the different experiences from within the one app. I think the reason you see separate things stay is because they decided to do multiplayers of free beta. So they, by separating it out, they could give you a standalone download. Right. That would be easier to digest. That's my understanding, as far as you know, there's a lot different with this release, right? This is a multi-platform deal for the first time ever at launch.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:57):
Anyway. I think halo two, I think it was halo two. Finally, eventually came out on windows Vista actually, now that we're talking about Vista again. But other than that, well, okay. More recent games. This it's supposed, it's basically been a console really. So this time it's console it's windows PCs, and it's Xbox game pass. I'm sorry. Yeah. Xbox game pass and Xbox cloud gaming. Right. So you're gonna get it through all the, these different channels. So you could play it on different, in different ways and mix and match and all that kind of stuff. So I know they have, they're gonna adopt that season's approach that a lot of games are doing now. They wanna be really aggressive with the seasons, which I don't actually think is too smart, but I think they're looking at three months seasons and that the original season, the first season I should say will be six months long. So they, and get their bearing and then go from there. I, I think a six month season is probably the right approach, but, you know, we'll see. I don't, that's all I have to say. <Laugh> good. I think that's, we have

Leo Laporte (01:23:59):
A question from JT. I'm gonna turn on, I guess, do I, oh, no, you turn, I look at this, Mike, somebody's gonna turn on his mic. Hey JT,

Speaker 4 (01:24:08):
Can you hear me? Hello? I can

Leo Laporte (01:24:10):
Speak up cuz it's a little low and I've turned the

Paul Thurrott (01:24:12):
Volume up. This is like an episode of mash where we're calling home from Korea. Yeah. <laugh> <laugh>

Speaker 4 (01:24:19):
I back to edge Paul. I, I take offense being called weird for upgrading windows. I don't know how many people here and I'm kidding. Okay. I, I wanna applaud Microsoft for skating to where the puck is going to be. I remember a minority port in 2054, so there's advertising everywhere. So I think they should be applauded for just going ahead and getting they know

Leo Laporte (01:24:39):
It's coming. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:24:40):
Sure. Yeah. All right. I, I do feel like there is a trend of subscription tea and I don't know if that's where Microsoft is going and, and that I'm, I'm happy to, to have windows be free forever. And I don't think they have a good way to pay for that with hardware like apple does. And I also just kind of wanna say that we see this lifecycle and, and I remember Netscape navigator became Netscape. Communicator became Sobo the K Mozilla Firefox. You know, we see that lifecycle of browsers where it goes from a very slim browser to a very bold browser, to a slim browser. I, I, I, I guess it's just inevitable, right? And maybe this is how the developer, their <crosstalk>, where goes from a very slim browser to a very

Leo Laporte (01:25:22):
Bold. So getting a little

Paul Thurrott (01:25:22):
Echo now, <laugh> like, I, sorry. Yep. So let me address, like, can I address the most important thing you said, which is my in order to report? The thing <laugh> the thing about that movie is they exchanged data by taking a disc out of a machine and putting it over, oh, my machine, like they had all this holographic stuff going on, but they still had physical, which I always thought was amazing. Anyway. Yeah, no, you're, I think you're, you're right across the board. Microsoft doesn't have a way to subsidize software, hardware, sales, like apple does. So they have to have a different approach. But I actually, you know, we talk about this notion, I think, and, and we have, for some reason have this belief that people would be against it that nobody wants to pay for a windows subscription. You know that when you hear something like Microsoft 360 or windows 365, you get nervous that, oh, here we go. You know, they've been working toward this. You know, I think that Microsoft believes people don't want that. And they're, they're nervous about offering something like that. But I think they've done so many terrible things by this point, if they just said, look for five bucks a month, get rid of all this stuff, I'd be like, please take my money. I, I would gladly pay that, frankly.

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:23):
I think they should try that. Actually. I do too. I think they should you know, just not for everybody, like if you're okay with seeing ads or not seeing them like me. Yeah. I

Paul Thurrott (01:26:33):
Have give you the option. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:36):
I also still think they should have a pro version of windows and non-pro versions. I don't, I still don't think actual windows should be a one size fit all. No.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:45):
Yeah. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
Actually this question from spit, if, about windows versions in the IRC, has there been any Indi spit? If, has there been any indication, audio thing? Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh> has there been any indication from Microsoft? There's a security first version of windows in the future to address the indu shoes win his ability to run any code from anywhere and authentication is strong as a latch on a public toilet stall. <Laugh> <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:27:13):
He just wanted that's T buddy, what

Leo Laporte (01:27:14):
Are you talking about? That's a, that's a good line. Thank you. Spit. That's a fair. Yeah, that's a fair,

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:18):
Well, okay. So that's, in some ways that's what windows 10 X was going to be because everything was gonna virtualized, right? Yeah. And then they couldn't pull it off. They couldn't make it work. I still

Paul Thurrott (01:27:29):
Wish they, I mean, I don't, we don't know. I've not heard. I mean, I'd like to think they're still working on that. I still think that's viable and would make a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:40):
Do you think, cause that would be the true secure way to do it. Right, right.

Leo Laporte (01:27:43):
Sandbox at all.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:44):
Yeah. Literally sandbox and, and where everything, you close something and it's disposed of, you know, whatever. Yeah. State was there, whatever data is, there is just erased immediately. Yeah. I, they are God. I mean, every John knows more about this, the majority type pro projects they've had a Microsoft has been working toward this for forever and it's just never really come to fruition.

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:13):
No Maddo for people who don't remember was gonna be a new operating system for Microsoft. That was not based on windows. Like they were throwing everything out and starting from scratch and they got pretty fur along. Right. Eric, Eric rudder, head of the team and they had all, like, it was the Creole of crem. They picked different people inside Microsoft to be on the team. Yeah. And some of the tooling they did for Maddo has made it into dev stuff, but they just, for whatever reason, because of politics or feasibility or whatever, they just got to a point and threw it out. They were like, no, we're not doing that. Actually. We're not gonna go that way.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:48):
Yeah. And that could have happened to windows 10 X already for all we know. But I, like I said, I'd like to think, I really think there's a container slash virtualization solution that could make windows

Leo Laporte (01:29:02):
Whole or

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:02):
Whatever. I mean, in some ways cloud PC is going that way with the app side of the equation. But it, that doesn't take into account windows really.

Leo Laporte (01:29:12):
Right. Let me go back to our discord Newman, go ahead. Turn on your mic. It's your turn to to ask a question.

Speaker 5 (01:29:22):
Cool. Hey guys, thanks for opening up the floor. You've actually already answered my question, Paul. It was about the halo infinite whether or not they're gonna charge for the multiplayer. Okay. <Laugh> but I just was say, I really enjoy my club. Put membership. Thanks guys.

Leo Laporte (01:29:36):
Thank you, Newman. Thank you for joining $7 a month gets you add free versions of all of our shows. It gets you access to the discord channel and the TWI plus feed for more information club, twi.com/twi TV. Do that sleep now it's, he's a wake in the TV. I go,

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:53):
You join and I'm, I'm gonna be on the AMA Friday. I forgot.

Leo Laporte (01:29:57):
Oh, that's so important. Mary Jo Foley. Doesn't ask me for club TWI members on Friday. What time do you know?

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:05):
I think 10:00 AM Pacific. 10:00 AM Pacific.

Leo Laporte (01:30:09):
If you're not a member it's not too late. Go to TWI TV slash club TWI. You can literally, you can join for a month and then cancel. And it'll cost you seven bucks. If you can't be around for the live to be anything, although I encourage you to be so aunt, Peru's gonna host it, our, our community manager. How do you do the questions on that? Is it like what we're doing here? I think so. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:31):
Yeah. An also has a bunch of questions.

Leo Laporte (01:30:34):
He's preparing questions. <Laugh> and then we'll put it on the trip plus feeds. So even if you can't be there for it in person, please do. But if you can't, you'll be able to download it and and listen to it. Spiff says, do I get to ask Chris Capella questions? If I subscribe the, to it <laugh> I don't know what the ground rules are. I don't, I don't think we're gonna open up the lines for that. I just feel like that might be

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:55):
A risk. Yeah. I don't think we're gonna have time. He's kind of time limited, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you guys can give us ideas if there are things you think that true,

Leo Laporte (01:31:03):
Actually we should, we can do that on Twitter or well, discord, you know, figure out a way to if people have questions. Well, and during the interview, we'll, we'll have those questions. I know you, Mary Jo you're in the discord. You can monitor it and yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> from IRC comes a question for Paul from Keith five 12. <Laugh> that's kind of a loaded question, but I'm gonna ask anyway, why does windows not update like Linux when you tell it to and why are they so focused on one update a month in the form of patch Tuesday? Oh God, I wish they were so focused on. That'd be good. Right? Gotta be kidding. One of the things that's nice about, and, and Microsoft's on this way to doing this, but it's nice about Linnux is you have a package man manager, almost always. When you install software, you install it through the package manager, which even allows you to install, you know, get downloads and stuff. And then the package manager, whenever you run, it will update everything for you, not just the operating system, but everything you've installed and, and that's on demand pretty much, although it'll pop up a notification, if there's, you know, a lot of updates waiting for you. So that is a nice way to do it. I can't, I don't think that's appropriate for windows really

Paul Thurrott (01:32:11):
Well. I, as far as windows updates go, I mean, the one thing I will say for all the complaining I've done today and for bur I do feel like they've gotten to a pretty good place with updates with a, a few little asterisks, but you know, they, they tried to do this windows as a service thing with windows 10, they expanded the number of weeks in which updates basically come out every month. And let's honestly, it's more typically get three weeks of updates in a month and one, but okay, whatever the cumulative update thing, I think has been a success that's worked out really well. If you don't believe me try to update windows seven today. That's hilarious. I, I guess it's not of support, but that was a nightmare. Windows eight, go do windows eight and then we'll talk in a week.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:51):
But I that's good. I, I, the there's still stuff about updating in windows. I don't like, I wish that I could midstream go into windows, update, click check for updates. It starts downloading the updates and I could click one and say stop doing that. Right. You know, I wish it was a little more granular like that kind of thing. But you know, they're trying to make it dummy proof. And you know, the, the goal is the same as it was when they announce windows 10, they want as many people as possible to be on the most, you know, the latest, most secure version of windows and the way to do that is to update the computer. So, I mean, yeah, it's, it's still disruptive. I mean, I, I, at least once or twice a month, I have to reboot a computer because of windows updates, but it's better than it was. I, I, this is one area I don't, this is one of the, I don't really have a lot to complain about air for some reason, but yeah. It doesn't bug me.

Leo Laporte (01:33:45):
It's time tested, trying

Paul Thurrott (01:33:47):
The painting bugs me though. Yeah. Screwed

Leo Laporte (01:33:49):
Up. Hell yeah. <Laugh> and Mary Jo, you sent the du oh, two back somebody Mr. K's asking. Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:55):
I did. Yeah. I sent it back and I feel bad because I was trying to do one of my non review were reviews of it, but it was so hard for me to use. I gave it's

Leo Laporte (01:34:04):
So awful. You know, this is something reviewers know, not everything deserves to be reviewed.

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:11):
No, I, and I don't even know if I should PO post on my site saying, so here's my one sentence review. It's still not ready. Yeah. That there we are. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:34:19):
There is you posted on this site. That's good enough for, for me. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you saved me cuz you know, I felt a little bad about not, I canceled my order and, but I,

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:28):
No, you know what? The hardware is fantastic. It's really great. The camera has gotten way better. Still. Not as good as like the pixel camera obviously, but the part that's still not good is the software. It just doesn't work well.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:43):
Yeah. I want, I want a pixels foldable, you know? Yeah. I want the pixel software

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:49):
On a foldable. Do you want the hinge in the middle though? That's kind of a weird thing to get used to. I really,

Leo Laporte (01:34:53):
I, the foldable, this is the flip. Oh, you want it? Like one of the fold. I really like the flip better than the fold two, but let

Paul Thurrott (01:34:59):
Me ask. So what's the advantage of it being able to fold and like what's the advantage of the small it's look at it. No, I know. But what's the like, look I know, but just to carry it right? Yeah. You still have to open it every time you pull it out. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
That's not a big deal. You used to do that all the time with your Nokia.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:15):
You do in the 1990s. That and I no.

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:18):
Do you ever do to like put it down on a table in like a mini laptop position and watch a

Leo Laporte (01:35:22):
Video? Yeah. You know, actually it's cool. Cuz of the selfie cam. Yeah. You can do it like that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (01:35:28):
Okay. That's actually pretty cool. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:35:30):
It's I, you know, I think what it is is it's a regular size phone. It's a little

Paul Thurrott (01:35:34):
Tall. If you just leave it like that all the time

Leo Laporte (01:35:36):
And you could leave it like, but then you like, what would be the point? You close it, it does have this extra screen, which shows notifications the time, stuff like that. It's a color screen too. So it's, you know, it's got, it can have a nice background and it's it's supremely pocketable. It would actually be somebody who wants a very small Tendo thing. It's like a game boy. It's only for somebody who wants a really small phone, but honestly I think this is, this is a, a, this is a good reason for a foldable phone. I don't think the folds, the galaxy folds the bigger fold. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz then it's, then it's a honk and wide, big chunk of a thing. Like the duo, which opens out into a too small for a tablet too big for a phone, kind of a middle size. This, this makes more sense. Plus applications say, oh, you're on a regular phone. It doesn't, it doesn't say I don't. I under, you know, I don't understand what you're doing here. So most applic

Paul Thurrott (01:36:28):
When that thing's folded, like in an L shape, it just is the app full screen by default. Is that how it works? Like if you put that like down on the little table, like you did there before. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:38):
Like folded, right. It doesn't go to a half size. Isn't some apps do. Oh, some apps, some apps are so you could have a

Paul Thurrott (01:36:44):
Fold aware cause you have two apps or yeah. Okay. So

Leo Laporte (01:36:47):
A camera app might have control camera app is aware. Yeah. So so the camera app, this is see, I can show you this. Can I? Yeah. So the camera app, this is because it's folded, it shows what's in the camera there and it has controls down here. Yep. Okay. Yeah. And when I unfolded, it goes back to the normal. So that's a Samsung app though, but that's yeah. I mean, I think that's pretty cool. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:14):
I notice you've correctly changed the orientation of this buttons on the bottom, which

Leo Laporte (01:37:17):
I appreciate. Oh yeah. You know, I don't know why. I don't know what the deal is on a lot of like the pixel on my pixel phone. I don't have the buttons, but on this phone for some reason, I just don't like the so because oh, cuz it's opposite. <Laugh> well, I mean, yeah. And then Samsung, for some reason puts back on the right, right and left. I know it's crazy. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. No. And this phone is so tall. I have plenty of room for those control on the bottom. That's why I left him on. Yeah, yeah. This, this is a weirdly the aspect ratio. This here's the pixel is a little weird cause it's yeah. Tall and thin tall. I can't even fit it in the screen there

Paul Thurrott (01:37:50):
<Laugh> yeah. How does the weight compare to the pixel?

Leo Laporte (01:37:54):
Pixel's pretty heavy. It's still heavier. I think. Yeah, this is, this is, I think, you know, not look most guys don't care about how big their phone is, but a lot of people, you know, women who wanna put it in a purse, people who don't wanna have, you know, a phone holster <laugh> on their hip. Sure. Just the fact that it goes in a breast pocket. Very it's nice. I like that. Yeah. Hmm. So foldable is not, I, you know, I don't, I think this is the way fo this makes sense for foldable. Yeah. make the phone smaller, not make the screen bigger. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> anyway let's go to the discord and Lowell. You could turn on your mic. Your next, go ahead. Lowell. Oh, Hey whoa. Hey surprise. Hi Lowell.

Speaker 6 (01:38:42):
<Laugh> hi. We we just got some notice with Microsoft, not that long ago that they'll be increasing the pricing by 20% of Microsoft, 365 subscriptions through DSP providers. And unless you get an annual. So if you, if you lock into the annual you get the same pricing except for the small pricing here and there. I'm just wondering if Mary Jo, if you've heard if that's also happening to be put by direct I'm, I'm sure it is, but just haven't seen me in communication about it.

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:14):
So this is different from the pricing crew in March that they already disclosed.

Speaker 6 (01:39:19):
Yeah. So there's a, the price increase on a few skews. That's just going to happen, period. But then if you stay on monthly month to month, you're gonna go up 20%. And that, that seems like a big money grab. It should be like 5% maybe or something that just,

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:32):
You can jump. No, I haven't, I haven't heard any other options or things that they're doing in that space. You know, you know, when they announced the March pricing, they said it's been a really long time since we had an increase in office pricing and this is substative. Like we admit it and yeah, you're just gonna have to bite the bullet because we've added so much to office that wasn't there before over the past several years, that it's time for us to increase the price. But yeah, I having a huge differential between monthly paying monthly and paying annually that that's obviously meant to force you to go annually. Right. But it still seems a little, especially during the pandemic kind of suspect. Right?

Speaker 6 (01:40:10):
Yeah. It's also tough because like, for us as a, as an it provider CSP, if a customer leaves us and goes to someone else we're responsible for the remainder of their annual contract. Oh, right. So, oh, wow. They're, they're making it a lot harder and worse for partners as, and they're saying it's for flexibility and for more options. And it's like, no, that's, that's not it at all. No,

Mary Jo Foley (01:40:31):
Totally not. It.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:32):
Wow. We didn't mention this when we talked about teams essentials, but that is also gonna be offered through partners. Right. Not just

Mary Jo Foley (01:40:41):
S from Microsoft right. Directly and through club partners. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:45):
So you're saying these prices are increasing for all partners who resell Microsoft 365. Is that yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:40:53):
So the, the there's those basic price increases. Some are 10%. Some are, you know, and those are good. I mean, Microsoft has an increased and they've add a ton of value and that's great, but I think they should switch to that. And yeah, if you want to, if you wanna charge someone more for monthly, maybe 5% or something. Right. But yeah, basically as all of our customers, we gotta go to and say, you wanna stay monthly, which a lot of customers, when you have like people leaving and coming in an organization, we've, we've used Microsoft model trying to tell other vendors, Hey, you guys should change your licensing to what Microsoft does. It's completely flexible someone, you know, month to

Leo Laporte (01:41:27):
Month. Oops.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:30):
Yeah. That's rough. I gotta I'm I'm gonna look a more into that. Thanks for the heads up on that.

Leo Laporte (01:41:35):
Thanks Lowell. Yeah, appreciate it. Let's see. I think we have one more question, actually. A couple more. Let's go to wo Jo, is that sure for wo Jo Hoz like from Barney Miller, from Barney Miller <laugh> and this cord server. Hello Ojo. Oh, he's he's got his headphones muted. He can't hear himself either. He can't hear us. He can't hear you. He can't see you while he's getting ready. Let's go to Jojo dancer in the IRC. Mary Jo and Paul told us Microsoft's coming up with Visio web version by July for the Microsoft 360 you five members have they finished porting it to the web? Where can we find it? We want it saw something about this.

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:20):
Yeah. So they they postponed the delivery date on that. This is the lightweight version of Visio that they were making available. Right. I was supposed

Leo Laporte (01:42:29):
To be, I was all excited when you mentioned,

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:31):
Right. I think last I heard are in the middle of rolling it out now to commercial Microsoft 365 customers. And most people have it, not everybody. I just heard from somebody a week ago, who was like, where is this thing? So I think it's still in the midst of being rolled out. If you're asking about consumers getting it, I don't think they said consumers would I think business only for this. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
Yeah. Somebody in a charm says it's live for him. 50 web through fifties and nineties. So it is live for some people. Yeah. Thank you, wo Joe he's gone, but Kev brewer is now in here. And maybe cuz you asked him about wo jots. I don't know, but Kev is our master, our master of the animated gift. Hello Kev. He is.

Speaker 7 (01:43:14):
Hi guys. Question on windows 11 in the task bar, do you think they'll be offering any more flexibility to control that as a user because I'm finding, having to use the start menu to get to word and all the other apps that I normally use would normally leave you by task bar. I can't put on there. It limits the width from the amount you can put and I'd probably have more control over that task bar. Cause it's taking me out my workflow

Leo Laporte (01:43:42):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> well, we wouldn't wanna do that cause we count on you for the animated gifts. So yeah. Yeah. Stay in the workflow.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:51):
Start and task bar have to be the two biggest pain points for windows, 10 users and Microsoft does this, right? So there's a couple things and, you know, start 11 addresses some of these by the way, not to keep pimping Brad's product. But one of the things it does is allows you to change the size of the task bar and, and the size of the icons. You get more on screen at the same time. Yeah. I, I expect they're gonna add more right. Click options. They're gonna add the ability to move that thing to other sides of the screen and then and actually do they even have to, I don't think they even support, I don't know that native windows live, it even supports like small icons does it? I don't think it does. No.

Speaker 7 (01:44:27):
There's people fix set on that.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:29):
So that's just such an obvious us regression. I would think they would tackle that for some time and yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:36):
I think they will too, because if anytime, somebody who works for Microsoft on Twitter brings up windows, 11 people zoom right in on that thing. And they're like, yeah, you gotta fix a task bar. You guys like, it's really not. Okay. And it turns into this like pile on thread. They know people really unhappy about the Tasker <laugh> and if they don't change it, what's the reason. Right?

Paul Thurrott (01:44:57):
Like why it just that

Speaker 7 (01:45:00):
You're through a a word document. I need a, a photograph. If it's in my task bar, I'm used to seeing there, I know instant, it's a click away to have the stop to break, to go to the start menu, which then flags up. And you've got bubbles of apps there, which you have to scroll through some cases, right. Auto way of poking you out in the mode. Yeah. It needs fixing

Paul Thurrott (01:45:23):
Also the, the drag and drop stuff too. You know, the ability to drag a file down to an icon and have that application maximize whatever and throw it in is another one. I think people have come playing a lot about, but this feels to me like the task, this was the windows 10 X feature, right. This was the 10 X was gonna be a ship bound version of windows. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't have to have all the same features. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it might have been appropriate for those kind of mobile devices that the thing was targeting originally. But yeah, it doesn't make sense as a windows 10 replacement. Yeah, for sure. I agree.

Leo Laporte (01:45:53):
Thank you, Kev. Very, we really appreciate your participation in the discord. Kev is one of the most active members who makes it very fun. During our shows a reminder once again, Mary Jo Foleys ask me anything is Friday 10:00 AM, Pacific club, TWI members just, there'll be a special room set up for the that. And you'll be able to ask Mary Jo questions and so forth. And and if you're not a club TWI member TWI do TV slash club TWI,

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:22):
I, I told aunt he has to drink a breakfast stout because it's gonna be 10:00 AM. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:46:27):
It's gonna be breakfast for him

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:28):
Too. Not a whiskey. Perfect breakfast

Leo Laporte (01:46:31):
Stout for all. All right. Let's that went well, we, I, we should reincorporate that because yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:38):
I like doing those

Leo Laporte (01:46:39):
Love doing that and you guys are great. We did get some new people in there. That was my concern in the past was it was always the same few people asking questions. But as you get less shy folks we will do more of that. Yeah. Let's put it that way. No need to be shy. You can. It helps where they we're the slowest part of the year too. Yeah. Yeah. Well now's the time. Yeah, it is back of the book just around the corner, including a beer pick of the week, but first a word from our sponsor windows weekly brought to you today by it pro TV, love it. Pro TV, the greatest way to learn the skills you need to get that first job in it or to perfect and improve the skills you've already got to get a better job in it.

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One of the ways they do this, they have seven studios in their Gainesville, Florida headquarters. They film Monday through Friday, all day long with their enthusiastic entertainers experts in the field, always that's first, but also people who can and communicate who can express their passion and help you get excited about the topic. That's really an important job. 20 to 30 minute chunks means you can watch at lunch or whenever you've got a moment and they even have searchable transcripts. So you don't even have to watch the whole thing. If you just wanna Polish up one particular area, you can go right to that part of the courses and you will be prepared for your exams with virtual labs, practice tests, all the, all the features that digital world can give you. They're wrapping up 2021. And for December, they are now announcing it's December 1st, the brand new theme.

Leo Laporte (01:49:04):
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Leo Laporte (01:50:04):
And they really are and it pro TV. And of course, Tim and Don, their founders are fantastic. You, by the way, just a free plug for Don's podcast, techn Nado. It's fantastic. It pro TV slash windows is the website. You'll get 30% off any consumer subscription. As long as you stay active, that could be for your whole life. As long as you stay active, just use the code. Do WW 30, 30% off is a lot. I think if <laugh>, if you're gonna get an it, you should probably know that it pro.tv/windows code WW 30 traditional 30% off for the lifetime of your active subscription. Love these guys. They're a great sponsor, but they're a great it's. They, they do a great job. And I know so many people who have gotten their it, the certs and training from it pro TV, and it's a community. That's the best part, wonderful people. It pro TV builder, expand your it career and enjoy the journey. Thank you. It pro TV for supporting windows weekly. Paul start us off. Yeah. Tip of the way back in the, what did I do? Here we go. It's your, it's your fault, Paul? I

Paul Thurrott (01:51:12):
Blame you. I didn't do it to do it. Oddly, yes. I mean, ahead of all this weird stuff that's been going on with Microsoft edge, I started experimenting with other web browsers a few months ago, and I've used all the major ones, you know, Firefox Chrome Aldi opera and brave. All of those except for Firefox are based on chromium. So they're, you know, a simple transition I would say from edge, I guess they're all simple transitions. Really. If Firefox supports all of the same extensions, you just have to, you gonna kind of go manually download them as you would on any browser. But now that edge is starting to stink. <Laugh>, you know I would imagine that other people are gonna start thinking about this stuff as well. And, and to me, I would say today, although, you know, this may change in the future. I, I always sort of say, I feel like I'm gonna end up on Braves someday, but I still feel it's like a little rough. I think there are two obvious choices either one of which will be controversial based on where your head's at at the time. And those are Firefox and Chrome, right. And Firefox is kind of the, the one I wanna support <laugh>, you know, because they're in depend and they obviously care about the web and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I use

Leo Laporte (01:52:33):
Fire folks pretty much

Paul Thurrott (01:52:35):
Every day. Yeah. And it's, it is, it's great. It, you know, they've done some stuff with regards to progressive web apps. I'm not a big fan of that

Leo Laporte (01:52:43):
Disappoints me. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:46):
If you're gonna use Chrome, I get it. I it's weird to me that Chrome might be less bloated than edge right now. It's this weird thing to say out loud. It takes some steps to get rid of the tracking stuff. There are extensions you can get that will remove the Google tracking. But I, I, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a weird thing to say, but in a really bizarre turnaround, I feel like these browsers might be better options. 

Leo Laporte (01:53:12):
If you're point a little handy mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, you can use a pen knife and cotton swabs, then you might want to try, it's called ungod chromium, the chromium C open source version and going a step further. There is an ungod Degod chromium, lot of, lot of privacy advocates, like cuz you get the benefits of the chromium engine with the zero Google

Paul Thurrott (01:53:36):
Even chromium. I mean, I, I didn't, I kind of dispensed the chromium pretty quick, but Google, at some point this year got rid of the Google sync and sign and stuff and CHRO, they made that part of proprietary Cru. Right. and that had always been part of chromium before that, that actually makes it less viable. I would say for a lot of people, although if you don't want the Cocal stuff, then you know, maybe it's okay. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a hard conversation and it's a weird thing to even be talking about.

Leo Laporte (01:54:05):
It's instant for me. Yeah. Search, you know, I move around a lot as I, I know you do.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:13):
Yep. Yeah. Someone asked me the, the day on Twitter, you know, what browser have you settled on? It's like, I, I, I'm not sure I ever will. I mean, I, I go back and forth. But I, I I've successfully used all these browsers. I there's something about opera that I, I just keep can't wrap my head around and Vivaldi, I think he had the same experience where it's almost like there's too many options. Yeah. I like

Leo Laporte (01:54:33):
Vivaldi a lot.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:34):
I do too. I like the idea of it a lot. 

Leo Laporte (01:54:38):
I just always go back to Firefox cuz I want there to be diversity in the ecosystem, frankly. So I don't want to use another Chrome based browser. Right, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:47):
Yeah. No, I understand that. It's a good choice.

Leo Laporte (01:54:50):
Yeah. It's pretty good. I mean a lot of the flaws have gone away. It's pretty good. They do a good job. Yeah. It works fine. It works fine. It's got a good sync built in.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:59):
Yep. Yeah. And by the way, that's the other thing, I mean, I, there's a whole conversation. I'm not gonna have it today, but to, to be had around whether or not you're sinking things like passwords and whatever, you know, fill form, fill data, et cetera, between mobile and PC and how many device types do you use and is that even important? I'm kind of in a place now where I have, I have synced my data between browsers on different platforms. So many times that my basic set of passwords will be available anywhere where I sign into and Firefox edge, you know, whatever on PC Mac, mobile of any kind, you know, Chromebook, whatever. So I, I, to me that, that stuff's just a one time problem. You can export your data and get it into any browser. It's fine. You, you don't, it's not really a big deal. Meaning I guess that you could say for some reason you wanna use Firefox on the desktop, but maybe you wanna use safari on an iPhone or Chrome on a Android handset or whatever it is. And that's, it's fine like this, you know, what's the big deal. It's fine. It all works fine. So anyway, I, I, I guess the tips such as it is, is maybe time to start considering <laugh> looking around if you're using edge, I, I, if you're nervous about it, like I am, that's all the

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:09):
Problem is though, if you get, if you decide to go with something other than an edge undoing edge from windows 11, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:56:17):
Yeah. And that's a, unfortunately as a moving target, you know, so for right now there rules that will let you do that. Like that edge extractor program is great. And it's some very, you know, Microsoft, like I said today, they said, Hey, by the way, it's a lot of this stuff is gonna come not before, you know, or will become before what I'll call windows 11 two point, oh, I, I expect that edge stuff to come before. Then why not edge is updated one every four weeks now. Right. So there's absolutely no reason that won't come. So yeah, you have, yeah. I, I, I feel like we'll it, it's gonna be this game. We play with Microsoft. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> where people will figure out workarounds, you know, people like you and I can kind of document them or write about them. Microsoft will work to thwart them, you know, and yep. We're gonna be playing this game for a while. Yeah, for sure. I'm not like I, I'm not in the place where I'm like, oh, you have to rip out edge from, you know, windows and get rid of it. And you know, I, I, it's not, we're not talking like the antitrust days with internet Explorer where people really yeah. That upset about it, but it's, it's trending in the wrong direction. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:17):
It is.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:19):
Yeah. How about an end of the week? <Laugh> yeah, so it's not like this, but any new apps released this week, although I will mention that Luna display, if you're into that just release a big update with 5k support and Mac to PC award. But my actual pick is Xbox can pass because next week, actually, literally one week from today, Microsoft is gonna release ALO, infinite, which you talked about with some of the people in discord earlier across multiple platforms. So I think, I mean, I, you know, I, I think it's gonna be good enough that you may actually wanna buy it on your platform choice, but if you just wanna see what it's like, well, Hey, by the way, dive into multiplayer right now. But if you Xbox game pass, you can get the game, you know, as part of the subscription.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:08):
So it's kind of a cheap way to do it. And if you've never subscribed, I believe that $1 deal for three months is still Ave available. If it's not, you'll get $1 for one month. So either way you can try a halo infinite next week for free using Xbox game pass. And you should, it's probably the reason that you see years call of duty. Didn't do that great that in the fact that the game is terrible, but that's never stopped call duty. So is also part of the black mark against call of duty. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so that's for sure. Yeah. And they're also not a company that participates in Xbox can pass, which makes me wanna dump

Leo Laporte (01:58:45):
Them like, well, I think Microsoft's not really participating in them either because didn't Microsoft and Sony above Sony. We're gonna reconsider our relationship with acquisition after

Paul Thurrott (01:58:55):
All. I was gonna say, they, they talked is what they did, so we'll see if anything comes out.

Leo Laporte (01:58:59):
See, yeah, it hasn't nothing's happen. Yeah. It's hard to turn down the money call a duty must generate <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:59:05):
It's, it's a little bit less money this year. So you know, they're, they're not trending in a good direction either, so yeah, maybe there'll be some changes over there.

Leo Laporte (01:59:13):
I love this, a new segment on the show. We're gonna call Mary Jo's calling our shareholder pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (01:59:20):
What? This is just a one off though. Okay. Not okay. Not every week. No, there's some, there's some very interesting news around Microsoft for, for shareholders this week because of the timing of a bunch of different things. So I've had a couple people ask me on Twitter this week. If I saw reports about Satya Nadella dumping, half of his shares of Microsoft over the holiday weekend. And what was going on there? Like did, was there gonna be a changing of the guard or was he quitting? Like what was going on? So there are a few things probably going on there. You know, Microsoft's not gonna say why he sold a lot of stock. That's his business and not theirs, but there you know, end of the year, a lot of executives sell off a, a stock for for tax reasons, estate planning, all that kind of stuff.

Mary Jo Foley (02:00:06):
And if you live in Washington state starting January 1st, next year, there is a new 7% tax on capital gains over 250,000 GeekWire wrote ASO all about this. And they said, if, if that's what he was doing, Nadela could up to 20 million in state taxes yikes. By selling now. So that's my guess. Why he sold now? I don't think it's anything to do about him quitting or no, no, no. Him thinking Microsoft shares are about to do take a dive. I don't think it's anything like that. It's definitely personal tax planning kinds of stuff. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:40):
Yeah. How much was his? Were half

Mary Jo Foley (02:00:43):
I forget. It was like a, I forget what the exact number was, but it was like hundreds of millions shares. Probably hundreds of millions. Yeah. Yeah. Hundreds of millions. Yeah. Yeah. See,

Leo Laporte (02:00:52):
This is why I have a hard time covering this stuff. Cuz if somebody came along and gave me 500 million, <laugh> I'd be on an island somewhere. I wouldn't be anywhere near running a company. No, I don't need that. I know stuff. I'm only working cuz I have to <laugh>.

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:07):
Yeah, same. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:01:10):
So this is why we're working tips. And those guys are billionaires, which is ironic. Exactly. Cause we'd know what to do with the money. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:19):
Yes. We, we would, I might still do this podcast, but I'd be sitting in front of a, I

Leo Laporte (02:01:25):
Don't, you know, <laugh> the only people who work are people who have to work these days, I think and do something, oddly enough, do something. Yeah. Do you have to do something? Do you, do you have to, you got my

Paul Thurrott (02:01:37):
Theory having never not done nothing or

Leo Laporte (02:01:39):
Have you never not done anything? <Laugh> I guess I dunno. Well, you'll probably be your billionaire someday. Paul, cuz you're hard not happening, but he is.

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:48):
He works hard.

Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
You do you get to a stage in your life. I'm there by the way, where you go. Well, guess that didn't work out <laugh> I guess. Yeah. I had a good run world domination, I guess. No, maybe not. <Laugh> how did that Bezo get rich so quickly? I don't understand.

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:05):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:02:05):
Understand. I worked started the bookstore. Yeah. It's the obvious way to wealth. What was I thinking? All right. That's good. I like it. Our shareholder pick of the week,

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:15):
But there's a, there's two shareholder. There's another one.

Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
There is. So through like all of Microsoft shareholders. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:23):
Tuesday this week was the annual Microsoft shareholders meeting. Have you, have you guys ever gone to one of these? They're so trippy. <Laugh> you? I used to go to Microsoft one when I, when I worked in Seattle and I could easily go to the you's sitting a peak

Leo Laporte (02:02:39):
Share, like, is it in the big arena? It must be. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:41):
Big auditorium usually. And a lot of old, much older people come and they sit in the front row so that they can ask questions of like gates bomber Nadela who's ever the CEO at the time. Right. it's a very formal staged affair. And what comes up during meetings every year is shareholder proposals. And they're always kind of interesting and sometimes a little wacky to see what people think Microsoft should do. This year there were a lot of shareholder proposals that were very sensible and very controversial around things like facial recognitions to MI should Microsoft continue to sell that technology because it's not regulated enough. There were things about pay, you know, will, should Microsoft publicize the racial and gender disparity gaps in their payment system. All these things voted, no voted, no voted down by the company. One thing got through this year at the shareholder meeting, that was very interesting. Microsoft shareholders voted it for more transparency and independence around the handling of, of sexual harassment cases that could approve it's not binding, but it got approved. And the reason it's like was because of bill gates, bill gates. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:03:56):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:58):
Yeah. So that was very interesting. And lots of other things, if you wanna read the whole report about this, go to geek wire, they have a great writeup. And for people who don't know this who cover and watch Microsoft and have a lot of interest, there's a site that's open to everyone, microsoft.com/investor. Go check that site out sometimes because there are a transcripts of all kinds of things up there, not just by financial numbers, but like the whole transcript of the shareholder meeting is up there. And you can just also

Leo Laporte (02:04:26):
For people who dunno this about Microsoft bill gates is a terrible human being. <Laugh> <laugh> still very interesting. This, it never ended is what we've learned. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:38):
Yeah. It never ended. The fact this gut through is very, very interesting. Right. yep.

Leo Laporte (02:04:43):
Anyway, so basically they want the results of that investigation. Right. And

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:48):
Not just about him, but you know, whenever sexual harassment cases come up at Microsoft, they want stuff to be more transparent and more public

Leo Laporte (02:04:55):
About that. That's hard to do because it's an investigation. It's not a court proceeding. No.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:04):
Yeah. Like I said, it's not binding this, this proposal's not binding, but the fact that it even was approved is very telling there's

Leo Laporte (02:05:11):
There's good legal and privacy reasons why you don't want an investigation to be public until it's included perhaps.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:18):
Yeah. Right. I'm sure they won't publish it before it's concluded. Right? Yeah. That, that would just be a lot of

Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
Virus even then of everything <laugh> even then, you know, it's still very controversial act. It like crazy. Right. Yeah. You would, you don't want the names of the victims to be in there for instance. Right, right.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:34):
Sure. Yeah. It's a can of worms for sure. But interesting. It got approved.

Leo Laporte (02:05:38):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> interesting. Yeah. Yeah. The power of the shareholder. This is why we're not a public company because you can't do anything about it. Yeah. It's also why I I'm still working. <Laugh> there is a transcript from the shareholder I see. There is.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:59):
Yep. You could go read it yourself the whole, like what Nadela talked about Amy Hood and the questions that people asked in the audience, all of that stuff's in there. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:06:08):
The only thing I know about shareholders meeting, I know from watching succession on HBO <laugh> <laugh> and that is a very much more fun, I think, than a normal

Mary Jo Foley (02:06:19):
It's usually very boring. Yeah. And sometimes the questions are very crazy and kind of zany, which make it a little more fun, but

Leo Laporte (02:06:27):
Right. Code name pick

Mary Jo Foley (02:06:30):
Of the week, there is a code name this week. Yes. Yes. project nucleus project nucleus is a not, not exactly like fluid framework and loop, but it's a way to synchronize data specifically offline Microsoft introduced this idea and this technology is more like a vision two years ago at ignite project nucleus. Well, the first app that is incorporating it is now available. Microsoft lists they're incorporating nucleus into lists. And this is how Microsoft says they're going to turn the lists web app into a true PWA. Hmm. So I kind of thought Microsoft had backed away from PWAs. They weren't really talking about it that much anymore, but no, they, I think they were waiting for nucleus to be finalized and complete enough to be used so that if you're using something like lists and you're you take your PC offline or you have a bad internet connection, when you come back, everything just sinks automatically in a way that doesn't take like so, so much time when you're syncing giant lists or giant files. And they're gonna start adding this project, nucleus technology to OneDrive and probably to other web apps to turn them into PWAs. So yeah. Pwas are still alive and they're coming. Thanks to project nucleus.

Leo Laporte (02:07:50):
Woohoo. Woohoo. And now speaking of woo, let's talk about a beer pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (02:07:58):
Yes. So two weeks ago I made my beer pick something from founders called KBS espresso. Remember I was talking about saying mm-hmm <affirmative> it's suburban barrel age beer that tastes like cold brew coffee because it's so coffee ish. Well, they have other variants of this beer. And for Thanksgiving I decided to try one called cinnamon vanilla, Coco KBS, cinnamon, vanilla, Coco. So I thought this is either gonna be fantastic or it's going to be terrible. Right. <laugh> because it's got all these things in a bourbon barrel, age, beer like vanilla and cinnamon. I'm like, eh, it could work. Maybe. I don't know. Well, I'm here to report. It was delicious. It was fantastic. I liked it even better than the plain espresso one, but you have to love cinnamon to love the beer, cuz it's very big on the cinnamon, but the cinnamon and the bourbon kinda worked together. I thought, and the vanilla cocoa was a little more muted, but still there, if you wanna deserve PI, that is very high in all call. It's 12%. But if you wanna just have it like a sipper, winter sipper, holiday sipper, dessert beer, I would very highly recommend the cinnamon vanilla cocoa version of KBS.

Leo Laporte (02:09:10):
Wow. Mash potato. Our charm says sounds like a Linux desktop environment. <Laugh> cinnamon vanilla cocoa.

Mary Jo Foley (02:09:18):
It kind of does, right?

Paul Thurrott (02:09:20):
Yeah. Yeah, it does. That's good.

Leo Laporte (02:09:23):
Wow. I, every time you do these, I just wanna run out and get one <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (02:09:29):
Aunt was asking me Thanksgiving, what are you gonna have for Thanksgiving? And I'm like, I showed him this and he's like, oh my, oh my, oh

Leo Laporte (02:09:36):
My he's a scotch drinker. I

Mary Jo Foley (02:09:39):
Don't know if he, he is, but I think he likes bourbon too. Doesn't he? Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Leo Laporte (02:09:43):
Who doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. This says Bal bourbon barrels.

Paul Thurrott (02:09:47):
Anyway, scotch perfected, ah, maybe says non pretentiously,

Leo Laporte (02:09:53):
You know, bourbon, you know, Leo is Paul Thurrott there. He's at thera.com. That's his little website as he calls it. <Laugh> he also has his book. His is is a field guy to windows 10. It's available@leanpub.com. Any ETA on the windows 11 version.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:15):
Well, yeah. So no <laugh> so I think I'm gonna try to time it to when it's not so terrible. I'm just afraid of like, I don't wanna have to go back and keep updating stuff I already did. Cuz I feel like so much of it's gonna change. Yeah. That's a good, good thinking. So I'm gonna, yeah, it will be,

Leo Laporte (02:10:33):
It will be some number of months, but it will be for the 9%. Yeah. The first, second, first half of next year. Probably. Probably. Yeah, certainly. I should say Mary Jo Foley is writing about Microsoft all the time@allaboutmicrosoft.com, her eating net blog. Always a pleasure. I hope you both had a good Thanksgiving. I kind of know you did. Cuz I saw the pictures <laugh> especially he went of Sorachi with his big belly, just hanging out at, after his Turkey there. I doing his Al Bundy thing. I'm surprised he didn't have like a hand inside his waist. He should have we will be back next week. Is our Chris cap. It's two weeks from now, right? Yeah. Two weeks from 15th, I think right? Two weeks. Okay. So that's something you wanna prepare for folks? The CTO CMO Microsoft stopping by thank you, Paul.

Leo Laporte (02:11:25):
Thank you, Mary Joe, we do this show Wednesdays. If Leo gets here on time@elevenampacifictwopmeasternnineteenhundredutcyoucanwatchliveatlive…. After the fact you can get on demand versions at our website, twi.tv/ww, or there's a YouTube channel with all the videos. Of course you could subscribe in any podcast client and, and get it automatically. The minutes of a, if your podcast client allows reviews, please leave us a five star review. Tell the world about Paul that Mary Jo, you can say that Leo guys no good, but Paul and Mary Jo now <laugh> they know they're tough. They know their stuff. Thank you everybody have a wonderful week. We'll see you next time on windows weekly.

Leo Laporte (02:12:15):
If you find yourself talking to those virtual assistants in your house quite often, or maybe you can make your light turn on and off with the touch of a button. Well, smart tech today is the show for you. Join Matthew Castelli and myself, Micah Sergeant, every week as we talk all about smart stuff and the fun that comes along with it,