Windows Weekly Episode 766 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley here. Paul's got an interesting new well, I'll let him explain where he is. Kind of a surprise to us all. We'll talk about Windows 11. It continues to March on, is it time to install Windows 11 on your machine? Some interesting news about Fort a horizon, five Xbox gaming pass titles, and and some new computers from mobile world Congress. There's lots to talk about. Paul and Mary Jo are here. Let's get Windows Weekly underway.
... (00:00:38):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.
Leo Laporte (00:00:47):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley episode 766 recorded Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022. I wrote it on the plane.
Leo Laporte (00:00:59):
Windows Weekly is brought to you by Melissa. The us postal service process is more than 98,000. Address changes daily. Make sure your customer contact data is 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. 24 7. Get started today with 1000 records, clean for free at melissa.com/TWiT and by thanks Canary detect attackers on your network while avoiding irritating, false alarms. Get the alerts that matter for 10% off and a 60 day money back guarantee. Go to canary.tools/TWiT and enter the code TWiT in the, how did you hear about a box and by Intel orchestrated by the experts@cdwtodeliverincreasedperformancewiththebuiltforbusinesseleventh… slash Intel client. It's time for Windows Weekly. The show, we were the latest news from Microsoft. You guys, you guys are stars now all rotten Mary Joe Foley, because you, you, I don't know if you know this, maybe your ears were itching or your palms turned red or something.
Leo Laporte (00:02:16):
I don't remember what it is, but we played a clip of your show yesterday in security. Now, in which Steve Gibson was PR praising you for complaining about, well, Steve's on a, on a bit of a high horse these days about Windows 11 hardware requirements. He says there's no. Oh yeah. So he is playing the clip where you say there's no, you know, no technical reasons arbitrary. It's arbitrary. And Steve's been saying that for a while. I don't know why it makes him so mad. He's the guy who a few years ago, just a few years ago wrote a program that said never 10. And now he's mad. You can't get Windows 11. Well, actually he just wrote a program called in control that keeps you from getting Winston 11. So I don't even, I guess he's just, he defends the nerd in him that a company say this software can't must not run on this hardware.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:06):
This is the modern version of Bill Gates walking into a user group meeting and saying that people have to pay for software. You can't just steal it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:03:13):
You know?
Paul Thurrott (00:03:14):
Yeah. And it's like, I, I it's, it just rubs people the wrong way and be, and it is it's arbitrariness. I think that is the problem.
Leo Laporte (00:03:21):
Yeah. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:22):
And I think their secretiveness and, and kind of not, not coming forward with the truth at right off made people matter,
Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
You know,
Paul Thurrott (00:03:33):
You know, I it's right. That that's a good point. So, you
Leo Laporte (00:03:36):
Know, would people be less, would people be less offend? If, if Microsoft said you can't have Windows, you could run it, but you just can't have it. Cuz we don't want you to have it. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:46):
Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't I
Leo Laporte (00:03:47):
Be more angry if you said that.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:49):
I, I don't know about all Microsoft, but the, the win God, I'm sorry.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:53):
No, I was just gonna say they, the part that they weren't forthcoming about was they knew they were gonna increase the TPM and CP roof requirements. They never told us that, like they never told us till it came out,
Paul Thurrott (00:04:03):
They literally briefed us about this stuff and never mentioned the most important
Mary Jo Foley (00:04:08):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:04:09):
Part of it. Yeah. Yeah. This is, you know, we go through waves, I think with the Windows team, you have transparency and then secrecy. Yeah. Transparency and then secrecy, you know, Jim, all Jim was parent sonno was secrecy. Terry Myerson was transparent back, you know, we're back with pan secrecy
Mary Jo Foley (00:04:28):
In the, let's a big surprise. I, I like surprises too. And I think there's a good reason to do them sometimes. But Harbor requirements is not one of those. No.
Paul Thurrott (00:04:39):
Well, let's put it in for wait, surprise works. When you're a consumer products company making little gadgets. So people get excited about once a year. Yeah. Windows is a product used for product productivity and work it's used by businesses. There's no reason for surprise. Let's be transparent about what's happening. That just is what makes sense for this market. And I know they want it to be exciting. I know they want it to be more consumer focused. I get it. It does. But nobody cares.
Leo Laporte (00:05:08):
Yeah. Okay. I didn't mean to hijack the show. That's Paul throt on the,
Paul Thurrott (00:05:12):
No, that's fine. I
Leo Laporte (00:05:14):
Throt.Com you know them from security now. Of course. You
Paul Thurrott (00:05:17):
May have heard us from such podcast,
Leo Laporte (00:05:19):
Such podcast is Mary Jo Foley for, from ZDNet. And we're here not to talk about that. But we are here to talk about Windows 11. Yes. even though you can't have it, you can't, you can't handle the 11.
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:37):
Well, you can have it, but the question is, do you wanna have it thinking that you might not get the re security update and such there's
Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
A chance. Yeah. And the little watermark in the corner that says you loser you. Yeah. And loser loser. Yeah. And honestly, I mean, who
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:56):
Cares? You know what, Windows 10 is a good operating system and support it old two.
Leo Laporte (00:06:00):
I can find a hard time caring. I do think, I mean, I guess this isn't gonna, this is fuel on the fire. I do think Windows 11 is beautiful and really looks nice. I do too. I like it. I do too, but it's purely cosmetic.
Paul Thurrott (00:06:12):
Yeah. But you know, it's also purely cosmetic in that standard software, you know, as in fact, we'll talk about this today. There were, since we last spoke, there had been a couple of builds. They're cha making more interfaces look like Windows 11, always appreciated, but that's always been the problem with Windows. Hasn't it? We have eight generations of Windows UIs in this product. So you have these weird pains that come up. It look like they're from Windows eight. We have legacy classic UIs from Windows seven and earlier we have Windows 10 UIs. Obviously. Now we have Windows 11 UIs. You know, one of, if you had asked people a year ago, what do you want from the next version of Windows? Like actual ENS who care about this stuff? I think they would've said consistency. Yeah. Get rid of control panel and use every, put everything through settings, you know, clean up all the icons.
Paul Thurrott (00:07:01):
So they're all consistent. They're all pointing the same way and have the same style, you know, put fluent or fluid or whatever it is everywhere, make it blah, blah, blah, whatever. And, you know, instead they come up with this new UI, which like you said, is pretty love it, but it's only in some places. And you know, you get, you can write clicked and from places in Windows 10 and get 11, sorry, and get three different kinds of menus. And I know, and, and I know a lot of people won't notice that stuff, but those people aren't listening to this podcast. So screw those people. I,
Mary Jo Foley (00:07:30):
Hey, a minute.
Paul Thurrott (00:07:33):
No. I mean, the people who care about this stuff are very clear on what they want. And Microsoft is just, I think, is just looking at in a different direction, I think. And, and you know, that's their right. Of course, it's fine. But just don't think it's gonna be, we're gonna wake up one day and everything's gonna be perfect. I think Windows is always gonna be a hodgepodge of UI. It's just the reality.
Leo Laporte (00:07:56):
Ugh. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:07:57):
I know If you want, if you want consistency, there are solutions out there for you, you know? Yeah. I mean, if that's the, if that's your number one goal, I mean, I think for a lot of people, the real number one goal is just, you know, I want the applications I need, I want to access my data, blah, blah, blah.
Leo Laporte (00:08:12):
What I, yeah. A lot of times you don't even really see the underlying operating system. Right. You know? Yeah,
Paul Thurrott (00:08:17):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:08:18):
Yeah. I mean our poor editors are using Windows eight, but they don't ever see it cuz they've got premier full screen all the time and
Mary Jo Foley (00:08:25):
Right. So it doesn't matter. Yeah. It doesn't matter like me, I have tweet deck full screen with no pat on the side, like,
Leo Laporte (00:08:31):
Okay. Right, right. You know, I could slip Linux in and you wouldn't even notice. It'd be like, Hey, Hey,
Paul Thurrott (00:08:35):
Hey, let's not get crazy.
Leo Laporte (00:08:36):
We put Linux Mary Jo's coffee. Let's see, we
Paul Thurrott (00:08:40):
Called it project Mojave.
Mary Jo Foley (00:08:43):
Now do you, do you remember one time we were at a, I forget Paul and I were at a show and the only works stations, there were Linux.
Leo Laporte (00:08:50):
Wow. Remember this that's kind of user hospital. They do it. Wow.
Mary Jo Foley (00:08:54):
And I remember going into the press room and I'm like, wait, is everything in here Lenox? And they're like, yeah, it is. And I'm like, okay. And they're like, just try it. And I try it. And I'm like, you know what? It's not that hard. I don't know like why, I guess I thought it
Leo Laporte (00:09:07):
Was that's that's their secret. That was their secret mission. They're being paid by Linus towards, I think
Mary Jo Foley (00:09:13):
That was, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:09:15):
Probably not in this country. That's all. I don't
Paul Thurrott (00:09:16):
Remember that. No,
Leo Laporte (00:09:17):
It was some communist nation. No doubt.
Paul Thurrott (00:09:21):
Remember they used to be like Linux guys and open source guys that would boycot Microsoft events. They used to be outside.
Mary Jo Foley (00:09:26):
No, they'd stand out. They there with signs. What's really costumes would stuff. Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:09:31):
They would pick it. That's hysterical. Yes.
Paul Thurrott (00:09:32):
And it, it would've been more entertaining if there were more than three or four of them, but you know, God bless them. They, you know, they
Leo Laporte (00:09:39):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:09:40):
Fight in the fight.
Leo Laporte (00:09:40):
That's hysterical. You know, that's something you do when you really are kind of a backwater minority operating system. Now that Lennox is the desktop for most of the world. We don't care much. You know, don't need to pick it. You might wanna pick it up. That's all. Wait,
Mary Jo Foley (00:09:57):
Wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. What happened? That I didn't know about
Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
Android baby Android happened. That's what,
Mary Jo Foley (00:10:04):
Yeah, but it's not a desktop.
Leo Laporte (00:10:05):
No, you're right. You're right. Yeah. You're right. But you know,
Paul Thurrott (00:10:11):
You're supposed to end that with yes.
Leo Laporte (00:10:13):
It's it. The point really is doesn't matter very much.
Mary Jo Foley (00:10:17):
It doesn't matter.
Leo Laporte (00:10:18):
They're all so similar nowadays agree. The differences are something enthusiasts will yeah. Go over and over, but
Paul Thurrott (00:10:28):
Well, I mean let's okay, but let's say for example, one of the issues, I would say moving to Lennox for a typical Microsoft user, and this is not an enthusiast. I mean just a normal human being is if you are used to saving files normally in word and Excel and everything, they save to OneDrive, they sync to the cloud. That's where they go. That capability isn't available natively on Linux. That's something Microsoft could do. And I know there are third party solutions, but it's a, for me even, I mean, just in my own particular way of working, it's a huge workflow change to go to a system that doesn't offer that, you know, the Mac is easier because it does have native well, you know, Microsoft supplied, OneDrive integration, but there's always something. I mean, it, this is true. Even when you go from a version of Windows to another version of Windows or your Windows user, and you want to use Windows RT back in the day, you know, Windows yeah. You know, whatever we have now, Windows an arm you know, when that one thing you need the printer or whatever, isn't there. That's the, for a lot of people, that's just the block. That's why they don't want to change, you know? Right.
Mary Jo Foley (00:11:31):
Great.
Paul Thurrott (00:11:33):
You can't make it hard.
Mary Jo Foley (00:11:34):
Yeah. But I gotta say, I was surprised when I looked at our notes and the top, it says, you think Windows elevens coming along really nicely.
Paul Thurrott (00:11:43):
Yeah, no, I want there's an
Mary Jo Foley (00:11:46):
That right? Like that some
Leo Laporte (00:11:47):
Items really nice. It's coming along really nicely That something, the doctor tells you, if the medicine's working, the swelling's going down down, you know,
Paul Thurrott (00:11:57):
There are three or four different versions of Windows 11, right? There's the version that normal people are using the millions of PE, whatever, hundreds of millions, whatever it is now out in the world. And that version is not coming along very nicely that the version's coming along very slowly. Yep. They have made some feature updates, you know, nothing major, but some little changes. That's good. In the dev channel and in the beta channel, you now can test a, a wide range of new features. You know, two weeks ago we got the biggest feature drop Windows, 11 has ever seen one week ago. We got another big one just today. We got some more. And what this all means is that by the time the first feature update ships, Windows 11, this is kind of what we talked about last year, right? Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:12:41):
They should never have shipped it when they shipped it. But if they had just waited for the first feature update, fix more of those UIs, you know, Windows, 11 eyes, more UIs, modernize, more apps, add more features back from that. You regressed, you know, in the original RTM version, it becomes something where you, you can, you can't really complain about too much anymore. So if you run the beta channel today, you get to see what that is. And it's, it's good. It's not perfect. Right. But it is, it's much better than what they shipped last October. I hope they Shipp more of this stuff before this October. They will.
Mary Jo Foley (00:13:18):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:13:18):
They will. I hope so. They will. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. But yeah, and you know, it, it look cynically. Yeah. They, they should have done this. This should have been what they shipped as V1, you know? Absolutely. But yeah. But you know, there's some good stuff in there.
Mary Jo Foley (00:13:33):
Yeah. What, like, like when I look at these builds,
Leo Laporte (00:13:37):
Okay. It's we're switching roll. No, they're not so bad. It's not so bad.
Paul Thurrott (00:13:41):
No, no, no, no. I know I got this. I got this. No. So for example,
Mary Jo Foley (00:13:46):
Because everything I see, like when you say it's a huge update, like I remember two weeks ago when the update came out, you're like, this is a huge update. I'm like, really? What, what do you think is the,
Paul Thurrott (00:13:57):
So a lot of this is gonna be workflow based. Like for example, one of the things they have not fixed is right. Click the task bar and right. Get task you. Right. That's not there. It's
Mary Jo Foley (00:14:05):
Still not there, but that's a,
Paul Thurrott (00:14:06):
That's a very specific feature. And I, I don't know. Yeah. That the average Windows user is accessing task manager a lot. I actually happen do that a lot, but whatever. One of the things that's really impacted me so that one you can work around, right. You can right. Click the star button, you get that menu it's in there. That works. Okay. I think that works for most people. You can yep. You know, open the start menu and start typing and get to it. But one of the big, one of the really, really big ones for me is you've got a, a file of some kind and you drag it down to one of the icons for an application in the task bar, that application will open and you drop it. And then that opens it in the app. Right. I do that. All the, I do that every day to this day, if I'm on Windows 11 RTM, I will, I'll still do that from time to time. It does not work. It's one of the regards of features. They lost that's back and that works great. That's who works exactly as it should, the way it, I know
Mary Jo Foley (00:14:59):
I've never done that in my life.
Paul Thurrott (00:15:01):
Okay. All
Mary Jo Foley (00:15:02):
Right, fine. I didn't even know you could. But it's not the way I work. So
Paul Thurrott (00:15:07):
Yeah, yeah. This honestly, lot of it is, and this is why you have, this is the asterisk part. I mean, I, and, and yeah. The part where it's easy to be cynical, a lot of it is literally stuff that they lost when they went to Windows 11, that they're bringing back. So it's like, how much do you wanna applaud this stuff? But realistically, this is what makes that transition for the one point something billion people that are still using Windows 10 to Windows, 11 more easier, cause less stuff is missing, you know? Right, right. Even goofy little things like the widgets, I hate widgets. Right. I hate them. But I really like having the little weather forecast in the task bar. That was a really nice feature of Windows, 10 lost in Windows 11. Now it's back in, you know, I don't know beta, it's probably in beta and Deb, but it's just a nice little thing.
Paul Thurrott (00:15:53):
Now they have very sneakily put it over in the left corner where the start button used to be ensuring they will get false clicks from people with muscle memory going down there to launch applications. But I'm glad that that's back. Is this a lot of little refinements, you know, you gotta remember some of, some of key new UIs in Windows 11 are half bakes because they're so new, they're brand new. They're not things that used to exist that they evolved they're brand new. So the task pro is the obvious version, but quick actions that notifications interface and the calendar, those are all brand new. So if you're familiar with Chrome OS, which a lot of people probably aren't that OS has very similar UI to that. And it does, it's far more advanced and you can see little things in there that they're adding in these interim builds that are gonna bring it kind of up to speed.
Paul Thurrott (00:16:44):
And another big one for me. And this is very typical for what we're doing right now. I'm I'm, I, I could be on a computer home that I never change the audio setup, the peripherals attached to ever, but I'll go into teams, start a call. It's on the wrong mic. It's on the wrong speakers. It happens all the time. But when you travel like this, you start plugging stuff in. It wants to use the wrong devices for all that stuff. And you have to fix that stuff. And it's, it's, it's a lot more, a lot of things in Windows, 11 are a lot more clicks. And one of the things they're adding now is like a sound output. They don't have mic, but they have SP sound out where you can choose the speaker, right from quick settings, which is perfect because before you had to, to, you know, dive into settings to find that interface, it's a bunch of little things, but I think it's just kind of progra, you know, the start menu is another classic example, the new star, again, brand new UI, not based on something from the past, totally unsophisticated.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:39):
There's an, there's two main sections for like pinned apps and recommended, which we, you know, we kind of all agree to dumb. Some people might just want recommended. Some people might just want pin. Some people might wanna be able to kind of, you know, choose the size. It's just stuck. And one of the things at its, whatever it size is right, you get 50% for this 50% for that. If you delete every single pin icon, you'll have a giant empty space in the top of your start menu. It won't fill in that space. Totally sophisticated. So they're making sta this is not what I wanted, but they're, they have new layouts where you can have more of the pins or more of the re you know, more of the recommended items. It's not actually what I want. I, it's not good enough. I don't think they made snap stamp layouts discoverable. Right. Awesome. You, if you move a window around, the little panel comes down, it gives you a visual cue. Something's going on? You go check it out and then it shows you the layouts before you had to you.
Mary Jo Foley (00:18:36):
Yeah,
Paul Thurrott (00:18:37):
It was this most over. Is that small? Yeah. That's
Mary Jo Foley (00:18:40):
You know, no. If you said to me, top three features of Windows 11, that's one of 'em for me the
Paul Thurrott (00:18:44):
Same layouts. Yeah. No snap layouts is one of those things I think. And snap groups I, I think is one of, are those features that I think will impact a lot of people and it's, by the way, for all the silly emoticon, blah, blah, blah nonsense. They're putting in Windows, this is an actual productivity feature. Yep. You know, we should, we should celebrate that kind of thing. I mean, that's good.
Mary Jo Foley (00:19:03):
Yep. Yep.
Paul Thurrott (00:19:05):
Have I convinced you?
Paul Thurrott (00:19:08):
No. Okay. Maybe it's good. Better. We can agree. It's getting better. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:19:12):
Yeah. I, you know, it's funny because when I, I write every one of these posts, you know, when they come out, the insider builds and I'm always like, does anyone actually care about this? Like I, when I'm writing it, I'm like, okay, like
Paul Thurrott (00:19:25):
That's how all about you're Mary Jo look down at the street, cuz I'm out there holding a plus sign. It says, I care. I care.
Mary Jo Foley (00:19:33):
No. Like, like I, I, I remember when they did something to one of the volume indicators, so it was more in the fluent style and people lost their minds and I'm like, okay, I there's two groups of people in this world. Right. There's these people over here who think like it's a travesty, that things aren't fluent design, whatever that is really. And there's the people who actually just try to use Windows to get their job done. Me and many, probably like the other 1.5 billion people who use Windows. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:20:01):
Absolutely. Well, no, but see a lot,
Mary Jo Foley (00:20:05):
A lot of it just have trouble getting my enthusiasm up for some of these features because I'm like, does do people,
Paul Thurrott (00:20:11):
Honestly, anytime you change any thing, even if a lot of people think it's pretier yeah. What you're, what you're doing is causing a, a work stoppage for a moment. Right. While you that's true. Empowering her for the first time something think about what am I, what is this? They change this. Why did they do that? It's true. And sometimes you might say, Hey, this is nice. But a lot of times it's just some stupid recommended thing that pops up and it's just getting in your face. Yeah. And why I think this, you know, the snap stuff is so important because I don't think most people would be annoyed by that. I think, I think most people would never even know it was there. And I'm like, what is this thing? And maybe that will make a difference for some people. I think it's, I think that one's positive. At
Mary Jo Foley (00:20:48):
Least me too. Same. See,
Leo Laporte (00:20:57):
Do you wanna talk about the new dev builds, but go ahead.
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:00):
Today's build, today's
Leo Laporte (00:21:02):
Build, there's a new, somebody's saying a new security feature.
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:05):
Yeah. So that's intriguing, but they won't give you any information yet about it other than the name of it. Right? Geez. Which is something app security. I think I've already forgotten because I,
Paul Thurrott (00:21:18):
Something, something app security, something,
Leo Laporte (00:21:19):
Something app security,
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:19):
Something, something app security. I use that. I have to look it up because I'm like it. No, it's post alert you, if you are trying to, if an app is trying to install or you're trying to install an app, that's not secure.
Leo Laporte (00:21:33):
Good
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:34):
Smart app control. Right. Good. that's a
Leo Laporte (00:21:37):
Good feature.
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:38):
Yeah. So that's good. That's a good feature. And then it says, and we'll tell you more about it in the future. That's all it says. I'm like,
Leo Laporte (00:21:46):
Okay. Okay.
Paul Thurrott (00:21:50):
You don't think that Reiling the open as dialogue is the most important thing that's ever happened to Windows in industry Windows. Huge,
Leo Laporte (00:21:56):
Huge.
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:58):
I didn't even notice the difference between those two pictures.
Leo Laporte (00:22:00):
What's different. What's new
Paul Thurrott (00:22:02):
What's well, so the, the thing about this UI is that it actually debuted in Windows eight. And one of the weird is when you move forward to 10 and then 11, it actually hasn't changed that much. It's basically the same, you know, thing. But Windows
Mary Jo Foley (00:22:16):
Used to something it says to you too, how do you wanna open the, well, it comes
Paul Thurrott (00:22:20):
Up, right? Yeah. It comes up two times. You, you can right. Click and choose open as, and then you would get it. A lot of people probably don't even know about that. But if you say you're running, you're normally by default, you would run Windows, photos to launch image, files, whatever. But you install say Photoshop or something. Once you've installed an app that can take control of those file formats. The next time you double click on one, it will say, Hey, which one do you want to use? And it's the same UI, but it literally dates back. What is it 10 years now? Yeah. It's like 10 years old and it's persisted through three versions of Windows. It's kind of weird. These things still exist. You can still find Windows eight panels, which of these things they slide over the side of the screen instead of being like floating Windows in Windows 11 today. And this is, you know, some of the stuff they're slowly stepping through and modernizing, right?
Mary Jo Foley (00:23:07):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:23:07):
I, I, what, I see something like this, I think this is, it is beautiful, is a strong word, but it's modern and it matches that Windows 11 aesthetic, which I happen to like, right. But it's frustrating for me. And I think for some people that there isn't enough of it that there's too many. Like I said, this, I think I said this. So front there, there are just too many generat of UIs and you, you don't, you know, that like that one's fun, but there are other UIs like that you'll click it. It'll still be, it'll be the one from Windows 10 or the one from Windows eight or in some cases even earlier. And I think that's, that's frustrating to people who care about details, I guess, or whatever, a UI I don't. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:23:52):
Okay. I'll give you that. But yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:23:57):
Be crushingly.
Leo Laporte (00:23:57):
Oh man. She had to drag that one out of her. I'll give you that.
Mary Jo Foley (00:24:03):
I'll give you that one. And then there's some new things. Like I like some of the things you're doing around account management, like in your Microsoft account, how you can now see more things and they're up leveling things. So that it's more apparent, you know, what credit card you use is your credit card expired. Here's what they, I don't like in there though. Then they also said, and if you're not using Microsoft 365, we'll show you some little things to indicate. Maybe you wanna upgrade premium. So I'm like, oh, they're putting an ad in there too. Okay. Of course they are. Right. Sure. To upgrade. Yeah. But you know, I do like that. They're making those things like account management, easier in the operating system. Cuz that makes sense. So many times I'm like, where's my Microsoft account. What, which account did I use to set up a certain subscription? Which credit card did I use to send?
Paul Thurrott (00:24:48):
Well, by the way, I mean, this might be tied to the requirement that you have to sign in with a Microsoft account, right? Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:24:54):
It
Paul Thurrott (00:24:54):
Probably is. Yeah. You're telling me I have to sign in with a Microsoft account, but I have no management capabilities of this account once I sign in. Yeah. I mean that, those might be related.
Mary Jo Foley (00:25:03):
That's true. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. So it's those kind of things. It's incremental. We have a long way to go till October, which is when we think feature the feature one and only feature updates coming this year. Like you said, there'll be little things they trickle out before that like they just did with this February update. Yep. I I'm sure they're gonna have more things come out before October when the feature update comes. But
Paul Thurrott (00:25:28):
When
Mary Jo Foley (00:25:29):
You know it just, I want a big bang, something, I guess like I'm like, can we have something?
Paul Thurrott (00:25:33):
Well, you know what, the big, the big bang is gonna be when they do this one outlook thing, right? Yeah. I mean, this is, I, well this is Mary Joe's Monarch.
Mary Jo Foley (00:25:46):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:25:46):
Oh yeah. Thing. Yeah, yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (00:25:48):
Yeah. Yeah. The one outlook that's supposed to be more consistent across all the different, sorry. Flavors of outlook. I should follow more closely. Looks like outlook for the web. No, you know what?
Leo Laporte (00:25:57):
There's so many take notes. Sorry.
Mary Jo Foley (00:25:58):
No, there's so many disjointed Microsoft projects going on right now. You're like, wait, what's the,
Paul Thurrott (00:26:04):
But this is another one. Like what? This isn't another reason they should, this Windows 11 should have had that. You know, this is something that goes back to Windows eight, right? And it was a problem in Windows 10. And it's still a problem in Windows 11, which is Microsoft is telling developers. They should use certain technologies to make their own apps. Then they use a mishmash of other things to make their apps and their apps that are in Windows, should these new technologies and should show how awesome things can be. They should be inspirations for other developers. But instead most of these apps are pretty terrible.
Mary Jo Foley (00:26:39):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:39):
You know? No, it's, it's, it's, it's too bad. And I, this is you know, the, it was Chris Jones who had somehow had ended up in Windows live showing off. This is how the mighty had fallen, showing off the, the mail app in Windows eight, you know, 10 years ago or more. Yeah. Which was based in HTML and JavaScript and CSS, this chunky little app, you know, and we're still struggling with its successor today. Right? The version a released probably in Windows 10 that is still in Windows 11 for some reason. And it's like, you guys used to have beautiful mail apps. Does anyone not remember this? You know, Windows live mail. Does anyone remember this app? It was beautiful. Well, even back in the day was pretty nice back. I'll look exactly. That was the earlier version of that app. Beautiful. I think it's, I don't know what happened. LA electrification of everything, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's the ramification of everything. I, I
Mary Jo Foley (00:27:36):
Don't know. No, I feel, I feel like waring teams. I always comes back to this at Microsoft, even now waring teams like the mail, the team that developed the mail app that's in Windows is not outlook. The outlook team. Like they're not even the same team they're not even related. Oh, that's
Paul Thurrott (00:27:49):
Interesting.
Mary Jo Foley (00:27:50):
So they're like always fighting, like who's gonna have the mail app that's built into Windows. And for a long time, it was the mail app team inside a Windows that won that battle. And now they're going to let the outlook team win and take the outlook and put it in Windows. Right. Which
Paul Thurrott (00:28:05):
Honestly can't quickly enough. Makes sense because
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:08):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:08):
Yeah. You know, I mean, it's not like mail, is that hard to do? There's an old well, but then you can start adding value. Like one of the things apple does with their mail app is allow you to appear, you know, have a unique account for, you know, signing up from newsletters, blah, blah. This, this is the, the, the top to bottom thing that Microsoft could do across its Microsoft account, the mail app and all of its clients. And it doesn't do any of that stuff. Yeah. You know, it's, it's just, they just put out this piece of junk. I don't, I don't, I don't get it.
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:41):
Yeah. But that is the kind of big bang thing I want. I'm like or something
Paul Thurrott (00:28:46):
The mono, Right. The Royal family of mail
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:51):
Or they come up with some brand new app that gets built into Windows somehow. And I'm like, okay, here we go. Something new, something exciting.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:59):
Not, they're not gonna thinner
Mary Jo Foley (00:29:01):
Thicker font, Paul.
Paul Thurrott (00:29:03):
Well, okay. I think, look, unfortunately for exciting, interesting fun consumery things. You're pretty much stuck with Xbox today. It's the music and video stuff is gone. It doesn't matter. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:29:15):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:29:16):
For the most part. Right. right. You know, we're, we're, we're looking at productivity and there's some neat productivity stuff. There's some fun things they're doing around focus and all that. But I think this outlook, this an outlook, whatever they're gonna call it yeah. Is is where they can may really make a difference.
Mary Jo Foley (00:29:31):
They're gonna call it outlook.
Paul Thurrott (00:29:33):
Outlook. Yeah. Right. Good. Cuz we don't have enough products there. King outlook. That's fine. Yeah. King, oh look Rex outlook Rex. Ooh.
Leo Laporte (00:29:42):
I like that. That's good. That's a good name. Yeah. That is strong, powerful name. Right? I feel like I should take a break here and then we can talk about more about Windows 11. I just wanna wanna keep us on track. Sure. Just if you don't mind gotta stay on track. I don't so very important. Paul, go out, have a quesadilla. Whatever it is you do in the, the Hilton in Mexico city have a te tequila. Have a con oh a con is Caribbean pronunciation. Con a con. It's like a, it's a pastry it's oh wonderful. Oh yeah. It's like a little curled up little pastry. Yeah. That's so good. Oh, I love those. Go have those and a great coffee too while you're at it. Mm. Our show today brought to you by Melissa. The address experts, people are so mean. They move Paul.
Leo Laporte (00:30:41):
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That's a record for Melissa the most in, in its 37 years of history. It's not just addresses by the way, Melissa does it all addresses emails, phone numbers, names all in real time. If you want, cuz Melissa's got a great API. You can use it as a software, as a service as well. Their global address service verifies addresses for over 240 countries in territories. They can do it right at the point of entry if you need it that way, but you, you know what? That's nice thing about Melissa. It's very flexible. They have, you can even, they have an FTP server, they have a secure FTP server. You can even upload your address, listed, download a cleaned version. You can do it OnPrem. Of course, if you wanna keep it all to yourself, but I should point out privacy is job one at Melissa, they undergo continual independent security audits because they're committed to security, privacy.
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It really is ultimately flexible. They even have apps now in iOS and Android called lookups. Lookups will help you search addresses names and more one at a time at your fingertips. Very handy, very handy support job. One of course they have a global support center offering 24 7 world renowned support. As long as you sign up for a service level agreement, they're, they're absolutely there anytime of the day or night data quality magic quadrant. Once again from Gartner that's the second year in a row G2 crowds, 2022 report ranks Melissa as a leader in both address verified and data quality software, Melissa, they're the address experts. So make sure you sign up right now, actually, you know, you wanna play with it a little bit. You can, you can go to the developer portal at melissa.com/TWiT. Take a look at the APIs. It's very easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the sandbox 24 7. And you can even get started today with 1000 records, cleaned free, make sure your customer contact data is up to date. You need Melissa. If you've got addresses, contact lists, CV emails, phone numbers, you need Melissa melissa.com/m E L I S S a melissa.com/TWiT back. We go to Paul and Mary Jo and some is this, you know, I'm looking at this number, Windows 11
Leo Laporte (00:35:12):
Penetration, is this a good number or a bad number? Or is this a surprise? Is this 19.3%? What is put that co contextualize that for me
Paul Thurrott (00:35:23):
It's so the context for this is it's slowing. Oh, right. Okay. But yeah, I right. I know. It's look, there's a big difference between Windows 10 and it's placed in the world and Windows 10 when it came out and it's placed in the world. Cause Windows 10 is not horrible. Right? One of the big pushes with Windows 10 was we get's,
Leo Laporte (00:35:48):
It's not horrible.
Paul Thurrott (00:35:49):
It's not, yeah, it doesn't suck. You know, we had to get past Windows eight, right? So I think Windows 10, there was a big push Windows 11. I think there, you, you know, content for this to move along as it does, but honestly, 19% after what is it? Six we six months that's actually, that's really impressive. You gotta remember, there are, what are we saying? 1.5 billion supported Windows PCs out in the world at 1.2 of them or something or Windows 10.
Leo Laporte (00:36:18):
So 20% is actually a pretty large number.
Paul Thurrott (00:36:20):
20% is actually pretty big. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:36:22):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:36:23):
Also to me the big thing here is that Windows 11 is poised to become the second, most used version of Windows after some version of Windows 10. Right. So, you know, Windows 10 21 H one I think is the, yeah. Is the, is number one. And we'll, we'll see if that happens. I mean, it, it it's possible the last two versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 might be neck and neck for a little while or whatever, but it's getting, you know, we're, we're still close to that thing that Terry Morrison always said he wanted, you know, as many people as possible to see on the same version, that's IM but as long as they're on the most modern versions and most of them are that's, that's pretty good. You know, Windows 10 could be seen as a version of Windows as Windows 11 could be seen as a version of Windows 10.
Leo Laporte (00:37:08):
Yeah. I guess that's the point. I mean, it's not, it's not like people are on Windows seven or something, right. Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:37:14):
Well you go out the world. I, I I've seen XPO world. I mean, you know, it depends, but yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:37:23):
That's yeah. I mean if you combine 10 and 11, what is that? More like 80% or 70 or,
Paul Thurrott (00:37:30):
I mean it's way more than 80 it's
Leo Laporte (00:37:32):
Is it's that's see. That's what Microsoft, because it's the same model for security and all that right. Drivers.
Paul Thurrott (00:37:38):
Yes you.
Leo Laporte (00:37:39):
Yep. So that's really what what's most important. I would say.
Paul Thurrott (00:37:43):
Yeah. It's honestly, I, I would say the entire time of Windows 10 and now went into Windows 11. There's been a real fine tuning of how Microsoft updates Windows, et, etcetera. I mean that they've come kind of componentized it for lack of a better term to where, you know, we're on this. Even if you're in Windows 10 or Windows 11, you've basically pushing the same update. They probably have different names and things, but it's much easier than it was in the past when you went from seven to eight or between whatever versions of Windows.
Leo Laporte (00:38:09):
Yeah, yeah. Sorachi is waking up. So we are gonna have to do this fast. Let's get this over with.
Mary Jo Foley (00:38:18):
Yeah. He keeps exposing and waking up
Leo Laporte (00:38:21):
Mary Jo's been posting cute pictures in the discord. This is SRA on his heating pad. They gave the surface laptop.
Paul Thurrott (00:38:31):
The laptop. Yeah. Yeah. The problem with cats is they hear you talking. Yeah, they do. Because they're the center of the universe. They assume you're talking to them. You're
Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
Talking to me, you're talking me.
Paul Thurrott (00:38:40):
Yeah. So they just come over and start puring and pushing onto you. And you obviously, you want me to, you know, you wanna pet me cause you're,
Leo Laporte (00:38:46):
You're talking to me. Yeah. You're talking to me. I know you're talking to me. He is a bright eyed alert. Boy. I tell you. Yes, he is. Look at that. Look at that cat that's trouble right there. I can tell right there with the capital T yep.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:01):
Just waiting for you to blink.
Leo Laporte (00:39:03):
I'm surprised Paul is in Mexico city and not Barlo right now. I know you love Barcelona and mobile world. I do on that's work. You know what I do? You can have Mexico city. I'm moving to Barcelona just for the hang.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:18):
Well, but you know what from, but how, how hard is this? Get back and forth to California
Leo Laporte (00:39:22):
From there. Oh yeah. You're right. It's really hard. But no,
Paul Thurrott (00:39:25):
Compared to Mexico, I mean, seriously.
Leo Laporte (00:39:26):
Think about Mexico's easy. Yeah. Mexico city. There's many nonstops. It's not expensive. It's quick.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:33):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:39:33):
Well haw is a little harder. We had a fly in Mexico city or Houston and then the Oaxaca. So you gotta pick your San Miguel would be hard. Yep. But yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:42):
Yep. Yeah. And we, that was one of the first places we looked and we said, you know, it's pretty, it's a little too touristy, but it's three hours in a bus. Yeah. For Mexico city. It's like, I don't.
Leo Laporte (00:39:53):
So but you didn't go to Barcelona. Lenovo did. Yep. And I'm interested in this arm based thing they're doing.
Paul Thurrott (00:40:03):
Yeah. So this is the first HX gen three announced laptop, right? Thinkpad, no less, which is great. I mean, you know Lenovo came late to the tablet PC game, but some ways once the, I think it was the next 200 or whatever it was called at the time, once they announced the tablet PC, which was a convertible PC, I think in some ways that kind of legit legitimatized is that word I always wanna use made legitimate that platform. This is you know, a think PLA I ThinkPad as Windows on armed device is very interesting. And you know, and it's Windows and arms like an electric car. Yeah. You don't want something that looks like some weird, nothing. You want something that looks like a, a normal thing and this, this is, looks like a normal thing. Right. That's, what's kind of interesting about it, you know,
Leo Laporte (00:40:54):
But, but, and, and it would run I'm even concerned about Windows on arm. I mean, is that a mature? No, no, no.
Paul Thurrott (00:41:04):
It's no. Well, it isn't, it isn't, I, I, the thing that has been holding back Windows, well, the, I should say the thing that is now holding back Windows on arm, now that Windows 11 is out in the world is the hardware. And HX is a, you know, a step up. We'll see. I mean, obviously everyone's waiting for the Nuvia stuff, but I don't know any, I don't know. We'll see, you know, we have to see every generation you go in with hope, every generation we've been disappointed. Yeah. you know, we'll see, but they're talking about 28 hours of battery life. Wow. You can kinda see in those photos that Lenovo and they're doing is across their product lines. See a little bump at the top, instead of doing a notch in order to get 10 ADP or higher quality webcams, they're just putting a little bump. Fine. You
Leo Laporte (00:41:48):
Know, that's better than a top. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:41:50):
Why notch? Exactly. Yep. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:41:51):
Does it put, I don't think that's gonna bother anybody. Look at the bottom.
Paul Thurrott (00:41:56):
I dunno. I don't have one, so yeah. I
Leo Laporte (00:41:58):
Guess that's the only issue, huh?
Paul Thurrott (00:42:00):
Unless it closes, I don't, I don't know, know it closes actually. Yeah. But that's actually a good point, but they're doing that across their think pads. I think you're gonna end other product lines. So you're gonna see this a lot.
Leo Laporte (00:42:09):
Makes sense.
Paul Thurrott (00:42:11):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:42:11):
So, but again, it's gotta come down to performance. I mean, is this eight CX, see if this was, if this were the equivalent of an apple M one, which is also arm based.
Paul Thurrott (00:42:20):
I, okay. Let's not go crazy if this was equivalent of a qu I three or a qu I five. I think a lot of people would be okay with
Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
That. It's not even that
Paul Thurrott (00:42:27):
That's been the claim. The problem is there's been multiple generations from Qualcom and through some combination of, of, you know, software and hardware in efficiency, it just hasn't landed where we want it. So, you know, I'm optimistic but realistic, I guess. I, oh, we didn't get to see it. It was closing.
Leo Laporte (00:42:44):
I know, you know, there's the, I
Paul Thurrott (00:42:46):
Don't know what the, okay. I think the bump does ex expand, go beyond it. But if you,
Leo Laporte (00:42:50):
The cameras
Paul Thurrott (00:42:50):
Are
Leo Laporte (00:42:51):
Holds it, it makes it easy to open. I don't know.
Paul Thurrott (00:42:54):
That's right. Look at it. But, but the camera itself is still gonna be protected when it's close. It's not exposed. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:43:01):
I actually don't think that's a bad design. I think that's a clever, I don't either. I think it's fines clever way to handle it. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:07):
The problem is here. I am being dooms day again.
Paul Thurrott (00:43:11):
What's going on
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:13):
The
Paul Thurrott (00:43:13):
Freak Friday.
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:15):
I know the only reason to use arm Windows with arm is the battery life. Right. And the battery life is still terrible on Windows. Onar oh, really? That we have seen so far. It's not terrible, but it's no better than Intel and it's not, not at all. Even in spite of all the vendors claims the
Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
Performance isn't TWiTce as good. There's why would you use it? 28 hours of video playback?
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:37):
Come on, right? Like what's the real battery? Like, is it six
Leo Laporte (00:43:39):
Hours? It does seem a little high. Should's
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:42):
Gonna be like
Leo Laporte (00:43:42):
Six hours. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:43:44):
It, it should be closer to 14, but we'll see. I hope to review this one. Come on,
Leo Laporte (00:43:50):
Comes out may thousand $99. According to these website, the rot that no, I
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:56):
Would love it. I'm I'm always looking for the best battery life, lightest, PC, if, and I love think pads, but I just know like every single time we've seen the battery claims on Windows on our yeah. Cause you, they're not
Leo Laporte (00:44:08):
Anywhere near, you don't need performance with no pads. You just, you want battery life. I want battery
Paul Thurrott (00:44:12):
Life, battery life. Okay. So I think there, there are three levels of battery. If there's at the top end is what they claim. Right. There's always some crazy number 20
Mary Jo Foley (00:44:20):
Hours, which is always a lie, right?
Paul Thurrott (00:44:22):
Yeah. At the bottom of it is what Mary Jo gets, which is always like three hours for Use. And then somewhere between those is what I usually see. I usually get, you know, depending on what it is. I mean, somewhere higher than that, I usually, I usually don't have as bad results as you do. And I don't know why I, I, if anything, I mean, I'm running visual studio, I'm running advanced graphics packages. I'm using office apps to write, not notepad. I mean, I don't, I don't, I can't even explain this. I don't know. I don't
Mary Jo Foley (00:44:47):
Know why. I, I can't either, but I've sent you my battery report, you know, I'm not just like making
Paul Thurrott (00:44:52):
Oh yeah, no, I know you. I know. You're not making it up. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:44:54):
Yep.
Mary Jo Foley (00:44:55):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:44:56):
The comments in your, on your website are great. There's no average consumer who watch this video for 28 hours straight. What is the battery life really? Right. Yeah. Right. Things like
Paul Thurrott (00:45:06):
We're gonna have to wait for reviews. Well, good. I hope it is. Lenovo, whatever it's worth, Lenovo is one of those companies that has really gone after getting rid of crap ware and stuff in the PCs. They've done a great job with that. They're usually, I'm surprised they're using a video number on this. They're usually most, I would say HPE Delta, you don't see a lot of the video playback baloney anymore. I'm, I'm actually kind of surprised by this. I, I think they're just emphasized thing that, because it's such a high number and you know, video playback on a typical laptop is probably closer to 10 hours or whatever, eight hours. So it's still, it sounds insane. But I would think it's gonna be between a third and a half of that. Hopefully a half. You know, we'll see. I mean, to the very first Windows and armed devices, I did see over 20 hours of battery life that's cuz I couldn't do anything. They were so slow. You couldn't even get, you couldn't get work done, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So if you wanted something just to last and be alive, but not be useful in any way. I mean, I guess that was, do met that.
Leo Laporte (00:46:05):
Cool. Do you think they're turning up the clock speeds and that's, what's like in order to give you decent performance, they're killing the battery life in effect. It's a trade off, isn't it? Even on arm.
Paul Thurrott (00:46:15):
Yeah. Well, right. So first of all, you gotta remember this, this architectural change, right. Windows for 20 yearsish has been designed for the 6 86 architecture. Right? So when you go to this new architecture, you have to change a lot of things. And I, it's interesting because Intel's moving to that arm style architecture and I'm sure AMD, well actually AMD's done among thing for a long time now. You know, Windows has to adapt and I think that's gonna make it better for everybody no matter which platform you end up choosing. Yeah. So there's some of that, but I mean, some of it's just the reality of the hardware. I mean, I, for whatever reason they thought, well this phones run fast, let's stick a phone ship in this thing and you know, it didn't really, that didn't really work out so well.
Leo Laporte (00:46:55):
Yeah. It wasn't the only Lenovo, they announced some other think pads and stuff. Anything of interest.
Paul Thurrott (00:47:01):
Yeah. So you know, the, the Ts series, which is kind of their work horse and I, if I'm not mistaken, I responsible for probably most of their sense, like 70% of the food thing,
Leo Laporte (00:47:11):
Laptop. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:47:12):
Pick updates, the P series the works stations grew updated the extreme not, yeah, the X one extreme, which is not a workstation technically, but a kind of a gorgeous actually one of those one, one point didn't you have
Leo Laporte (00:47:24):
An extreme, extreme, yeah. I had one of the first generations though. They're up to fifth generations, so I bet it's
Paul Thurrott (00:47:30):
Yeah. So the big thing that's happened is everyone's going 12th gen Intel. We know now what that means. We know that there's use series and P series and H series and you know, you can look out across these systems and we'll see, I think we're gonna start to see PC makers differentiate between use series on the low end. And it's especially like low wattage use series for really thin and light machines. And then I wouldn't be surprised if like X one type machines, the X one yogas, certainly the P series move up to like that core P series processor, higher wattage, you know, more power, et cetera. So kind of, this is gonna be an interesting year for PCs actually.
Leo Laporte (00:48:10):
Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:48:13):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:48:15):
Anything else at M WC that we should talk about? Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:48:18):
Samsung also announced there are gonna be stay tuned if you're into PCs, it'll be more announcements. The show's still ongoing, so there's more coming, but yeah, Samsung the, the computer I'm still using at home, interestingly and we do, when I'm doing this at home, I'm actually on a docked Samsung galaxy
Leo Laporte (00:48:35):
Book, you know, it, it's funny, they're not inspiring, but they're really, I feel like they're very solid. They've really
Paul Thurrott (00:48:41):
Made. Yeah. They're, they're really well made. Yeah. Yeah. And they're, they're super thin and light. They make laptops and convertibles 13 and 15, if I'm not mistaken except on the very lowest end version, you know, different colors, like you kinda see on the phones. The only downside to the Samsung stuff is the software pre-load. So there's sort of the opposite of Lenovo in that respect. So when you buy like a Samsung Galaxys, whatever a note or whatever they have, you know, there's a million Samsung apps on there. Yep. And when you buy a Samsung Windows PC, there are million Samsung apps. Yeah. But I, I'm not a fan of that personally, but if you're into the whole Samsung ecosystem, a lot of those apps are designed for phone PC integration. And that actually may be of interest to you,
Leo Laporte (00:49:26):
By the way. I haven't talked about this, but I, you know, I bought the you Samsung 22 ultra. Yeah. and it works really nicely with your phone.
Paul Thurrott (00:49:37):
Yeah. Oh, right, right. Cuz of that partnership there with Microsoft there, you wanna use your phone. Yeah. You almost have to have a Samsung.
Leo Laporte (00:49:44):
Yeah. that's worked out of the box. State connected was able to run any apps. The screen shared works.
Paul Thurrott (00:49:51):
Samsung, I think is still the only company that has software built into their phones. I think unless Microsoft has done this in their own phones, but that automatically connects to your phone.
Leo Laporte (00:50:00):
It was easy wiThurrott
Paul Thurrott (00:50:01):
Having to
Leo Laporte (00:50:01):
Go from. I had, yeah, there was, there were like 18 acceptance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Not, not this time. Yeah. It was very easy and it stays connected, which was another problem I had. Yep. Yeah. Is a great doesn't
Mary Jo Foley (00:50:12):
Work like that on the pixel
Leo Laporte (00:50:14):
Sadly. No, no, but I'm, if you're gonna use your phone, I think the Samsung it
Paul Thurrott (00:50:19):
Is, you have to have a Samsung. Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:50:20):
That's. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:21):
It's not even, you know, choice. We used to kinda say like, look, if you have an iPhone, it's not gonna work. If you have Android, it's better. But now really it's like, you have to have a Samsung, if you want the full experience, you have to have a Samsung,
Leo Laporte (00:50:29):
But it's a good experience. I mean,
Paul Thurrott (00:50:32):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:50:33):
It, it works really nicely. Yeah. so I I'm actually been very happy with this. The S 22 ultra great cameras is
Paul Thurrott (00:50:41):
That it looked like your background was animating in the, it
Leo Laporte (00:50:44):
It's not animating.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:45):
Oh, I see
Leo Laporte (00:50:46):
It
Paul Thurrott (00:50:47):
Tilts tilting you. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:50:48):
Nice. That's another Samsung battery wasting feature
Paul Thurrott (00:50:52):
Was gonna say it's like, it's like driving a 78 Chevy up a hill watching the gas go down,
Leo Laporte (00:50:58):
Use accelerated, but the battery life is good on this. It's a 4,000 million battery. They've done a good job of turning it. So I don't have,
Paul Thurrott (00:51:05):
I, I love about 4,000 is only now. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:51:08):
Only 4,000. Yeah. But
Paul Thurrott (00:51:10):
It only has a SpaceX engine in it, but it's
Leo Laporte (00:51:12):
Such a good looking screen. And I actually turned it up to, to 4k, which is really a battery. That's a bigger battery was than the background,
Paul Thurrott (00:51:20):
I think.
Leo Laporte (00:51:20):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it's a, it's I'm very happy with it. Yeah. It's a really nice, and
Paul Thurrott (00:51:25):
In fact, it's actually kind of cool. Isn't
Leo Laporte (00:51:27):
It? It's like your your
Paul Thurrott (00:51:29):
Stuck, cause I know, you know, the iPhone has a minor version of that, but it's very subtle.
Leo Laporte (00:51:32):
No, this is aggressive and it worked on all four, a axis, a axis, so right.
Paul Thurrott (00:51:38):
You
Leo Laporte (00:51:38):
It's neat. It's it's actually looks unsettling.
Paul Thurrott (00:51:42):
It's it's making me a little queasy actually. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:51:45):
What could I launch to show you how well, it's just the, this the quad, the 4k screen. I mean, I probably should set it back to 10 AP there's really, you can't tell the difference, but it's very smooth. It's, you know, the scroll is just great. 120 Pertz scroll and yeah, if you are, if you're Windows, user, and you want a phone that, you know, is as integrated with Windows as iPhone is for max, this is, this is as close as you get. I think. Yep.
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:11):
It is nice. Even more than the duo. It is more than,
Paul Thurrott (00:52:14):
Oh, absolutely. You gotta say you, you would think you would get this from a Microsoft device.
Leo Laporte (00:52:17):
You do. Yeah. But no, yeah. Isn't that funny? Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice phone. I like the yeah, the stylist. It's really a note. So
Paul Thurrott (00:52:27):
Yeah. It's literally a note. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:52:29):
It's literally a note. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:52:30):
A note by another name. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:52:32):
Yeah. And you get the funny four, five camera back, which really looks silly.
Paul Thurrott (00:52:40):
I kind of honestly, when that, when that's just there on that flat back, I actually kind of
Leo Laporte (00:52:45):
Have a case on it. See, that's the thing. If I take it outta the case, it stands, it
Paul Thurrott (00:52:50):
Looks like a spider there. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:52:51):
It stands out a little bit more. If you take it outta the kick,
Paul Thurrott (00:52:53):
I kinda like, oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I think it looks nice.
Leo Laporte (00:52:58):
Hey, it's a, if the camera system's amazing. Yeah. Really. It's amazing.
Paul Thurrott (00:53:03):
Yeah. If you like the zoom stuff, they definitely have the best
Leo Laporte (00:53:05):
Zoom. Yeah, yeah. A hundred X and yeah. A lot of that's optical, but it, I have to say it looks pretty darn good. They have a lot of processing in here, so yeah. It's, it's a pretty nice Yeah, pretty nice thing and work. And mainly I wanted to just report that it works well with your phone on Windows 11. It's a very nice combination. I gotta say. Could you, I'm just, I was thinking with the Samsung couldn't you couldn't, you just put a vanilla Windows on it, like just get rid of all the Samsung stuff or is that not doable?
Paul Thurrott (00:53:41):
So I that's what I did. And what's funny is, and I don't. So think back to the days when you used to have to do installs locally with like a CD or a DVD, right? One of the little tricks you could do back in the day was you would just make a copy of the, the plain Microsoft vanilla Windows, installer, whatever version, blow away, whatever HP or Dell or Lenovo had done. And you'd be good to go. Like, but realistically you want to things like, well, you might want the Samsung updater because it, you know, whatever, maybe they do firmware updates to there, or whatever it is, or you may want this or that, whatever. But you could do like a cloud update of or even a, a USB based in install of the, the Microsoft version of Windows 11 or 10, whatever the Samsung stuff, some of it still comes back. Like, I actually don't understand how that happens.
Leo Laporte (00:54:29):
That's
Paul Thurrott (00:54:29):
Weird. Like yeah. It's not the full, like if there were 30 to 40 Samsung apps on this thing and I do a clean, I did a clean install. I did this TWiTce actually, but I do a clean install for, you know, at the beginning. It's just, like I said, vanilla Windows, but come back in a week and it's like eight or nine Samsung apps on there. It's like the, I don't understand where they're coming from. Like they just kind of maybe through the app stores, it's a
Leo Laporte (00:54:50):
Weird firmware thing going on. That's weird. Yeah. Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:54:54):
Microsoft does allow, well, Microsoft allows these companies to modify the installer and now, you know, we don't, you don't get like a CD in the box computer anymore, obviously, but you, but they must have made it electronic. So it knows it's in the, what the system is. And when you do the install, it
Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
Hidden partition, little,
Paul Thurrott (00:55:14):
Little alarm goes off somewhere and they start downloading It's. Yeah. It's, I'd, I'd like to know more about that. I actually, yeah, it seems
Leo Laporte (00:55:21):
You
Paul Thurrott (00:55:22):
Don't get, it's not as bad
Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
With it's gone as like the Microsoft stores are gone. Just like, no, forget it.
Paul Thurrott (00:55:28):
No. Well, yeah. So two problems with signature, the Microsoft stars are gone, like I said, but also you know, there's a, from a business perspective the vast majority of retail sales Windows are going from other companies that are Microsoft partners. Right, right. And they's, they're trying to make a living in a world with the Raza thin margins. And they were not particularly excited about signature. Although, like I said, like Lenovo kind of went down this path on their own. I, I don't know if signature influenced that or not, or whatever, but you know, HP and Dell on different lines, you know, businesses, business computers tend to be better, but they still, the consumer stuff is still, I think it's consumed by a lot of crap.
Leo Laporte (00:56:12):
It's a reflection of the marketplace and cons people are buying Windows, PCs either are people listen to the show, they're smart enough to know how to remove that stuff or they don't care. Yeah. They
Paul Thurrott (00:56:27):
Just Don care.
Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
They're aware. And I think that's the vast majority. And so, you know what this overhead to not take 25 bucks more, not to have that crap on there. How much do you think they make?
Paul Thurrott (00:56:36):
I would too.
Leo Laporte (00:56:37):
25 bucks.
Paul Thurrott (00:56:38):
It's not just that. So it's phones are like this too. Phones, tablets, computers, every everything, every time you add anything to it. That's another thing that has to be maintained. Yeah. So, you know, you may be, if you're paying a lot for internet access or whatever. Yeah. Your computer's probably sitting there updating apps all day long every day. That's not necessarily what you're looking for. Right. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:56:58):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:57:00):
I don't know. I, I, I would like everything. I have to be clean as it can be. Even like, you know, apple people, won't like this, you buy a new iPhone. That thing comes with 37 apple apps on it or whatever. Three home screens. It's like chalk full of apps. Yeah. I, are they more useful than Samsung apps or Microsoft, you know, maybe some of them, but I mean, it's still a lot of, I don't wanna call it crap, but it's a lot of stuff. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:23):
Come on, go ahead. Call it crap.
Leo Laporte (00:57:26):
It's crap
Paul Thurrott (00:57:26):
Lot. It's well, I, I, I remove a lot of it. I mean, I just don't, I don't under, I mean, I understand, but I, I think people are just accepting of this stuff.
Leo Laporte (00:57:34):
They don't care. I think
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:35):
HP, HP is one of the worst.
Leo Laporte (00:57:37):
Yeah. They always
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:37):
Get a new HPC. There's so much HP
Leo Laporte (00:57:41):
Stuff
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:41):
On there.
Paul Thurrott (00:57:42):
Well, it, it depends. It depends on the line and, and it depends on the market. Right? Like the elite book stuff is usually is great, you know, but that's, those are, they're more expensive. These are computers that are sold to businesses. They have three year warranties, they start over a thousand dollars, you know, but yeah, if you spend 800 bucks on a, you know, and be something or a pavilion, you're gonna, well, they're gonna get paid somehow. I mean,
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Sadly, sadly. True.
Paul Thurrott (00:58:14):
What else
Leo Laporte (00:58:14):
We got, you were talking about the
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:17):
Reset PC. This is worth talking about actually it's worrisome, right? It's
Paul Thurrott (00:58:24):
Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:26):
So I didn't write about this. Somebody else did on our site. So I don't know a ton directly about this, but an MVP discovered that when you wipe certain Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs, not all of your data is gone, but not everyone like some people for some reason, not everyone. That, which is kind of weird. And now Microsoft's acknowledging this is true. And they say in order to make sure this doesn't happen, you have to disconnect one drive from your account before you wipe the PC,
Paul Thurrott (00:59:00):
Which is hilarious because now they're requiring you to sign into Microsoft account, which is how you get that one drive integration.
Mary Jo Foley (00:59:07):
Yeah. Yeah. So this is concerning to me because I think about all these PCs in the past year or two years, that I've returned to various vendors. Right. And I'm sure I didn't wipe them. Right. And so my datas might have been on them. Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:59:20):
I'm sure you actually did wipe them. Right. But they didn't, maybe they didn't, you know, work. Right, right.
Mary Jo Foley (00:59:26):
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just like, oh yeah, It's concerning. Right. I mean, cuz when you, when you do a back back to factory reset or whatever it's called, like when you say I wanna wipe the whole thing, my, all the data, everything, you assume all the data gets wiped, but this is saying it does not.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:45):
Well you assume, because it tells you that's what's happening in fact, right. There's a process you go through where it takes a long time, but it's just, don't worry, but this we're gonna encrypt this thing. It's gonna be great. Yeah. You know, and you know, maybe you're selling it, maybe you're returning it, maybe. Yeah. Whatever you're giving it away, whatever it is. Like, you don't want this thing to end up up in a pawn shop that have someone, you know, grab your personal data off of it. So yeah. Anyway, they're they are gonna fix it.
Mary Jo Foley (01:00:11):
Soon TM. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff anyway. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:00:19):
About that, that one. I, no, you need that. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's something people come to expect now because all the phones do it. So you know, everything, all your devices now really have to do that. I think they really have to do that. I
Paul Thurrott (01:00:32):
Don't remember when this debuted, was it Windows eight, this feature, this is a good feature.
Leo Laporte (01:00:36):
Pretty recent. Yeah. Pretty recent. Mary Microsoft 365.
Mary Jo Foley (01:00:47):
Yes. So as of March 1st, which was yesterday, Microsoft was supposed to be raising the prices on many of their business office, 365 subscriptions. This wasn't new. We knew this was coming. They announced its six months ago. And they said the reason was that in the 10 plus years, since they introduced office 365, they had all, almost never done a substative price increase. So it was time because they've added so many new apps and features and also by the way, Google's raised the price of their competitors. So why shouldn't we raise our price? So what was interesting was on Monday? No. When was this? Yeah. Monday, Microsoft quietly told some of its partners, reseller partners. Okay. We're gonna give you two more weeks to get this thing through this price increased thing through because they claim there's so many customers who are talking to their resellers about trying to get in under the old price.
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:48):
For one more year before these new price increases take effect that they were overwhelmed. And so they're giving the partners two more weeks until March 15th to get all this done. The price increase takes effect whenever your subscription news. So if your subscription renewed on March 1st, it would be on March 1st, but it starts March 1st. So anytime after March 1st, this year, you're gonna pay quite a bit more. For many of those subscriptions. I, I can't say 20% more across the board. It's very different for different ones. So, you know, like something like Microsoft, 365 business basics is going from $5 a month to $6 a month per user. And then all the way up to Microsoft, 365 E three, you're going from 32 to $36 a month. And people are like, okay, so it's four bucks more a month. Well, when you have a lot of users in your company, this is a big pricing increase, right?
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:39):
Like this is big. So yeah, the price increase is going to happen. It's it's taking effects somewhere between this week and March 15th. So once your subscription renews, after that, you are gonna pay these new prices. So here's not, here's, who's not affected no consumers. They didn't increase the price for consumers. They also didn't increase the price of E five, their most expensive one, which is $57 per user per month. I think they decided, you know what, we're making a lot of money on that one. We're not gonna increase the price on that one. And then there's a few other various plans that are not affected. But if you're a consumer, don't worry. If you're somebody who uses most of the plans like office 365 E one E three E five, you are affected. So you might wanna go check your price information, price list, and just know what you're gonna be paying. Cuz the price and cost is
Leo Laporte (01:03:32):
Coming. Same for you know, I have like the home user. Yeah. $8. You
Mary Jo Foley (01:03:37):
Won't, you won't be affected.
Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
I, I don't have to worry about that.
Mary Jo Foley (01:03:40):
No, you don't, you
Paul Thurrott (01:03:41):
Know, remember a month or so ago, Google finally realized they had these legacy Gmail or GC accounts.
Leo Laporte (01:03:48):
Yeah, yeah,
Paul Thurrott (01:03:49):
Yeah. They announced, Hey, by the way, you guys are gonna have to start paying for this. You know, I, I was shocked by how many people complained about this, like these and, and I, and I should say to be clear, these were not people like individuals that were just taking advantage of like a free yeah. You know, custom domain account or whatever, these like businesses with multiple users. And they're freaking out because like you said, you know, this is not $5 a month. It's five to $6 a month per user. Right. And then these are probably small business is they might have five users. They might have 20 users, whatever. And it add, you know, it's a lot of money, but to me, so wait a minute, you you've been running a business off of a free legacy Gmail. Like what did you think was gonna happen?
Paul Thurrott (01:04:33):
Like of course you have to pay for this. You know, even my, I keep saying this, you know, my small company, which doesn't have a lot of money we, for these type of accounts, I mean, that's, it's, it's a business. What are you talking about? Like, right. It's amazing to me. I, but it's, it's still shock. I still get email and I know people hearing will hear this and not like it, but I get email from people still, you know, can you recommend something else? That's free. Yeah. It's well, there is, yeah. For an individual. I can you, but not for a business, you know, you have to pay for the domain. You have to pay for the accounts. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:05:08):
Paul Libra office
Leo Laporte (01:05:10):
Libra office, baby. Yep. It's free. It's in the name
Paul Thurrott (01:05:15):
Does that. Right.
Leo Laporte (01:05:17):
It's fine. You know, I mean, and frankly I think a lot of businesses, including ours use Google you know
Paul Thurrott (01:05:23):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:05:24):
Because we're already paying for, it's not like we're not paying for it, but we already paid for Google workspace. And so we use sheets and the word process, of course.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:34):
Yeah. Right. By the way, that's what these guys were doing. They would order for free. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:05:37):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:38):
It's like, what do you think
Leo Laporte (01:05:39):
Is
Paul Thurrott (01:05:39):
Right. I don't know. I, I just, you can't expect something like that to be free for you. Can't expect to be free period.
Leo Laporte (01:05:45):
A big one for me. We kind of got conditioned to not pay for email that baffles.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:52):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:05:53):
That is, I mean, arguably the single most important technology for any big business is it's email.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:58):
Sure.
Leo Laporte (01:05:59):
And to say well, but yeah, but I don't want to pay for it.
Paul Thurrott (01:06:02):
Right.
Leo Laporte (01:06:04):
You know, it's mostly,
Paul Thurrott (01:06:05):
But I do want my company's name to be on it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you were, you were talking about two very different things here. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:06:11):
Yeah. I mean, I, I do think you should pay for email. You don't have to pay for a word,
Paul Thurrott (01:06:16):
But, but you're paying no such thing. Well, there is, but I mean really in Google, Microsoft, whatever, you're not paying for email, you're paying for email plus storage plus collaboration. Plus
Leo Laporte (01:06:28):
These guys are acting as if the storage is the paid product and everything else supports storage. Right. They sure
Paul Thurrott (01:06:36):
They can market however they want. But
Leo Laporte (01:06:38):
Yeah, one drive, I mean that they, they push that hard. Every time I use Windows, I go, wow. They really push one drive on you. Yeah. I mean, not that apple doesn't push iCloud on
Paul Thurrott (01:06:51):
You. And that was the, I will never forget. I, after some Microsoft event, I was talking to Steven SNO in front of the stage and he was telling the Microsoft would never get into the storage business. That it was like a tools game. It was just a bottomless pit of never ending storage. And why on earth? Would Microsoft want any part of that?
Leo Laporte (01:07:09):
Yeah. Well he was. And
Paul Thurrott (01:07:12):
It's like the primary thing they're marketing now. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:07:14):
I know. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:07:15):
Well actually he made sense when he said it. I was like, yeah, no. I mean, I, I don't why like who ha who would wanna build data centers full of hard drives?
Leo Laporte (01:07:24):
Well, but in, in a way that also explains why they push it so hard because there's an economy of scale that just doesn't work unless you have everything, but
Paul Thurrott (01:07:33):
You also have to replicate it. You have to make it geographically diverse. Yeah. You know, it's really expensive. They
Mary Jo Foley (01:07:38):
Have a lot of data centers. They're like Amazon, right? Like they're using up their excess capacity. I feel
Leo Laporte (01:07:43):
Like, yeah. It's almost like, well, we'd have these anyway. Yeah. So let's monetize them, you know, somehow. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Speaking of which OneDrive is now M one Mac compatible.
Paul Thurrott (01:07:56):
Yeah. Took, so what did they had one ship like a year ago, October.
Leo Laporte (01:08:02):
So yeah. This is the second year of the transition. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:04):
I, I bought a, a Mac mini at that time to test this out. I, you know, like everyone else in our, you know, the performance is fantastic, blah, blah. This works great. This is fine. Legacy apps work fine. The only problem I had was OneDrive. Yeah. Really, really bad. Like the performance was horrific. Yeah. Wow. And and I don't, you know, I don't use the Mac regularly of course, but I went back and, you know, I, I go back every once in a while I link up with OneDrive. It's never been good. Right. So this should solve that problem. Finally, I, 15 months later, 16,
Leo Laporte (01:08:35):
Everybody's pretty much converted to M one except a few handful of irritating handful of programs that
Paul Thurrott (01:08:43):
Well, but the M one promise is the Intel stuff should works, work pretty well. Yeah. The problem is for something that's integrating with the file system,
Leo Laporte (01:08:51):
You kind of need it to
Paul Thurrott (01:08:52):
Whatever. Yeah. You need the, you need,
Leo Laporte (01:08:55):
By the way, apple announced this morning for those who you not paying attention, they are having an event on Tuesday. We weren't sure if they were because of the Ukraine situation, but they are. And I thought it was kind of interesting. The invitation has a little pun, it says peak performance, but it's spelled P w E K. No. And it, and the, I think it's gonna be, I think they're gonna show off an AR product, which will be very interesting. Do you really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. I think that invitation indicates that as in, we're gonna give you a peak at something I see we're working on probably won't be available later this year,
Paul Thurrott (01:09:34):
But I mean, it worked out great with that wireless charging thing they were gonna do. So I wonder,
Leo Laporte (01:09:37):
Yeah. You know, you might wonder why they would change their policy and never saying anything until they can ship it. But I think they gotta get developers on board. And so there is a kind of an urgency to show it.
Paul Thurrott (01:09:50):
I think that they're gonna do a good job in the consumer space with that. Yep.
Leo Laporte (01:09:54):
It'll be interesting. You know lot of people, including Microsoft have kind of broken their ships upon upon the SCHs of AR VRR. Yes they have. So Apple's gonna take their turn. And the reason I thought of this is I think they'll probably announce a new Mac mini we're all, we're all waiting for that. So
Paul Thurrott (01:10:12):
Yeah, definitely with
Leo Laporte (01:10:14):
A new, with a new, more powerful, you know,
Paul Thurrott (01:10:17):
Now the one drive works. Maybe I can think about using it again. You see, you see
Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
Finally. Yeah. Hey, I wanna show you something. Our show today brought to you by Canary thinks from thinks the Canary this is it. I'm holding the Canary in my, in my hands here. This thing is the coolest little security device. I don't know if I've talked about it on Windows Weekly before we talk about it all the time on security now affects security. Now, way back when we first started, we, one of the, I think it was show number two. We were talking about something called honey pots. The idea being something on your network or on the public internet that looks valuable looks to is desirable, but is in fact a trap for bad guys. That's what this is now, honey, pot's traditionally hard to implement, you know, tricky. This thing is a honey pot appliance, which is so clever on average companies don't know about breaches on their networks for 191 days, more than six months.
Leo Laporte (01:11:22):
That means six months, the bad guys wandering around your network. Look what just happened to Invidia. You know, the, they survived the ransomware, but now they're slowly leaking more and more personal that's because they got in the Invis network. And before triggering the ransomware, they down, they exfiltrated as much information as they could. It's embarrassing. It's costly this little box. It looks like an appliance about the size of a, I don't know, smaller than a Mac mini bigger than a deck of card. Somewhere in between. Doesn't take much power. It's connected. As you can see hardwire to our network, it doesn't look like a honey pot to an attacker. Anybody roaming our network, this looks like I've configured it to look like a Sonology NAS with a Mac address to match with the proper login so that they attempt to log in. But instead of getting into my NAS and getting all my files, all they've done, it is trigger and alert that lets me know there's an intruder in the network, but here's the thing.
Leo Laporte (01:12:20):
It can look like almost anything. A Windows server, a Linux server. It can be a Christmas tree with all of the services turned on, or you can just turn on a few simple services, trying not to attract too much attention. It can look like a, I mean, a SC a device. It can look like, I mean, you can enroll it in active directory. The idea is to, to make it look real, right? Not make it look vulnerable, just make it look valuable. You can deploy 'em throughout your entire network. It can look like a router. It can look like a switch attackers won't even know they've been caught. The other thing you can do with these, which is great is you can, you can create files, Canary tokens. They call them, which are like little trip wires spread out through your network. They can be PDFs or docs or look like PDFs or docs or any kind of file.
Leo Laporte (01:13:08):
You know, for instance, I might have some spreadsheets, some dot XLS files spread around. They say things like employee information or payroll information. They're not real. As soon as you open them, it connects to the Canary on your network. So it doesn't even look like weird traffic and the Canary then contacts you. And by the way, no false alarms, it just, the alerts are exactly what you need. When you can get configured any way you want 'em email, text messages, you get a console. When you get a Canary, you can do it through slack, through web hooks, CIS log, they have an API. So it's very flexible.
Leo Laporte (01:13:52):
But the key is you're gonna know if somebody's in your network. Now one is not enough. I mean, I guess if you're a small operation, you can have one, you know, a handful, some big banks and other corporations have hundreds of them that deployed all over the world on every single continent. Really the tool you need looks, we've always said security as a layered process. And I'm sure you have other security things, but a lot of times people say we're protecting the perimeter. And then just forget about what happens once somebody gets in, this is, this is inside the perimeter. This is gonna let you know if somebody's got in, this is a very important, very important device. Well named to it's like the kind of area in the coal mine. You can, you can find out more@canary.tools, canary.tools/TWiT created by a team of experts who have trained companies, militaries, and governments, how to break into networks for decades.
Leo Laporte (01:14:45):
That was how, you know, they thought of this and they built this pricing. I'll give you an example. If you say, say you want five of them, medium size business probably should have, you know, you spread 'em out all over the place. 7,500 bucks a year, you get the five canaries, you get your own hosted console, all the upgrades, the support, the maintenance all you have to do. If you decide, you want to try these out is put TWiT in the, how did you hear about is box? And you'll get 10% off were life. It's a lot of savings 10 and not just for the first year, but for life. And I would, I will reassure you if you're at all skeptical two months, two months, money back guarantee for a full refund. Now I should tell you if it, you know, if you're in, in lock, if things are going well, you'll never hear from your Canary.
Leo Laporte (01:15:32):
It's dead silent. It only alerts you when there's a problem. That's what you want. Canary.Tools/TWiT offer code is TWiT for 10% off for your forever canary.tools/TWiT. This is something everybody should have. I don't talk about enough on the, this show we talk about on security now, the time, really, really great tool. Thank you, Canary for your support and thank you by the way, for using that address in the offer code. That way they know it came from Windows Weekly, Canary dot tool slash TWiT offer code TWiT. Alright. I have to go now because the you know what we can, you hear all the noise, we've reopened the offices and in order to entice people, we're not making people come back to work. We've done a lot of things. You know, it's been two years. It was March 17th, two years ago.
Leo Laporte (01:16:26):
Yep. We sent everybody home. It's been, they've been gone for two years. We're telling 'em they can come back if they want to. And we have also established a four day work week now. So they do four tens or four nines, I think. So we wanna make life a little bit better, but we really do want, they're not making 'em come back. We want people back. We miss 'em, it's been empty here, so you can hear some voices. We're having a pizza party trying to, you know, pizza gets everybody back, all the geeks come back. So that's so that's, what's going on. If you hear a little noise in the background
Paul Thurrott (01:17:00):
Not heard anything
Leo Laporte (01:17:01):
Good. And you don't have pizza in Mexico city. Can you survive wiThurrott pizza?
Paul Thurrott (01:17:07):
There's a, there is a, there is in fact, a pizza place
Leo Laporte (01:17:11):
Sushi pizza,
Paul Thurrott (01:17:12):
Right across the street from the where, where, where
Leo Laporte (01:17:14):
Is the best food? Mexican food though? I mean, or no?
Paul Thurrott (01:17:20):
Yeah. And it's surprisingly diverse. I think to what people, you know, expect
Leo Laporte (01:17:25):
Real Mexican food is not burritos and tacos, real Mexican food may amazing. It's incredible. You've got one of the best recipes.
Paul Thurrott (01:17:32):
We're gonna become a mole expert. That's gonna be my next book. The mole mole feature,
Leo Laporte (01:17:37):
The guy who taught we, I took a class when we were in Oaxaca from the guy who taught pool hole, how to make mole. And we
Paul Thurrott (01:17:44):
Made, oh, nice. He's doing pretty good with it.
Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
Oh yeah, it's
Mary Jo Foley (01:17:47):
Complicated. Right? Like it's
Leo Laporte (01:17:50):
30 0 30 or 40 ingredients. Yeah. It's and everyone's different. And by the way, it's never the same TWiTce. So you can't, you know, that's right.
Paul Thurrott (01:17:58):
There's different. Well then the pool guy ages it. So you, the one you're eating that day could be the 2,700 days old or whatever. It's.
Leo Laporte (01:18:04):
Yeah. So good. It's incredible. That's so good. I'm so jealous. A little sea. I saw this, I don't think it's widely known. We've talked about it before. Sat Mandela's son had cerebral palsy. That's right. And it's one of the reasons I think Nadela was so focused on accessibility at Microsoft. But sad news he's passed away. He was 25, I think.
Paul Thurrott (01:18:29):
Yeah. 26 I thought. Yeah. 20 very,
Leo Laporte (01:18:33):
Yeah. Very sad.
Paul Thurrott (01:18:34):
Yeah. There's not a lot to say there just it's, you know, it's sad. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:18:39):
Our, our, our condolences and our thoughts going out too, I Mr. Ella 26. Yeah. you know, I always thought of such as a very deep kind of serious guy, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of this is because he
Paul Thurrott (01:18:55):
Spoke, he's spoken about it and I, yeah. He
Leo Laporte (01:18:58):
Wrote about it. Address book, it hit refresh.
Paul Thurrott (01:19:00):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:19:01):
So Zane and Nadela passed away at the age of 26.
Paul Thurrott (01:19:06):
I like the quote about him. You know, this is the CEO of Seattle children's hospital who said, Zane will be remember for his eclectic taste of music, his bright, sunny smile, and the immense joy. He brought to his family and all those who loved him. Aww. Nice.
Leo Laporte (01:19:20):
Very nice. So hard. I don't think there could be anything harder than losing a child. That's no, just terrible for sure. Terrible. okay. What else, what else is going on?
Paul Thurrott (01:19:32):
Well, despite the fact that apples having an event next week Russia is still attacking the Ukraine. Oh
Leo Laporte (01:19:38):
Yeah. That, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:19:40):
Yeah. So Microsofts had an interesting announcement where they had detected a series of cyber attacks from Russia on the Ukraine and provided the Ukraine with the information they would need to th throw it. Good.
Leo Laporte (01:19:52):
Good
Paul Thurrott (01:19:53):
Is an interesting thing.
Leo Laporte (01:19:54):
It's really amazing. Isn't it? Even Switzerland
Paul Thurrott (01:19:58):
Switzer Switzer's yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
Even, even Switzer. That's
Paul Thurrott (01:20:01):
A great art. That's a, even Switzerland is an awesome title, but yes. Yeah, we're
Leo Laporte (01:20:07):
Right there then. Yeah. just that's another one. Our hearts bleed for the people of Ukraine. It's just,
Paul Thurrott (01:20:14):
You kind of look at the calendar and think, what year is this? What is going on
Leo Laporte (01:20:16):
Here? I know, right. Oh, what I'm, it's fascinating. I mean, it's hard to find anything. There's no good news in a story like this, but what I'm finding fascinating is how different war is nowadays. Thanks to, in a lot of ways consumer grade technology. One thing that didn't happen may still happen, we were very worried about is a cyber war breaking out kind of a a cold war between the us and Russia. They have not apparently used all of the, the tools they we thought they would against Ukraine possibly because Ukraine's defenses have been hardened because Russia's been going after Ukraine, like a little dog nipping at its heels for years, knocking out the power, bringing down the banks, they'd eat us, the banks before the envision began. And it's thought, you know, there was an article today in the Washington post that maybe Ukraine has, has better cyber defenses than even we do, and they've been protecting themselves.
Leo Laporte (01:21:16):
But it's also interesting to see Russia trying to shut down Facebook and TWiTtter Wikipedia people using Google maps to follow the war, follow you know, a professor and his students were able to say with some certainty that Russia was imminently about to invade because they could see traffic congestion and road closures on Google maps. It's it's a, it's a, technology's changed the face of of war in a way, even since, you know, even since you know, shock and awe in in, in Iraq right. Things are very, very different. It's not just a TV war anymore. It's an internet war. I thought that was very interest that's right. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But a lot of com good, good going on all the us companies who have, and, and the people America stood up and, you know, it was really I thought it was very encouraging to see all the Ukraine flags on Congress, members of Congress, people dressed in gold and yellow and golden blue and, and all of that. So yeah, we we're falling with both dismay and interest what's happening in new it kind of takes the fun outta call of duty, or maybe not, I don't know. Maybe just make sure you're shooting the rush. It is. I don't know.
Paul Thurrott (01:22:38):
I'm taking the week off,
Leo Laporte (01:22:39):
So yeah, I think, yeah, I think so you don't bring a, you don't bring an Xbox down with you when you go to Mexico. No,
Paul Thurrott (01:22:45):
No, there are, you'll be surprised to know there are other things to do. Yeah. So
Leo Laporte (01:22:50):
Good. Yeah. Good for you. Maybe that's why Stephanie keeps making you go down there. That's great. It's a fresh air. Yep. Some Xbox news. I'll let you take it away. Paul, before we get to the back of,
Paul Thurrott (01:23:05):
Yeah. A lot of stuff. This one is actually really cool to me. And in Forer horizon five only right now getting a free, in fact, the free update has now happened that has support for American and British sign language for in-game cinematic, right? And the, the video showing how this works is kind of amazing because they start it, they show the beginning of the game and it's all the race sounds. And the music's playing in the background and there are subtitles as a engine revving and music playing, and it slowly kind of fades out to silence. And it says, this is how some people experience this game. And then they bring in a, a sign language person to describe what's going on in the game in a, you know, kind of a little picture and picture effect. It's nice. It's just a it is a really nice thing.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:49):
And I hope we start to see more of this, you know, across other video games. So that's kind of cool. I, it's something I talked to my son with about, you know my son is deaf, but he has cochlear implants, but he doesn't hear directionally. And what that means is, you know, you could be off to the left and call him and he'll, he kind of looks around and he doesn't know which direction you're coming from. So in a video game, you know, one of the things like, you know, call Judy or whatever sounds happen in directions, you know, from directions and it helps you can hear someone coming up behind you, you can hear an explosion and know what direction it is, you know, and I always kind of thought having some kind of a a textual prompt to that stuff might be kind of interesting.
Paul Thurrott (01:24:30):
And I, I, I, I think we're gonna see more of this kind of stuff. I, it just seems like a, an obvious, so thing to do to make games more. Successs so cool. That's so great. Yeah. It's neat. Yeah. So that's cool. It's a new mark a month, sorry. So obviously have new game pass and new Xbox games with, with gold titles. The game pass stuff is particularly interesting because flight simulator is now available, meaning you can play flight simulator simulator on an Xbox one, right? So this is a game that's not natively compatible on Xbox one, but if you have a game pass subscription, you can play it on Xbox one. Now that's cool. I don't actually recognize most of these other games, although I, I will mention lawn mowing simulator is available for your people that don't do enough lawn mowing.
Paul Thurrott (01:25:17):
Can't get enough. I dunno. That's hysterical. Weird. yeah. Games with gold. Nothing stands out here for me either, unfortunately but you know, street power to, or street power, sorry soccer. This is sponge bug. I dunno stuff that these aren't, these, aren't my kind of games, but, you know, $90 worth of games coming free. If you have an Xbox game pass or ultimate or Xbox live gold account. So that's always cool in bigger news. Valve has just finally launched their portable gaming device, which is really exciting and seems to be getting good reviews and so forth. And Gabe new, who I I'm kind of Iona, I kind of go back and forth on this guy mostly because he never finished the half-life games. I'm still upset about that. But as the owner of steam, which is the biggest game service, I guess I'll call it on the PC.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:14):
He's been a target of, you know, epic Microsoft, et cetera, with revival services and everything, but he said this past week, he would be open to the idea of making Microsoft Xbox game pass available via steam. That's cool. So this is neat because you might, you might have expected him to kind of dig in his heels. Your Microsoft's trying to buy avision blizzard. I mean, you know, maybe this is where this some pushback occurs, but actually it looks like this could be moving in a good direct that's cool. And if you care about this kind of thing Amazon Luna, which most people have probably never heard of is now generally available. This is Amazon's game streaming service. I will say this O of the available game streaming services, which the top the top level ones are game pass stadia and Luna, and maybe G first now, but let's just say those three, honestly, Luna offers the best meaning lowest latency. Oh, if you use it with a yeah. With a Luna controller, cause they, you can use any control, your want
Leo Laporte (01:27:15):
Controller. Yeah. I just, yeah,
Paul Thurrott (01:27:17):
It's coming actually works really well. Yeah. Yeah. It's worth, it's worth looking. It's gotten better. I mean, one of the interesting things about this service is I didn't really have a lot of it. It wasn't super competitive from like a, a volume or quality level, but it actually it's improved pretty dramatically over the past year. So it's been kind of stepped in, you know, prime members could sign up to get on the list and prime was open to prime. Now it's just open to everybody. So they have different pricing if obviously it's Amazon. So if you have a prime membership it's less expensive.
Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
Yeah. Some free prime stuff. And then early adopters this month, I think it's 5 99. Yeah. Five months
Paul Thurrott (01:27:50):
It's worth looking at. I mean, if you're most people have an Amazon, something, you know, prime subscription it's worth, it's worth checking.
Leo Laporte (01:27:57):
It can't play El and ring on it yet. But other than that,
Paul Thurrott (01:28:02):
Right. It's yeah, I, I Luna and stadia both, I think suffer from a problem where there just isn't enough unique stuff on either one of these services, but
Leo Laporte (01:28:14):
At least with Luna, you don't have to buy the game
Paul Thurrott (01:28:17):
And is cheap. It is it's I think it's, I think its like six bucks a month. That
Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Was a bad choice by, at by Google on that making you buy the, the game.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:27):
Yeah. But at least they've really paid attention to it ever
Leo Laporte (01:28:29):
Since. Oh yeah. Right. Put a lot of effort in that. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:33):
I don't know what they're doing. Honestly. Stadi is good technology. Anyway. I wish I, I wish they'd pay a little more attention to it, but oh, well
Leo Laporte (01:28:40):
I presume all three Microsoft, Amazon and Google are doing this cuz you know, it's a show off, he thinks for the cloud and all that. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:49):
Yeah. But it's also the future of gaming, I think, you know mainstream gaming, I mean
Leo Laporte (01:28:53):
Maybe the future of computing in some respects.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:56):
Yeah. Yeah. No that's true. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, you know, there are these kind of hardcore enclaves of gaming, PC gaming console gaming, which honestly are not giant numbers, but they're the PC is particularly lucrative though. But I'd say mainstream gaming today is on phones. Right. And I think this is these services are a way to bring console or PC class games down to mobile, which is really interesting also to match. And then the whole we've
Leo Laporte (01:29:25):
Been kinda loosen out on this
Paul Thurrott (01:29:27):
Stuff or to Linux, so whatever. Yeah, yeah. And it, and that continuation thing, which I think is so important if you're really into playing games and some, you know, you're at home, you have a beautiful, huge screen and you've got a dedicated device attached to it. You play there and then it's time to commute to work as that's happening again. Or you're going on a trip you can play on your phone or your tablet. It's it's this is it's good stuff. This is, this is, this is definitely the future for sure.
Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
Yeah. Really interesting. All right. Let's take a break. We are gonna go to the back of the book in just a second. Paul throt Mary Jo Foley. We're talking Mike Microsoft on Windows Weekly. So glad you are here. Especially glad we have a whole pizza party and nobody showed up. So come on over, have a, have some pizza with us. Sure.
Leo Laporte (01:30:16):
Our, our evil plan to get people to come to work, apparently didn't work. I don't know, but you know, you know that people really wanna work from home when they don't come in for pizza. That's, that's a, that's a giveaway. Our show today brought to you by Intel orchestrated by the experts at C D w they understand that to keep up with changing business needs, organizations of all eyes need to stay secure, stay connected, stay protected. And that takes powerful processors built for today and tomorrow, like Intel's built for business 11th, gen Intel core vPro processors, the 11th gen Intel core vPro processors provide you with a performance security and remote manageability needed to continually move forward and stay productive. Even while on the go CDW works with Intel to provide the right technology to fuel productivity and innovation. CDW can assess your distributed workforce and their needs and implement the Intel vPro platform and configure devices power by 11th gen Intel core vPro processors, accelerating digital business transformation.
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Let's talk about some of the benefits of Intel 11th, gen core vPro processors like performance and new processor. Core architecture delivers increased overall application performance. That means less time waiting, more productivity from anywhere compatible with wifi six to prevent delays built in AI that accelerates apps and optimizes speed. And of course, securities paramount. These days Intel's hardware shield builds in protection detecting and preventing malware and network threats wiThurrott sacrificing performance. And of course, one of the great benefits of VePro is remote manageability cloud-based or hardware-based management for it. Leaders consistent features across notebooks, desktops, and workstations within a business. You're gonna love that for increased performance and security trust intel@itorchestrationbycdwpeoplewhogetitlearnmoreatcdw.com slash Intel client that's C dw.com/intel client. We thank CDW so much for supporting the Windows Weekly show the Windows cliche show back. We go on the Windows Weekly show to the back of the book with the tips of the week from Mr. Poly Thurrott.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:49):
Yeah. Two tips this week. I thought I was gonna have an app pick, but turns out the announcement is next week. So we'll move on to that. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that Windows 11 is starting to get interesting and I think it's time for people to start taking a look at it. So most listening to show are probably familiar with the Windows insider program. I mentioned in the notes originally you should sign up to the dev channel, but Mary Jo, a little, what is that? The puking devil Mocon or something. So it's
Mary Jo Foley (01:33:19):
An angry devil, angry
Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
Deviling devil angry devil, not
Paul Thurrott (01:33:23):
Ping devil. Okay. With a purple face. So I guess you can choose between the dev and the beta channel. If you're, if you're specifically interested, what is coming in the first feature update that is the beta channel actually. And if you want to look at some possibly more experimental features that may or may not make it, that's the dev channel. I've got PCs in both now. I like what I say, you just, the thing you need to understand is you probably almost certainly are gonna have to wipe this thing using not the PC race. That's what we just mentioned, but the downloadable media and you know, a wipe it from space, so to speak because there's no way to back out of these things, but you know what, you're smart enough to do this. You got this it's okay.
Paul Thurrott (01:34:08):
It's not hard. But I think this is the time. So if you're, if you didn't upgrade to Windows 11 or you weren't super impressed by Windows 11 take a look at it now because it's, it's gotten, it's gotten better for sure. As I mentioned earlier, it's the new month and I'm trying to do a programming project every month, this year. I'm starting off really slow because I have these older programming projects I wanna modernize. So I mentioned the.net pad the Windows forms version of do net pad, which I had brought to GitHub last month. Actually originally in January, that was actually very difficult. I was surprised by how much work I had to do to make that presentable to the public. But for this month, I'm gonna do the Windows presentation foundation version, which is my favorite version of the app.
Paul Thurrott (01:34:56):
And I actually did this on the plane ride coming here. If you can believe that, oh it is not, it is in great shape. Unlike the other app, this one is in great shape. It's, it's nicely documented with comments. The code is very clean. The app runs properly the first time out of the box. I didn't have to do anything there. It has some features that I actually added to the wind forms thing last month that are already in the WPF version. I was, I forgotten that that was the case. So it's not on GitHub today, but it will be on GitHub within the next couple of days. I want Rafael to look at it just to make sure he's knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. I just wanna make sure there are no scaling issues. There's no, not it. This is absolutely the best version of the app and it's probably a very good candidate for modernization. So I'm Def I I've already, the thing I did on the plane was add some features to it myself which is some of the stuff I'd added to the WinForms version and just went through the code really closely. And like I said, it's actually it's seems to be in great to. So would you say that will becoming easier
Leo Laporte (01:36:00):
To write for than
Paul Thurrott (01:36:02):
I did not say that it is, it is not easier. So WPF is in some ways more powerful than Windows forms. It is more, slightly more modern in that it came out in 2006 versus 2001. It is fully support day though. It's still, if you wanna create a modern, well, see now they have a slightly more modern way to do this. If you want to create a desktop app is maybe the way I would say it. This is actually still the best way to do it. And I, the Zael stuff is incredibly powerful for building the UIs.
Leo Laporte (01:36:36):
This is nice. Cause you're putting code code examples in
Paul Thurrott (01:36:39):
Yeah. Just kinda showing some of this stuff.
Leo Laporte (01:36:41):
That's nice. Yeah. And he did it all on an airplane folks.
Paul Thurrott (01:36:46):
Yeah. Yeah. Which by the way is more impressive than it scenes because you don't get access to any of the documentation when you're flying. That's true. But doesn't
Leo Laporte (01:36:53):
Visual. You have a local copy of stuff
Paul Thurrott (01:36:57):
For no. Well, you probably can install have and installed that since back when it used to be called like MSDN, right. You know, documentation or whatever. But I didn't, I, I don't have it anyway. The, but the point is not that doesn't that mean I'm like smart. It means this version of the app is actually in really good shape. Like it did. It didn't require me to look any, you know, like it was, it was, it was already really in really good shape. So I think in the next couple, B days, so I'll have that up in GitHub. So I will post when that happens and you can play with it to your heart's content. You forking little forks.
Leo Laporte (01:37:34):
Well,
Paul Thurrott (01:37:35):
That's, that's, that's GitHub's language, not mine. I
Leo Laporte (01:37:38):
Little, you little forks now, enterprise territory with Mary Jo Foley in our pick of the week.
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:45):
Okay. First before I do my pick, I'm gonna give you a breaking news story. Uhoh Miguel de Casa is leaving Microsoft. Oh.
Paul Thurrott (01:37:53):
As you predicted you predicted this just last week.
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:57):
I did.
Leo Laporte (01:37:57):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:37:58):
Where is he? Does he say where he is going?
Mary Jo Foley (01:38:00):
So I've been during the show, I've been back and forth with him on tweet deck. I'm like, where are you going? Come on. Right. And he said, he's going to take a break and just take a rest, hang out with his kids, play around with some products. And he said, when he comes back, he's like very highly likely to go join a startup, but he has nothing to announce at this time.
Leo Laporte (01:38:23):
Hmm. That's really
Paul Thurrott (01:38:23):
He from Mexico city originally.
Mary Jo Foley (01:38:26):
Yeah, he is. Yep.
Paul Thurrott (01:38:28):
He's and then he lives in Boston. Interesting. Yep.
Mary Jo Foley (01:38:31):
He's following still lives in Boston now. Everywhere.
Leo Laporte (01:38:33):
I, yeah. Starting something with Paul throt in Mexico. Exactly.
Mary Jo Foley (01:38:38):
I'm writing a book.
Paul Thurrott (01:38:39):
What a weird coincidence.
Leo Laporte (01:38:40):
A yes. Delivery service. We're
Paul Thurrott (01:38:42):
Gonna write a, we're gonna create an notepad replacement Using do net technologies.
Mary Jo Foley (01:38:47):
Exactly. Anyway, sorry. Yeah. Anyway, that's kind of interesting. Just and the way I found out was I saw Brad, Sam say, I think Miguel DS, cast's leaving Microsoft. And I'm like, oh, I was right. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:39:00):
Yep.
Mary Jo Foley (01:39:00):
Yep. Yep. So Brad was correct.
Paul Thurrott (01:39:06):
Actually. Had we talked about this publicly or did we talk about this privately? Cuz I, I had recommended to Mary Jo a few weeks ago. Yeah. That she should listen to podcast. Okay. In particular the one with Miguel Deza because he had mentioned the semi secretive thing he was working on at the time. And I said, you might wanna listen to this because yeah. It's not clear to me what he's doing at Microsoft, you know? Yeah. And I don't remember if we actually,
Mary Jo Foley (01:39:32):
He was working on Onix Onix is an AI standard for machine language models kind of an odd thing for him to be working on after his background with Zaine. But yeah, the, what he was most recently doing as far as I know, so yeah. Anyway, just a little breaking, breaking news item before the pick.
Paul Thurrott (01:39:53):
Yeah. Just that doesn't surprise me.
Mary Jo Foley (01:39:56):
I mean, neither same once that Friedman left late last year when he resigned as CEO of GitHub and said he was going back to the startup world, I'm like, you know what, I bet Miguel's gonna do the same thing.
Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
He was at Microsoft for a actually surprisingly long time.
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:09):
Yeah. Six years. So that, that is a long time. Yeah. Yep.
Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
They acquired his company and you know, normally there's a lock in for a few years.
Paul Thurrott (01:40:16):
I mean, Microsoft has trying to had been trying to hire him since 2002, 2003.
Leo Laporte (01:40:21):
Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:22):
Yep. Yep.
Leo Laporte (01:40:23):
Very talented, nice guy. Good.
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:25):
Very nice. Very nice. Yep.
Leo Laporte (01:40:28):
Meanwhile, okay. Back to the enterprise. Yes. Pick of the week.
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:32):
Yeah. So Microsoft did a blog post this week that I thought was very helpful. It's on the Windows server blog and it says get the most outta Windows server with these five best practices. And you know, sometimes I feel like Windows server gets the short shift and it really should not because many it pros still maintain their own servers. Even if they're using the cloud, they still have their own servers. And so these five tips are just, they're nothing brand new, but they're all things that it's kind of like a checklist, make sure you know about these things. So one of them is, did you know, there's a Windows server hybrid administrator certification you can get now we've talked about that on Windows Weekly before they hot patching mechanism available generally available. Now that's part of Azure auto manage for Windows server. So if you're interested in not having to reboot after patching, there's a way to do that with Windows server Windows server 2022 exists.
Mary Jo Foley (01:41:28):
I remember when Microsoft announced this last year, it was kind of a bit of a botched announcement. They did it in parts and it was very hard to figure out was it generally available? Was it not? So that's the latest on-premises version. Long-Term servicing channel of Windows server and that is available right now. And then just like with Windows seven, there is a way to have extended security updates for different versions of Windows server. So they have a bit out that and which versions and how long it, you can buy hot, not hot patches. You could buy security patches for older versions. And then I'm sure most people know this, but there is a thing called the Azure hybrid benefit that lets you use your on-premises credits to pay for cloud services. So this is all in one handy dandy blog post with links. So if you, any of those sound like, oh, I should find out about that. They're all on the Windows server blog this week.
Leo Laporte (01:42:21):
Very nice, good tips. And that's not all, there's more, there is enterprise pick too.
Mary Jo Foley (01:42:29):
Yeah. This is more like an SMB small midsize business pick. But there's a version of Microsoft 365 called Microsoft 365 business premium. That's about 22 bucks per user, per month for people who wanna have like up to 300 users on this version of Microsoft 365, that does include many, many apps and services. But this week you get even more, you defender for business added to your subscription starting now. So yeah, you don't have to pay extra. It's gonna just be rolled into your subscription. So if you're interested in extra security and you're a business premium customer or thinking about business premium, you, you may wanna check that new added benefit out. And if you don't want buy the whole Microsoft 365 business premium subscription, Microsoft is going to turn defender for business, which is for companies with 300 or fewer employees into a standalone offer later this year. I don't know what the price is gonna be on that, but it's coming later.
Leo Laporte (01:43:32):
Okay. Yep. Okay. And I, I don't know what to think about this beer pick of the week, but I'm a, I know I'm gonna let you do it. I have, I have questions myself. I have thoughts? Yes.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:43):
Yes. Okay. So yesterday was Mardi GRA woo. And since we're not in new Orleans, can't enjoy a new Orleans beverage there. I, I was looking for something to have on Mardi GRA and it turns out one of my favorite breweries here in New York, other half did a partnership with par brewing in Louisiana. And they came up with this thing called gravity gumbo. So that what this is, is a stout. They call it a pastry stout and you'll see why in a minute they add to the stout. It's at first it's Asian bourbon barrels, so already high alcohol, very sweet. Then they throw in some Chicky coffee and then add preens and pecans and vanilla mix it all together. Let it brew into this. That
Leo Laporte (01:44:32):
Actually sounds good.
Mary Jo Foley (01:44:33):
Dark beer 14.5%. So I only had a very small pour of this yesterday.
Paul Thurrott (01:44:41):
Do they sort this in a shot glass?
Mary Jo Foley (01:44:44):
So you had a choice of four ounces or eight ounces. So I went the four and I'll tell you the craziest thing about this beer. It tastes like pre wow, definitely. You could taste that. I love preens. Yeah, really, but very sweet because of that. A lot of it vanilla. I couldn't really taste a Chicky, but I could taste a coffee. I definitely could taste suburban. So I was like, yeah, 4%. That's plenty on that. Pour four
Leo Laporte (01:45:12):
Ounces. Yeah, it was, yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:45:13):
Yeah. It was still fun to have something for Mardi GRA that was like, you know, a little bit of new Orleans and your glass and this week in, in New York, it's New York beer week. So it was even better because you could celebrate beer week with something for Mardi GRA.
Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
Nice. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. Yep. Well, wonderful. Mary Jo Foley and Paul. Throt a very good job wrapping up the week. That was if you wanna watch us do this show live, you can we do it two? I'm sorry, Wednesdays 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM Eastern. That's why I'm, you know, never, I'm confused. I never know when. Well, I think you're,
Paul Thurrott (01:45:54):
I think you're focused on Tuesday right now.
Mary Jo Foley (01:45:57):
Yeah. Next Tuesday or Tuesday. Luckily not Wednesday.
Leo Laporte (01:45:59):
Won't impact you at all. Yeah. Yep. Might impact my credit card, however yeah, watch live at live all of our shows and, and even when we're not on the air, there's always something going on@livedotTWiT.tv. If you're they they're watching live, you can chat live@ircdotTWiT.tv. Of course, club TWiT members get their own discord channel. That's a boy. That's a lot of fun in there that discord is always something's happening. Whether it's Stacy's book club or titled Lennox show or GI fi or whatever, if you wanna know more about club tot get ad free versions of all of our shows, join the discord TV slash club TWiT, actually, it's also useful for us because it's where we can try out new shows. And for the last few weeks we've been kind previewing, beta testing, a new show this week in space, and it will appear in public on Friday with my friend rod pile.
Leo Laporte (01:46:54):
Who's the editor in chief of the national space society magazine at Astra and toric Mallek who is at space.com. And they're gonna talk about space audio only thanks to the members of club TWiT who helped us bat it tested for more than a month TWiTt TV slash T I S. This weekend space goes live on Friday and again, club TWiT members. Thank you for for that. If you wanna join TWiT.tv/club TWiT, of course, we always will continue to offer our shows on demand for free@TWiT.tv. In the case of Windows Weekly, TWiT.tv/ww. There's also a dedicated YouTube channel with the videos there or you could subscribe to the audio or video show and get it automatically with your favorite podcast client. Don't forget to leave us a five star review so that the world can hear about the goodness that Windows Weekly. Thanks. Paul have fun in Mexico city.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:56):
Thank
Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
You. Let us know if you decide to move there, we can
Mary Jo Foley (01:48:01):
I'll come down to visit. We
Leo Laporte (01:48:02):
Can all, we can start doing the show from there. Yeah. Gosh, that's it would, so this was unplanned. You just, you just pick up and when, well,
Paul Thurrott (01:48:11):
I, we, I don't know, it's been a progression, you know, when the pandemic started, we started researching other things and yeah. Mexico kind of happened. And then I, I, I don't know once the we'd like to split our time between two different places.
Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
I think that's a good idea as the wealthy, do you need to sum home right. And winter home?
Paul Thurrott (01:48:32):
Well, yeah. I mean, I'm just tired of winter. I can't, I just
Leo Laporte (01:48:35):
Can't. I know I
Paul Thurrott (01:48:37):
Can't deal with it.
Leo Laporte (01:48:38):
It's no good. It's no good. And
Paul Thurrott (01:48:40):
I don't wanna go to Florida. I'm
Leo Laporte (01:48:42):
Sorry. No, Mexico city. How fun is that? Yeah. How fun is
Mary Jo Foley (01:48:45):
That? I need the reverse. I'm tired of the summer. I hate summer. It's
Leo Laporte (01:48:48):
Really hot New York. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:48:50):
It's so hot and horrible and stinky gross. So I'm like, I need a place I can go get outta here in the summer.
Leo Laporte (01:48:59):
You could stand Paul's place in Mexico city. He doesn't wanna be there. This,
Paul Thurrott (01:49:02):
I don't wanna make any promise. Let's let's let's sign checks and stuff, but yeah, I mean, sure. Perfect.
Leo Laporte (01:49:08):
Oh, man. Thank you. You both of you. It's great to have you. Paul Thurrotts website is Thurrott dot COMT H U R R ott.com. His books are@leanpub.com, including the field guide to Windows 10, Mary Jo Foley, blogs for ziti net@allaboutmicrosoft.com and wiThurrott them why this show would be all about one. So it's a good thing. They're here, I guess, you know, you know what I'm saying? Thank
Paul Thurrott (01:49:38):
You. Yeah, no, I feel, I feel good about it.
Leo Laporte (01:49:40):
Thank you, Mary Jeff enjoy enjoy life in Mexico city and New York city to the world's great metropolises. And we'll see you next week on Windows Weekly.
Mikah Sargent (01:49:51):
If you are looking for a midweek update on the weeks tech news, I gotta tell you, you gotta check out tech news weekly. See, it's all kind of built in there with the title. You get to learn about the news in tech that matters every Thursday. Jason Howell and I, Mikah Sargent, talk to the people making and breaking the tech news, get their insights and their interesting stories. It's a great show to check out TWiT TV slash T N.
