Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Leo Laporte

Mar 4th 2020

Windows Weekly 662

Moving to Montana Soon

Coronavirus Cancellations, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

Records live every Wednesday at 2:00pm Eastern / 11:00am Pacific / 19:00 UTC.
Category: News

Don't call it the Cortanavirus!

  •  What's Microsoft's conference calendar looking like, post COVID-19 cancellations?
  •  We're just waiting for the nearly-inevitable Build cancellation.
  •  MVP Summit: In-person event canceled; online only
  •  GitHub Satellite Conference in May: Online only
  •  Expected NYC hardware event in April/May: Looking unlikely, we'd say
  •  Google I/O canceled. Plus lots of other events
  •  Is this a big deal, in terms of how MS communicates with press, customers?
  •  What does it say about the future of big events for Microsoft?
  •  What about Ignite? It's early this year.
  •  Speaking of cancellations: Microsoft is dropping 3 major certifications. Goodbye, MCSD, MCSA, MCSE. It's a role-based (and cloud-centric world).

Windows 10

  •  Less emphasis on Live Tiles; cuter icons? (I guess)
  •  This is one time where what MJ notices or doesn't is dead-on: There is nothing to see here.
  •  How might Microsoft meaningfully fix the Start menu? The answer is right in front of us all.
  •  Related: Speaking of Win 10, will we see Win 10 2004 start rolling out next week on Patch Tuesday? Possibly
  •  We just got a slow ring-only CU this past week.
  •  Microsoft begins testing automatic rollout of the new Edge.
  •  Cortana's retreat from the consumer space continues. Microsoft is whittling away at Cortana's consumer skills and beefing up its productivity focus (as expected).

Microsoft 365

  •  Hands-on with the Fluid Framework. WTH is this thing?

Teams!

  •  Teams picks up Outlook sharing, chat improvements
  •  Microsoft is giving away Teams paid features because of COVID-19
  •  Thanks to Microsoft, the NFL now has two kinds of Teams!

Xbox

  •  Xbox Series X will let gamers resume game after a reboot
  •  Microsoft adds more colors to its transparent controllers
  •  Google Stadia is failing because of Google

Tips and picks

  •  App of the week: FalconX. FalconX lets you center your taskbar icons, like macOS, and add transparency effects too.
  •  Game pick of the week: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. After just two weeks of testing, Microsoft has released the remastered Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on the PC. Yeah, you want it.
  •  Enterprise pick of the week: PowerShell 7 is here. PowerShell 7, or PowerShell Core 7: Whatever you call it, the latest version is here and available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
  •  Codename pick of the week: Monad. A blast from the codenames of the past. Monad was the original PowerShell codename. It first made its debut around 2002/2003. Also sometimes was called the Microsoft Shell or MSH.
  •  Beer pick of the week: Schlafly Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout. I haven't had this yet, but hoping to this week in St. Louis. This is a bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout from Schlafly, an excellent craft brewery in St. Louis. 10.2%! But I'm sure totally worth it https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/583/33894/

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Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

Check out Mary Jo's blog at AllAboutMicrosoft.com

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