WW 901: 75% Corn - Copilot Vision, Office 2024 release, Bundeskartellamt

Summary

Windows Weekly (Audio) - Episode WW 901: "75% Corn - Copilot Vision, Office 2024 Release, Bundeskartellamt"

Release Date: October 2, 2024

Hosts:

• Leo Laporte
• Paul Thurrott
• Richard Campbell

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1. Introduction and Overview

In the premiere of Episode 901, hosted by Leo Laporte alongside veteran Microsoft insiders Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell, the trio delves into the latest updates from Microsoft. The episode covers the release of Windows 24H2, significant enhancements to Copilot, new offerings for Xbox, and regulatory scrutiny from Germany's Bundeskartellamt.

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2. Windows 24H2 Release and Review

Discussion Highlights:

• Release Timing & Reception: Windows 24H2 was released a week earlier than anticipated, deviating from the typical Patch Tuesday schedule. Paul Thurrott remarks, “[...] 2024 will go down in the books as being a unique year unless they somehow manage to duplicate this next year.” ([03:19])

• Update Contents: The update primarily includes behind-the-scenes improvements such as Wi-Fi 7 support, HDR backgrounds, energy saver adjustments, and Bluetooth LE audio enhancements. However, users won't notice significant UI changes like the taskbar behavior adjustments previously teased.

• ARM64 ISO Availability: Initially planned for June alongside Copilot Plus PCs, ARM64 ISOs remain unavailable, causing frustration among ARM device users. Paul notes, “There are ways around it... but that's not right. You don't do that to people in Stably.”

• Known Issue Rollback: Microsoft introduced a “known issue rollback” to address the problematic Preview update for 22H2 and 23H2, which caused reliability issues like repeated reboots. Paul emphasizes the rarity and necessity of this measure: “[...] an update you can install to fix an update that screwed over your computer. It’s hilarious.”

Notable Quote:

“It’s technically a full OS swap, not an enablement package.” – Paul Thurrott ([12:11])

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3. Copilot Vision and AI Enhancements

Discussion Highlights:

• Copilot’s Evolution: The hosts discuss the transformation of Copilot from a sidebar pane to a standalone app with enhanced features aimed at becoming an AI companion akin to the original vision for Cortana.

• Copilot Vision: An experimental feature that scans user activities in real-time to offer contextual suggestions without retaining any history. However, its rollout is limited to Copilot Plus PCs initially, restricting broader access.

• Security and Privacy Concerns: Concerns about data privacy and security were prominent, especially following the Recalls controversy. Paul highlights Microsoft’s efforts to bolster trust by ensuring encryption and sandboxing Copilot Vision within secure enclaves.

Notable Quotes:

“Copilot Vision [...] scans everything you do in real time and it will offer you suggestions based on the context of what it sees.” – Paul Thurrott ([29:09])

“Microsoft clearly are afraid of the law. And even if it’s restricted in the U.S., I bet it’s state-based.” – Richard Campbell ([36:17])

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4. Copilot Security Enhancements and Recall Discussion

Discussion Highlights:

• Recall Feature: Initially controversial due to perceived privacy invasions, Microsoft responded by making Copilot Vision opt-in and ensuring it can be uninstalled, addressing major user concerns.

• Security Theater vs. Genuine Security: Paul critiques the balance Microsoft strikes between actual security measures and what some perceive as mere security theater, emphasizing the importance of user control.

Notable Quote:

“You can't run this on a non-Copilot Plus PC. So if you want to see if it's unsafe or not, you have to use an actual qualified certified Copilot Plus PC.” – Paul Thurrott ([39:07])

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5. Chromebook Plus and New Features

Discussion Highlights:

• New Chromebook Features: Richard Campbell shares updates from a recent Google event, highlighting the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus. Key features include a redesigned keyboard with a context-sensitive "Copilot" key, enhancing user interaction with AI-driven functionalities.

• Design and Functionality: The new key adapts based on user activity, similar to contextual search features seen in other platforms, aiming to streamline the user experience.

Notable Quote:

“It's a context-sensitive key that will depending on what you’re doing at the time you hit the thing and it will do the [Copilot] thing.” – Paul Thurrott ([75:00])

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6. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements Updates

Discussion Highlights:

• Latest Releases: Adobe introduced the latest versions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements with generative AI capabilities, such as generative fill and erase, allowing users to manipulate images and videos more intuitively.

• Licensing Models: The hosts discuss the shift from subscription-based models to perpetual licenses, noting the challenges and user frustrations associated with Adobe’s current offerings.

Notable Quote:

“These limited time, whatever they are, one PC versions, perpetual license.” – Paul Thurrott ([127:54])

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7. Xbox and Game Pass News

Discussion Highlights:

• Game Pass Additions: Microsoft showcased new games for Game Pass during the Tokyo Game Show, including remastered titles like Starcraft and upcoming releases such as Indiana Jones and Sifu. However, the excitement was tempered by the focus on older titles rather than groundbreaking new games.

• Game Pass Strategy: The hosts analyze Microsoft's strategy to bundle older games with new releases, questioning its effectiveness in maintaining subscriber interest without offering exclusive, high-profile launches.

Notable Quote:

“It’s hard to get excited about both new and old in one.” – Leo Laporte ([116:21])

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8. Regulatory News: Bundeskartellamt Investigation into Microsoft

Discussion Highlights:

• German Antitrust Action: Germany’s Bundeskartellamt has launched a comprehensive investigation into Microsoft, assessing the company's dominance and compliance with EU regulations. The investigation spans all Microsoft products and services under the gatekeeper clause of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

• Implications for Microsoft: Paul Thurrott discusses the potential repercussions of this investigation, emphasizing the significance of Microsoft's market position and the stringent regulatory environment in the EU.

Notable Quotes:

“They will regulate Microsoft, all of Microsoft, every product and service that they sell as if it was under the gatekeeper clause of the DMA.” – Paul Thurrott ([86:10])

“Microsoft is yes, they were to make this secure and private.” – Paul Thurrott ([48:42])

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9. Tip of the Week: Downloading Windows 11 ISO

Tip Presented by Paul Thurrott:

• Recommendation: Users are advised to download the latest Windows 24H2 ISO to create external recovery media, ensuring they have a backup in case of system issues.

• Technical Insight: Paul suggests using the Windows 11 installation media over traditional recovery disks for faster and more reliable recovery processes.

Notable Quote:

“If you’re on Bing, you’ll probably get there eventually and there’s a bunch of different options. But the advice here is that you should have some kind of external recovery media.” – Paul Thurrott ([127:11])

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10. Whiskey Segment: Russell’s Reserve Bourbon

Discussion Highlights:

• Introduction to Russell’s Reserve: Richard Campbell introduces Russell’s Reserve, a bourbon produced by Wild Turkey’s partner distillery Russell’s Reserve. This bourbon is noted for its sweetness, attributed to a 75% corn mash bill, making it exceptionally smooth and candy-like in flavor.

• Distillation Process: The segment delves into the specifics of Russell’s Reserve's distillation process, highlighting its lower alcohol content at 55% ABV and the inclusion of more barley to balance the high corn content.

• Historical Context: The bourbon's history is traced back to Thomas McCarthy of Austin Nichols in the 1940s, emphasizing the longstanding tradition and craftsmanship behind Russell’s Reserve.

Notable Quote:

“The mash bill is 75% corn, 13% rye. That’s your flavor grain. And 12% barley, which is a relatively high amount of barley.” – Paul Thurrott ([136:27])

“This is Wild Turkey is where the barrels come from. So there’s only one... center floor. So the higher floors tend to be hotter. So they lose faster.” – Paul Thurrott ([140:57])

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11. Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with the hosts sharing personal updates and expressing anticipation for future episodes. Leo Laporte encourages listeners to support the show through various streaming platforms and subscription models, emphasizing community engagement.

Notable Quote:

“We thank you for supporting Windows Weekly by using that special address.” – Leo Laporte ([150:25])

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Conclusion:

Episode WW 901 of Windows Weekly offers a comprehensive exploration of Microsoft’s latest endeavors, from the Windows 24H2 release and Copilot enhancements to regulatory challenges and strategic moves within the Xbox ecosystem. The hosts provide insightful commentary on the implications of these updates, blending technical analysis with engaging discussions. Additionally, segments like the Tip of the Week and the Whiskey Segment add variety and depth, making the episode both informative and entertaining for listeners.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Therott is here. Well, actually, he's in Dallas, Richard Campbell's home in beautiful British Columbia. We've got lots to talk about. The big story, of course. 24H2 is finally here. Paul has some recommendations and big updates to Copilot. Plus new games for Xbox. All that coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is tw.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Therot and Richard Campbell. Episode 901, recorded October 2, 2024. 75% corn. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we cover the latest news from Microsoft. Today's a big news day, I think. So let us not delay. Get all the winners and dozers together. And Paul Thurot's here. Are you in Dallas, Texas, Tejas?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, I am.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at that beautiful room you're in.

[Paul Thurrott]

Fancy. And I am looking at a sea of nothingness. It's the Dallas metro area. The flattest place on earth, perhaps.

[Leo Laporte]

And then. Are you on your way to Mexico after this?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, tomorrow we fly to Mexico.

[Leo Laporte]

It's kind of on the way, isn't it? He's still in his fortress of solitude in beautiful Madeira Park.

[Richard Campbell]

Very happy to be at home. Yeah. I'll give you the. I'll give you the out the window view. It's been.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Richard, it's so beautiful. Richard Campbell.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, there's. If you watch closely, there's been sea lions working the. The salmon out there. So for the past couple of days.

[Leo Laporte]

So they're doing very well. Stunning.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah, that's where I saw. Just saw a head there. So, yeah, the salmon are doing their thing and they. And they're being feasted upon.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it okay to make the show title? I saw a head there.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or should we probably, you know, let's see what happens.

[Richard Campbell]

Let's see what happens. It's the beginning of the show. Some good titles.

[Leo Laporte]

Show titles.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I wouldn't commit now, you know, so I'm doing. I think it was Mac Break Weekly yesterday. And. And then Everybody's all excited. 24H2 is here. And I'm going, dude, dude, this is Mac Break Weekly, dude. Wait till tomorrow. Okay, well, tomorrow has come.

[Richard Campbell]

Here it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Here it is. 24H2 has arrived.

[Richard Campbell]

We're all excited.

[Leo Laporte]

Are we?

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know. Are we? I guess.

[Leo Laporte]

So what do you say? What do you say?

[Paul Thurrott]

I say there's been a lot of shenanigans this year and.

[Leo Laporte]

Shenanigans.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go. That's a Title right there. A lot of shenanigans.

[Paul Thurrott]

I like that Microsoft announces this like they're the most common measured organization on.

[Richard Campbell]

Earth and everything is fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

This makes sense.

[Leo Laporte]

As you expected, Windows 24H2 has arrived exactly on time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Actually, it's a week earlier. Oh, even worse. Yeah. Next Tuesday would be Patch Tuesday. I sort of assume that would be the day. Because reasons. But Microsoft. Right. Because reasons. So as we talked last week and probably the previous 17 weeks, this has been kind of a weird year for. We release things while we release them. Suck it. So here we are.

[Leo Laporte]

It's theirs to do. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So 2024 will go down in the books as being a unique year unless they somehow manage to duplicate this next year.

[Richard Campbell]

2023 was pretty hairy too, man. Like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, no, I don't mean it that way. I just mean that, yes, they were both terrible. But they released 24H2 initially, remember, in June with the Copilot Plus PCs. And now they've released it allegedly for everybody. So we'll see. I am obviously traveling, so I only have three computers with me. So I don't have. As Amir. Yeah. I don't have as many test cases here, but I'm not seeing it yet. I'll just put it that way. So we'll get to that. But yeah. So in the buildup to this, there has been. You know, I always talk about how I don't like multiple displays, but now that I'm stuck on this tiny laptop stream, I'm kind of going nuts here. I can only look at one thing at a time.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Dude, the USB power display is a godsend. It's essentially.

[Leo Laporte]

I hardly ever use it. That's.

[Paul Thurrott]

I have at least three at home. I could have brought any of them.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep, you should have brought them. Yeah. But I do find bringing two annoys people, so. Especially a little wide.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's because you're using their tray table on the plane, Rich.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. You know, people are high maintenance. I don't know what it's about.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I guess if I was feeling up to it, I could just use one of my other Windows laptops as a display. But that takes 30 minutes to set up.

[Richard Campbell]

So I should put some hook Velcro on the back of what I was going to stick it to the seat back as an above monitor and that would happen.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, I'm so. You know, you go to war with the army you have and whatnot. So here I am. So let's see if I can remember this because it's so convoluted but last week was week D. No, the week before it was week D. I'm losing my mind, man. Give me a second here. Yes, last week was week D. Microsoft, remember, did not ship any updates on that Tuesday as we, you know, as would be the schedule.

[Richard Campbell]

They were waiting till the show was finished as usual.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And so they released the Preview update for 22 and 23H2, I think on Thursday. And then it wasn't until Monday that they released one for 24H2, which is kind of curious timing, right? The 22, 23H2 build preview, build preview update was apparently a freaking disaster. So all kinds of reliability problems. People were having instances of computers just rebooting like repeatedly. Yeah, Microsoft just, I think today or yesterday took the rare step of issuing something called a known issue rollback, which has actually existed for several years now, in fact, maybe as long as eight years ago. They've been around a while, but it's basically another update you can install to fix an update that screwed over your computer. It's hilarious. And so most of the people who would have installed a preview update, of course, are individuals. So you can install this and reboot and then hopefully you'll be back. But you know, 24 H2s out, so who cares? And then if you're in an organization that somehow allowed this through, which I can't imagine many do, is a group policy, of course, to employ that same fix.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So there's that. So we ended last week. Well, not last week, we ended Monday with, okay, you know, we're caught up. This is what I sort of predicted. And then Tuesday came and Microsoft announced approximately 1100 things related to Windows. One of which was 24H2 is now available, you know, for everybody.

[Richard Campbell]

Did they bury it? Is that what.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, there's not. It's weird in a way because as well, it's weird in a way that 24H2, there's not much to say about it. Right. You know, we've been talking about this thing for, I mean, actually for months, but certainly for the last few weeks we've been saying, look, it's coming, it's coming.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. But we've definitely been talking about it for a year.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, I went through, in fact, I should try to find this right now, but I went through and I have to update the book for this. And there's a lot of stuff in it, but nothing major. A lot of the stuff that's in it is kind of behind the scenes things. Right. It supports Wi Fi 7 now. Great. There's support for HDR backgrounds, there's some energy saver changes, some Bluetooth LE audio support changes. So these are not things I have to worry about for the book. That they're not user facing UI things like the taskbar buttons they keep scrolling with just to mess with me. So. Okay. I mean it's fine. So there's not. We've talked about this and there are going to be further changes. Right. We talked about this account manager, which is a silly name where they're going to pull out the sign out option. So it's now on the account manager and not via yet another submenu. So that's not actually in the RTM version of 24H2, which Microsoft would never call it that, but let's call a thing what it is. And there you go. So the ISOs are available. They finally addressed ARM64 ISOs and they addressed it by saying they're not available, which is not. It's like saying getting ready to install. Which to me is equivalent to not installing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Why are you telling me?

[Richard Campbell]

This was the state I was always in except for the moment where I don't want to be anymore.

[Paul Thurrott]

But there's a note that says we will make those available in the coming weeks. So it's coming. So if you're on an RPC or thinking about it, to me this is the baseline. It's very dangerous to get into the Insider program, for example, to test recall like will be happening soon. Without an ability to go back.

[Richard Campbell]

No. And that would be the whole thing. If you're going to sacrifice a machine to that ARM implementation if something goes wrong. It's borked until the ISO shows up.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. I mean there are ways around it. Don't pay. Even UUP dump or UDP dump, whatever it's called will give you. You could use a Windows Insider ISO. There are things you could do just to have a computer that works sort of. But that's not right. You don't do that to people in Stably. You don't want to have the official ISO that will happen.

[Richard Campbell]

I think we've been counting on this window since June for the few machines that are running these things that they'll hold together.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which speaks to how come it's not available today. You've known about this since when? It's been months and months.

[Richard Campbell]

They should have been released in June.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Microsoft published a document describing the many reasons why you might not be getting this update yet. And there are some interesting ones in There Easy anti Cheat is apparently broken. Yeah, if you have that you cannot get the update.

[Richard Campbell]

That means they're actually looking for it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I guess they'll be able to break the game.

[Richard Campbell]

Right? That's a bunch of. That's Fortnite. That's like a whole raft of very games that have issues with exploitation. And so that's interesting that the installer checks to see are you running this? Do you have anything that installs that has Easy Cheat on it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Some of these are curious to me because you would think Windows 11 to Windows 11 this stuff should just work. But there are intel smart sound technology drivers that are incompatible.

[Richard Campbell]

Wallpaper customization stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, well, fingerprint sensors, you know, but here's the one that's not Ring zero. This is my favorite one on the list. This is so funny. Asphalt 8 airborne. The game. What if you have it installed, it will not install 24H2, which is okay. It's. I don't know. So whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, so here's the question. The implication there, Paul, is that the CrowdStrike incident has changed the course of 24H2.

[Paul Thurrott]

I love it.

[Richard Campbell]

I hope that's the implication.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, maybe if they're really going to start enforcing more, you know, you have to go through the API. You don't get to play in ring zero anymore. That is good. It's interesting to see what breaks. But this is the same as like Ned Pyle pushing on no SMB1. And the best way to find out if you have SMB one is to turn it off and listen for the screens.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Like they're coming. Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Maybe not the that scream is coming from your out of support WD nas. Would you upgrade already?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

God, yes.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

So there's a new term Microsoft's using and it's not from today or yesterday. It's fairly recent development. But they're describing this as a full OS swap, meaning it's not an enablement package. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's actually place.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like an old school upgrade. It's a literal. Which I don't know why we have to point that out, but. Okay, I don't know where that term.

[Richard Campbell]

Came from, but you know, I got. I did a show with Aria Carly, who's now Aria Hansen. Congratulations. She got married, who's one of my update goddesses and she talked exactly in those terms that they are alternating between enablement package, which is a bunch of feature ads and an OS replacement.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Okay, well no, it's just the language Like I believe maybe I'm getting it right. I think it was full OS swap.

[Richard Campbell]

Mm.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it's like. Okay. I don't. I mean, I guess it's that I've never heard it.

[Richard Campbell]

You know that phrase that way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. But it's. It's all over the place all of a sudden.

[Richard Campbell]

So maybe that's the new term, like a new language.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And then I didn't write about this myself, but Mary Jo did, and I'm sure others did. But I think this is the first LTSC version of Windows 11. So this is the long term servicing channel release. Right. This is the thing that was missing from Windows 11 when it first appeared, which was keeping apparently some people in 10.

[Richard Campbell]

It was one of the excuses.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Microsoft is very, very strenuously recommends not using this. It's for specialty installs in certain situations. There's a version of Enterprise and a version for IoT Enterprise.

[Leo Laporte]

Why does Microsoft not push it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Because it doesn't install updates, Leo. They really would like to.

[Leo Laporte]

No ads, huh?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So part of no security patches.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's not good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's not good.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

But even, even I was. You know, again, I don't cover this part of the world per se, that much anymore. But there's a group policy for IT admins or for organizations that are managing deployment of software. Right. And your choices with 24H2, which by the way, again, full OS swap, not in a. It's not a. It's not a simple, fast little process is you can make it available to your users or you can make it available as a preview, like an optional update, I guess. We're giving them the option to install this thing. What are you doing? One of the options is not do not install this thing.

[Richard Campbell]

No, that's not an option.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not an option.

[Richard Campbell]

The question is, do you want to give your users a choice of when to install it? That's all. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You're installing it.

[Richard Campbell]

It's happening one way or the other. But it's sort of. I talked to printing systems that do this. It's like this will be installed by Friday, but you get to pick the day this week that it installs. So it's like you're going out of the office for the afternoon, start it.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then leave it's choice adjacent, is what I'm hearing.

[Richard Campbell]

It's choice. Ish.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's like a rail. It's like one of those rail based video games where it makes you feel like you're actually making choices, but you really can only go in this direction. You're on the track for most people on unmanaged PCs and Windows Home and Windows Pro as individuals. Two years of support, I think it's three years for enterprise and education, I want to say and then five years for ltse, if I'm not mistaken. So not that it matters because November is going to come and you're going to be updated, so who cares?

[Leo Laporte]

Those numbers are there assumption with LTSC that manual updates will be applied at the IT department's discretion?

[Paul Thurrott]

Actually, I think the assumption is that these are PCs that are not necessarily people. Yeah, they're in some back room doing some. Whatever it might be.

[Richard Campbell]

I think that's the IoT version, those kinds of things, the offline machines that would have to be manually updated but then they also don't have the same level of exposure.

[Leo Laporte]

It's different in the Linux world. They have long term support versions of most Linux.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, A Linux also is a kernel that doesn't get hacked by security companies. So there are changes, there are different approaches. There's something about Windows that this has always been the case where there's this group of people that want to do this thing where they're running some enterprise server, whatever version, but as a client. And part of the reason is they don't want, now these days they don't want the updates. The earliest version of this was Mark Rzinovich documenting in Windows NT magazine how you could make a single change to the registry to turn Windows NT 4 Workstation into Server, which is beautiful. Hey.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry.

[Paul Thurrott]

That was not just a random outburst, but a very precise and short outburst. Is there more coming?

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, so you know, Windows Server 2003, 2008, whatever time frame, you know, there was that kind of a desktop package you could install to kind of give it the XP look and feel back in that day or whatever. And then obviously with Server they go in this completely different direction where what they want for a long time is just like server core, you know, command line interface, no gui, et cetera, et cetera. But this is still a thing, you know, there are people that look, I did this myself just to look into it, you know, maybe like, oh, I could run Enterprise, you know. And I know there are people out there like, man, I need ltsc, I need it, you know, I just don't want, I want to just control that myself. And I would just say, you know, given to the matrix guys, it's over. So just walk away from this. But I get it. I feel it myself. All right, yeah. What else do we have on this single screen machine that I can't stand using booted up? So we've had a couple of Windows Insider builds since the last time we spoke. Dev and beta channel both got a build. Both of them have one new feature. Nothing particularly interesting, but dev channel 6 GHz support for mobile hotspot. So right now it's 2, 4 and 5. If you're familiar with this feature. I just literally used it on a plane, which probably is illegal. And you can choose between 2.4 and 5 gig options gigahertz. But also best you know, choose. Choose any available. So whatever the device can connect with, it will use both.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know why you choose anything else than whatever.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So unfortunately with six, though, if you choose six, you're only six and you don't have a choice. So apparently this is new, right? So it's a new. It's a new spectrum or whatever, but that's kind of odd. And then there's just a single language change. If you're familiar with the out of box experience with. By this point I've probably run 260,000 times or something. Whatever it is, there's a step in there where they refer to. In the out of box experience. Sorry. Where they refer to something called tailored experiences. This is like one of the tips in the book where I tell you just to don't ever do that. It's basically you're allowing them to track you more. They're going to call that personalized offers now. Yeah. So you don't want to turn to that.

[Richard Campbell]

So you know what it means, whatever the name is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Then last time we spoke about this, it must have gone to Canary and Dev. So now beta and release preview channels are getting the new version of the snipping tool. This is the one where you get to choose where the screenshots and screen captures are saved if you'd like to. Right. You can change the folder.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not a lot there then.

[Richard Campbell]

Today it is interesting to see what this is going to become. Now post 24H2.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You like the new version of OS? Here's another one. It's already changing.

[Richard Campbell]

How long before we start talking about 25H2? Because it's not going to be long.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, this is not. This is. This is not iPhone Weekly, man. We're not doing that.

[Leo Laporte]

That's exactly what happens in the iPhone world. Okay, we got a new one. So when's the next one?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's always like, you Might want to skip the iPhone 17. It's like, I just got an iPhone 16. What are you talking about? You're like, what is that? This is what you're writing about.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, speaking of the out of box experience.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Where is my.

[Richard Campbell]

I was like, yes, Snapdragon kit?

[Leo Laporte]

Where is my Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Developers Kit?

[Paul Thurrott]

Where?

[Richard Campbell]

I checked my delivery date today.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you got it shipped? October 2nd. That's today for delivery in September 19th.

[Richard Campbell]

Mine is October 2nd. Delivery September 20th. Which is awesome. I love everything about that.

[Paul Thurrott]

How come yours is delayed?

[Richard Campbell]

But I got. Well, everything's delayed. I got an email today, a new one from them from Aero Electronics, saying that they're excited to have received some supply of the Snapdragon development kits for Windows. And we know they're working hard to provide additional units as soon as possible at this time. We expect more units to arrive in the coming weeks, and we'll fulfill your order as soon as units come available. So it sounds like I'm not in the first batch.

[Leo Laporte]

It's nice that they sent you an email. They haven't sent me.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the weird part. Then they say, as a reminder, the initial orders have been had the purchase price reduced by 10%. Do I know that? Okay. If you still wish to receive these units as ordered, you need to do nothing. Well, that's relief, you know, like, okay, an order. But what does that imply? If I do something, something changes. If you would like to modify shipping terms or even cancel your order based upon these changes, I don't know what the changes are. You can notify us. Canceling or shipping changes will receive a real full refund if applicable. So what this implies to me is that there's a new price for the product going forward, and if you mess with your existing order, you won't get that price anymore.

[Leo Laporte]

You'll get a new price. Oh, yeah, I just got that email, too. I got it yesterday.

[Richard Campbell]

You know what the other thing on this might imply as well is they may be shipping immediately on the new price because they make more money on it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, God, that's really annoying.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this has all the. This is. You know when a company's going out of business and you sent them money and you just really kind of want to get the thing or maybe get the money back. And what's happening?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, yeah, that's my little Kickstarter lamp. The little dude. The little green dude. That's exactly what ended up happening with that. Delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed until I finally got somebody on and it's like, so if I pay an extra $40 in shipping, I get this like next week. Yeah. All right, here's the 40 bucks, you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Know, and then they ghosted you for two more weeks.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, I got it right away. But then I named it the bargain. Right. Because it was a two hundred dollar lamp held up by forty dollars in shipping.

[Leo Laporte]

So. Okay, so yeah, I got the same email yesterday. Now that I. It's went my spam.

[Paul Thurrott]

The good news is this is coming via Qualcomm. So it's just not. This may be a fly by night company they chose to go with, but I mean, Qualcomm can't let this go bad. Right?

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I'm not even. I mean, again, I used a credit card, so you know, credit cards.

[Leo Laporte]

Did they.

[Richard Campbell]

Billy, I can reverse it. No, I have been charged.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. So that's legally, they're not expensive.

[Richard Campbell]

Expires in February. Right. So they take much longer.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you may not get it. I want it. I still want it.

[Richard Campbell]

I want it to. And apparently Geerling got one. We were talking about this before the show started, but Jeff Geerling's already got a YouTube video.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the purpose of the email is we sent one.

[Richard Campbell]

We sent one.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, see, they're shipping.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, because he's waiting.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're like, see, it's shipping.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, they're shipping because we did send one.

[Richard Campbell]

But I also appreciate, I think Burdick mentioned this, that Burzick mentioned this, that Gearling immediately installed Linux on it. Which is what I want to do with it anyway, because I want to turn it into an HA box.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's brutal. And I'm not. What is wrong with you people? So I. Did he notice any homemade looking stuff inside of it or anything? Did he look for.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Like what's the HDMI port look like? Is it glued?

[Paul Thurrott]

Is it super glued over?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's a little plastic cat.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

A little piece of duct tape over that. And here's your dongle.

[Leo Laporte]

I will keep it as a regular Windows machine for as long as I possibly can.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know what that language means. It's like when my kids figured out what will C means. They're like, we know what that means. That means no, maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe. We'll see. All right, let's take a little break and continue on that triangle of sadness now over. The Qualcomm triangle of sadness. The arrow triangle of sadness. We will have more with Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell on this fine network. Thank you. For all of you watching all, let me see 616 watching live on X.com and Facebook and LinkedIn and Kik and Discord, of course, for our club members. What have I left off? Oh, YouTube, I've heard of them. And Twitch, seven different places you can watch. And we love having all of you. I get to see a unified chat version so I could see all your chat messages and I try to respond if I can if I'm not busy because I'm doing all the finger stuff. But anyway, we're glad to have you and we're especially glad to have our club Twit members. They are the salt of the earth, the bread that makes the butter, the whatever tastes good. Our show today, brought to you by thanks to Canary. Now this is a sponsor I have been talking about for I think seven years now. And it's so cool. It is a honey pot. Okay, It's a little, it looks like a external USB drive, just a little black box. You hook it up to power, you hook it up to Ethernet and then you relax, you sit back, you wait. Because this honey pot, which can be deployed easily in minutes and you can choose it to be anything you want. A Windows LTSC Windows server that hasn't been patched in years, for instance. I have mine as a network, attached storage, even like things like SCADA devices. It's just checkboxes and it is a beautiful impersonation. These things, canaries, really look like the real deal. The Mac addresses are right, the user interface is right. And that's what's cool. Because as soon as the bad guy sees it, they don't look vulnerable, they look valuable. They look, oh, I gotta get into that, right? As soon as they log in, you, they think they're logging in, but you're going to get a message. Only the alerts that matter. No false messages. They can also create lure files, PDFs, docs, Excel, spreadsheets, whatever you want that you could sprinkle around your network with attractive names like payroll information. And if somebody tries to open those boom or brute forces your fake internal SSH server your think Canary will immediately tell you, hey, there's somebody inside the network. No false alerts, just alerts when you really want to know. And you get the alerts in any way you want. Email, sms, syslog, it supports web hooks. There's even an API if you want to write your own. Just choose a profile for your thanksg Canary device, register it with the hosted console. You get monitoring, you get notifications, then you Wait, attackers who breached your network or malicious insiders? The evil made other adversaries. They make themselves known by accessing your Thinks Canary. And then the jig is up. On average, companies don't know they've been breached for 91 days, for months. And that is those 90 days. That's bad news. That's somebody wandering around inside your network, unknown, unnoticed, looking at everything, exfiltrating what they want. No, you need a thanks to Canary. Visit Canary Tools Twit. Find out more. For a small operation like ours, maybe five big banks might have hundreds. But let's give you the pricing for five thinks Canaries $7,500 all in. You get your own hosted console, you get upgrades, you get support and maintenance. So five things Canaries, 7,500 bucks, your own hosted console, you get the upgrades to support the maintenance. If you use the code TWIT in the how did you hear about us Box, by the way? You get 10% off for life. Not just for the first year, but for as long as you used your thanks to Canary. And if you're saying, well, I don't know, you can always return your things to Canary with their two month money back guarantee for a full refund. You have 60 days to decide. But I should tell you that in all the years Twit has partnered with Things Canary, no one has ever asked for their money back. That guarantee has never been claimed because it works. It does exactly what I just said it does. And it does it so beautifully, so elegantly. These honey pots are a must have for every network. Visit Canary Tools Twit. By the way, enter the code Twit and how did you hear about us Box? You're going to get 10% off for life. Canary Tools Twit. We thank thanks to Canary for a great product which we use, and for being supporters of Windows Weekly. We also really appreciate that Canary Tools Twit on we go with the exciting bandwagon of news and information.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, the cornucopia, if you will, of Copilot.

[Leo Laporte]

We had Daniel Rubino on Twitter on Sunday and he kept saying, I can't tell you, but there's a big. There's big stuff coming. There's big stuff coming. Can't tell you. Well, it was. There was a. Microsoft had some big Copilot announcements.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know you're not really supposed to even allude to it, but fair enough.

[Leo Laporte]

He didn't. He didn't. He said, I wish I could allude to it, but I can't.

[Paul Thurrott]

He literally mentioned it though.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Why would he say while alluding to it, he said he couldn't allude to it.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry, Daniel. I didn't want to get you in trouble. He didn't allude to anything. We were just talking.

[Richard Campbell]

Microsoft has talked about a Wave two.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So was this Wave two?

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like when you have Montezuma's Revenge. Like Wave two is the one you gotta get through.

[Richard Campbell]

Before the Cipro kicks in.

[Paul Thurrott]

No. So Microsoft did a Wave two for Copilot for business, right, A couple weeks ago. Copilot for Microsoft 365. Or as now we're calling it again, Microsoft 365 copilot. Because seriously, my head just stopped spinning. Thank you for doing it again.

[Richard Campbell]

Take a name, Any name.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, please. So now we're seeing the kind of consumer one. So adding to the confusion, of course we have Copilot, which is the app that's in Windows and in Edge, I guess, and on mobile actually, but whatever. And we also have copilot plus PCs, both of which have their own things going on. So of course they announced new features for both on the same day. So it's fun trying to keep track of this stuff. So we'll start with Copilot, which is in Windows. Windows 11 now is the app, right? This is the thing they jammed down our throats last September as part of 22H2, three seconds before they shipped 23H2, ensuring everyone would get it. It started off as a pane in the side, then it became a resizable pane and then it became an app and they moved the icon three times and now it's a year later. So hilarious. But they're adding features to it and making it a little more useful. If you think back to when they first launched this, there were basically two things there. The text or the chat based interface like you would [e-mail] and then there were also these kind of Windows 11, I don't know what to call it, feature launchers. Like I would like to make my screen dark or whatever. And it would go into settings and say, is this what you want? And it was pretty limited, right? There were always going to be more of those, but now there are none of those. So that was one of the fun changes that occurred between then and now. And now they've announced these additional features which are. I don't ever purposely launch Copilot, but I do sometimes launch it and I keep waiting for it and it is.

[Richard Campbell]

Occasionally your mouse strays over that Gigantic icon. Yeah. Well, in my case, it's activity. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's these giant hands, fingers hitting the wrong key. Yeah. So I have not gotten this update yet, but there are a bunch of things that will occur here. Not much of this is very interesting to me, honestly. I would say compared to the CO PC stuff, not super exciting, but. But turning it into more of an AI companion, which kind of the original vision for Cortana. So Copilot Daily. I almost said Cortana Daily. I do struggle with this. We could call it Clippy Daily. It doesn't matter. But Copilot Daily is every day you get up and there's a summary of news and weather and blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff. You can have it read out loud like you would do with a device, perhaps, or an micro device, I guess. And that is rolling out now. Apparently in the US and uk more countries, personalization options are coming, but haven't seen it. Copilot voice. Just the same stuff we see on all of these things right now. You can choose from different voices. You know, if you set up a new iPhone, you got to choose a voice for Siri, including men voices, which I'd say is a little weird for something called Siri.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, I've had three different cases now where people have sent me a podcast generated by AI where the main voice sounds like me.

[Paul Thurrott]

Interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the Notebook LLM or Notebook.

[Richard Campbell]

That's one of them.

[Leo Laporte]

It's pretty wild. They really do sound like podcasters.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

All the arms and.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Very strange.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's.

[Richard Campbell]

It's.

[Paul Thurrott]

My ums are all natural and possibly caused by something that's wrong with my brain.

[Leo Laporte]

So in that case, it's exactly the same thing there. You calculate in the background.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Crap in, crap out. That's the AI model. Personalized Discover. Discover feed. They can't seem to get over. I don't want to even discuss that. More Microsoft Edge integration. We know that Copilot is available as a pain in the browser as well. And that's the way you can use it on the Mac or even Linux.

[Leo Laporte]

Can I use that as a title? If I spell it P A I.

[Paul Thurrott]

N. Yeah, you could say the pain is a pain.

[Leo Laporte]

Pain in the browser.

[Paul Thurrott]

Then these curious ones. I guess there's a couple. So think deeper. This is an experimental feature, so this is another new thing. They're going to keep these disabled by default, but you can go in and turn it on if you want. Now, this one actually works.

[Leo Laporte]

I know what that is. That's ChatGPT401. Right. That's the reasoning. ChatGPT that thinks it's slow, but it can.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So this one you have to be paying for Copilot Pro and it will answer complex questions.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's an OpenAI thing. Yeah, it's a new model from OpenAI.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well no, it's a completely new Microsoft thing. I don't know why.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I'm sorry, did I say.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's hard to overstate how reliant they are on OpenAI. Anyway, limited number of.

[Leo Laporte]

Well as far as I can tell, it's just relabeled OpenAI. There's nothing. Is Microsoft adding anything to Copilot?

[Paul Thurrott]

They put a Mercury sticker on it. I don't know why you don't got to keep completely different. It will be available in, what is it? Australia, Canada, New Zealand, uk, us. But the big one here, and this is one maybe we should try to digest a little bit, is Copilot Vision. This is also experimental, so it's off by default if you turn it on. If you thought Recall was a nightmare, this will scan everything you do in real time and it will offer you suggestions based on the context of what it sees. Now they've learned something from Recall. This thing is only alive while you're in the context of the thing. It disappears. Nothing is ever saved anywhere. It goes away immediately. There's no history, there's no anything like that. It's primarily from what I can tell really for the web. You're on a computer and you're looking at something on the web and it supposed to not work with paywalled content sensors.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know how it would know.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know whatever that means. Right. This is one of those things. I feel like I need to experience this before I can speak intelligently about it, which, which frankly should be true of everything but limited number of Copilot Pro subscribers in the US only. So it's going to be a really limited drip, drip, drip, kind of a rollout. But this is like what's up?

[Richard Campbell]

This is regional filters. This is interesting. They clearly are afraid of the law. And even if it's restricted in the U.S. i bet you it's state based. I'll bet you California doesn't get it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look, among the many valid complaints about AI of any kind is the fact that in order to train the models to the scale and scope, they need to, they have to steal content. Basically they're scraping content. Right. So obviously you don't want to go after paywall. It May literally be as simple as is the URL nytimes.com or whatever the.

[Richard Campbell]

Basically sorting the URLs by quality of their legal team.

[Paul Thurrott]

It may literally be that dumb or that simple maybe is the better way to say it. So I don't know. I guess what I appreciate about this is just that they this time are acknowledging that maybe people won't trust this.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, with.

[Richard Campbell]

This might make you uncomfortable.

[Leo Laporte]

So Steve Gibson yesterday did a big segment on that write up from the blog post from. Who was it? The. The Recall blog post.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, the guy from Microsoft. David Wesson.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And went through it step by step and verdict was perfect. Good job. What was that first thing that they offered?

[Paul Thurrott]

It was actually. Well, I'm going to tell you in a second because we're going to get to that. It was exactly the same thing. That's what it was. The problem was they didn't. We're going to get to this because in fact, I'm sort of getting to it right now. This is actually what I meant. So there are changes to. That's Copilot. No, sorry, that's Recall, which is a feature of Copilot PC but an AI feature on your Windows computer. Right. There are two substantive changes that have happened since they first announced it. One is they made it opt in instead of optional. This is a squirrely word that someone said to me explicitly was opt in. It was in fact opt out. So that's garbage. But they also address the other big complaint from critics, which is that you can uninstall it.

[Leo Laporte]

That's new, isn't it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's new. Those are the two big changes. But as far as all the technical diagrams, and we're doing this and this and Windows, hello, ESS and encryption. And that was already there. You can go back and find it all in the original post, which I referenced back in June, when everyone's complaining.

[Richard Campbell]

So all they've done is modified the installer.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, look, they did a security review with a third party just to make sure that what they believe was true. They also said that because of the Secure Future initiative, that they have the new trustworthy computing thing, that it has to undergo an internal audit along those lines. They did that before May, by the way, and it passed then a lot of this is just pr. Control.

[Richard Campbell]

Security theater.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, look, the security was always real, right. The bit where the user is always in control, sort of. I mean, you know, opt in versus opt out is important. It really is. Like that's. That's and this is why.

[Leo Laporte]

So this so called enhanced sign in security architecture is exactly what they talked.

[Paul Thurrott]

About in the beginning. Yes, this has been. I wrote an article about this in May or June. I explained what this was. This is when everyone's like, oh, you don't. These guys pull it out and they did this. Yeah, they didn't have Windows. Hello ess. You can't even use this unless you have it. Oh, I should say. Sorry. There was a third change since we're on this topic. They also changed the code so that you can't run this on a non copilot plus PC. So that instance where those security researchers were ripping the code out of the Insider program and putting it on the normal PCs and then reporting that it was unsafe, they're not going to let you do that anymore. So if you want to see if it's unsafe or not, you have to use an actual qualified certified copilot plus PC.

[Richard Campbell]

Still sounds like all they've done is update the installer.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Have this new.

[Paul Thurrott]

I love that you make me not look cynical. Like I knew, right.

[Leo Laporte]

This installer and the description is the picture is new. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean I can't actually read it on your screen there.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah, it's kind of hard to read.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look, functionally nothing has really changed and fundamentally I still, you know, this is a very contrary view, unfortunately. Although.

[Richard Campbell]

But yeah, the point being nothing needed to change. They just needed to actually explain how it was going to work.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's really interesting. I mean here's Steve Gibson who is paying attention, really thought this was all new.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I know they're presenting it as all new. Yeah, yep, I know.

[Leo Laporte]

And who was a very skeptical. He says I'm still not going to use it. But it. But I was very. He was very skeptical about. He says, oh good, they've solved this with the vbs.

[Paul Thurrott]

I just. Enclaves in the VBS enclave literally is in the original post. I will just look when I defended this and everyone said I was an insane person, I feel like I was the only one paying attention because this stuff was there. You can go see it for yourself. I'm not, you know, I'm not making it up. It's there and I wrote about it. You can go see what I wrote about it back in May and June. So this is like I said, not really new. But it doesn't mean they haven't made changes. Look, there could have been changes under the hood. They could have enhanced things or whatever. Actually, you know, like for example, this one I Don't know for sure, but I'm trending in a certain direction, which is they talk about how with Windows hello ess, which is, you know, Windows hello, so it's facial or fingerprint recognition. Anytime you engage with recall, it has to do. It has to scan you that time. It's similar to when you get, like a 2fa notification, Microsoft authenticator app. There's no time limit where it doesn't have to do that. Every time you have to authenticate yourself, it's doing that now. Is that new? That one I actually don't know for sure, but it's not new. Right? Because that is how Windows hello ESS works. Right. Anytime you're crossing this kind of security boundary, you have to make sure it's you. That one I have to put an asterisk. I actually don't know because they never explicitly discussed it, and I just don't know if that's how it worked or not. That may be new, but fundamentally, this is the same thing they were talking about in June. The difference is they blissfully acted like everyone trusted them and would love this. And I told this story that day sitting in the audience. Yousef Mehdi, like, oh, boy. I mean, I know my audience. I know how they're going to react. The thing that is weird about this to me is the overreaction, if you will, or the. That's not fair. The reaction to it was far more visceral and negative than even I imagined. Like, I thought I could foresee how this was going to go, and I was off by an order of magnitude. People freaked out over this. So, look, I'm excited to try this. I want to see what it's like.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, the single big change is you can uninstall it, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

That is a big change. So you're not automatically opted into it.

[Richard Campbell]

When you got rid of negative optioning.

[Leo Laporte]

But you can also remove.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can actually remove it.

[Richard Campbell]

Not that that means anything. Well, all you could say is it deleted the installer. Like, how would you know? People said, I want IE off my machine. And so I deleted the icon.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And then the whole Internet went down with you. Great. Smart move there, Grandma. No, but. So, yeah, we'll see. The one thing I always said, even when I was defending this back in May or June or whatever it was, was, look, it's Microsoft. I mean, we still have to see this thing in the real world, right?

[Richard Campbell]

So everybody was very sure it was bad and had never actually seen it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right? So those same people and others that maybe I trust a little bit more will test this now on real computers and we will see. I can't claim and that it's somehow perfect. It's going to work. But based on the way they describe it and you know, it looks like they've done the right thing.

[Richard Campbell]

I want a real expert at it on a Copilot PC saying a break. Breach this thing. Break it. I want you to break it.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right.

[Richard Campbell]

Show us something real.

[Paul Thurrott]

So they did do that with us. They won't name the company, but the company did try to hack. They weren't able to do. So that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they named them.

[Richard Campbell]

But.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well maybe they will. Maybe this will come out eventually. Maybe they want it to be out first and then that would be the time for that discussion. It's kind of hard to say.

[Richard Campbell]

So it'll be. Life will be easier if there's a whole bunch of people hooked on it saying, I don't care what the security is. I want this. This thing's awesome. I can't live without.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I think that's what Microsoft's hoping.

[Richard Campbell]

Because I think that. Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

If it is secure, then it is going to be a really useful thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to be a very handy thing.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm afraid it'll be really useful even if it isn't secure. Well, but.

[Leo Laporte]

And this is a problem because if it isn't secure the first time somebody gets into it and it becomes a big issue, there's a breach, it's going to be a big deal and Microsoft's going to have agonists.

[Richard Campbell]

Somebody will make it a big deal but the average mortal does not care less. It's disturbing to me that they're not offering this at the corporate level because there are plenty of corporate organizations who'd be all over this.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think we're going to get there. For all of the craziness around Microsoft and AI over the past year and a half or whatever, they've really gone after this in a conservative way. And it may be as simple as it's just early. You know, we just did it. You know this. It's probably limited in many ways. They were intending for this entire summer now into the timeframe where now for it to be in preview and testing and it wasn't going to be.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And only available on the Copilot plus machines. Yeah. Which is like Snapdragon machines. Like it was a very narrow sect of the market.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's so narrow it's not even measurable. That's the Problem. No, it really isn't. That's the thing and that's one of the important points. Even if everything.

[Richard Campbell]

It almost makes me wonder if they didn't want this deal to happen while they were in the exclusivity period when it blew up. That became useful for them to say, we should just wait.

[Paul Thurrott]

This really undermined that launch though. I don't think this was.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't disagree. Once it went off, they found an upside.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it possible there were warring factions within Microsoft?

[Richard Campbell]

There always are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, there always are.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, really wanted this and there was a group said, are you kidding? This is a terrible idea.

[Paul Thurrott]

So the thing you're describing is the type of conversation one has around like OpenAI and is this new model ready and are we moving too fast and is this thing going to take over the earth? You know, it's like this existential thing. The recall stuff isn't exactly like that because it's local to a machine, it's protected by VBS enclave, you know, all the stuff that was already there anyway, it's encrypted, it's protected by Windows, it's in the early.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, people who cracked it were saying it isn't encrypted. That is that just because they weren't using it on a copilot PC, they.

[Paul Thurrott]

Were not using it on a Windows copilot PC. Yes, that's.

[Leo Laporte]

So if you use it where it's intended to be used, it's fully encrypted and not.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is like. So one of the. Yeah, so one of the things that those guys said was I was able to log into a different account on the same machine and browse the disk and access it. Right. Which can't happen if it's encrypted. So it doesn't matter if you have an admin account or whatever, you can't do it. You can't, as the owner of a company that deployed this PC to someone, see it. There's no way to see it unless you're you. That's always been the case.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it's. I don't know, I can't. This, the argument over this makes me sad because this is where you see. Well, you know when CrowdStrike happened there was this knee jerk reaction that this was Microsoft's fault. Now that type of thing is deserved to some degree. It's the burden Microsoft has to bear. But okay, what happened, happened. So I think when this type of thing happens and Microsoft did have that VM thing out, that was out in the world and they got hacked. And what happened, happened. That's. That's bad. And then this thing comes along and they're like, are you serious? And then people say, oh, I put it on a computer and I got into it immediately. It's like, of course it's Microsoft. This is why them standing up on a stage and introducing this feature so gleefully, like it was something everyone would want. Which like Richard kind of said, I guess is something everyone statistically probably does want, you know, most people. And ignoring the security privacy aspect of it. That was the. That David Westin post that you were referencing is what should have been out that day.

[Richard Campbell]

That day. Absolutely 100%.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is irresponsible that they didn't do that. So lesson learned, I guess. But Microsoft with security is like tsa, right? They're always fighting the last battle. So they solved the problem they created for themselves in May. Great. But you got to start being proactive here, guys. And I should say, I'm sorry. So they have this feature that we were talking about but have forgotten about now, the Copilot vision. They actually detail how this thing is secure in great detail and nice. Right. That shows you that they did learn from recall. And by the way, it's not that I don't want to give them too much credit. This thing is so much like recall, yet sort of a weird high level that I mean, anyone would have seen this. Like, they should have. This is the right thing to do. But they literally list through all the ways they are trying to make this thing secure and private. Right. And I think that's really smart because, you know, you can't hear something like this and not have that same trigger warning. Like, are you kidding me? No. You're doing another one of these things?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. It's got an uncaly valley effect just every time.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's a feature that came on the new Pixels that's just called Pixel Screenshot. And the idea is that you. We all do this. I bet my wife and I do this all the time. So I assume it's fairly standard for people. You see, you're browsing, you see something, you're like, I want to remember this. And you're like, I'll take a screenshot, it goes in, and then you never see it again. Whatever. So now there's.

[Richard Campbell]

Goodness knows, eventually you run out of space.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. And you're like, wow, yeah. How come I can't store any photos? So Pixel Screenshot will look at the screenshots you take. With your permission, you have to give Permission. Right. It's Google. It's not like they've ever done anything bad. And it will do the text recognition and image recognition will do all this stuff. And it creates metadata so that later you can go into that app and say, I'm looking for, I was shopping for a red sweater. Whatever stupid example we got red sweater. And here we have that metadata because we created it the day you made the screenshot. That feature is a super limited and almost like stupidly simple version of recall. Right. Because recall, the way recall works is it's automatic as you're doing things on your computer, it's capturing screenshots all the time. Yep. And that's actually far more valuable. Right. I don't always remember to take the screenshot or know to take the screenshot or even know how to take the screenshot, I guess, depending on who you are. So this requires you to explicitly take a screenshot. So the kind of knee jerk reaction type, people who didn't like recall will look at this and say, oh, there you go, that's what they should have done. This one makes sense. Whereas I look at that and say, I'm never going to use this. Because I mean, well, maybe not never, but it is so much less useful because you're doing the work, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Still taking the shots.

[Paul Thurrott]

I want this thing working, which is.

[Richard Campbell]

Why people are comfortable with it. Because it's like, if I don't want it to happen, don't take the picture.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know, like maybe, maybe there's an answer here that's in the middle where you do both and you give the person the option and I don't know, but Microsoft went the way they went and you know, we'll see what the cards fall where they may. I think it's going to be a.

[Richard Campbell]

Game of 52 pick. It's been talked about in the discord or in the combined channel here about what happens when the lawyers learn about this.

[Leo Laporte]

Like because of discovery, you mean?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. When your machine gets seized.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they have to compel you to unlock it.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, that's right. That's the interesting aspect. Or they're going to come at Microsoft to say, unlock this for us.

[Paul Thurrott]

And they can't.

[Leo Laporte]

Microsoft can't.

[Paul Thurrott]

They can't.

[Richard Campbell]

Which is the correct thing for Microsoft to do is to literally be unable.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

That's exactly right. Now this is, you know, Apple does this sort of thing. This is, this comes up with Apple.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the famous story of Apple, you know, refusing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, in that case, they could get into it. That's the problem. But in this case, literally Microsoft cannot.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's the smart thing for these companies to do. If you want to make it secure, leave yourself. Literally no ability.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because actually, sorry, I can't do it.

[Richard Campbell]

Cannot.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're looking for some kind of a PC buy boom thing to happen. You know, sales gonna go, and if we can just get the Mexican cartel to buy copilot plus PCs, we're gonna be all set.

[Richard Campbell]

So, I mean, as much as you make fun, like, do not understand, do not underestimate how well US Intelligence has done compromising computers of their opposition for a long time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think all of our eyes.

[Leo Laporte]

Were opened when the pagers exploded.

[Richard Campbell]

That's an interesting one. That's Mossad, but it just shows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but this is the right.

[Leo Laporte]

The US are there.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. The US knew the entire order of battle of the Russians invading Ukraine. Even the Ukrainians didn't believe it. And the US had them down to the minute. Point your gun that way.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to start tomorrow. I mean, they were saying.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you know, we don't talk about how good the US intelligence actually is. It's so good. They don't have to brag.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So on that note, if I didn't mention this, the NSA has started a podcast.

[Richard Campbell]

I love it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Everything about the it is fantastic.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it sound like Richard Campbell's voice?

[Paul Thurrott]

The first episode? Actually, it does, oddly. So the first episode is about Osama bin Laden and it's, it includes someone who.

[Richard Campbell]

A current NSA or CIA. I think it's the CIA.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's nsa.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay. It's nsa.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's worth looking into. And you know, the nsa, it's not a secret agency or whatever the, you know, the fake acronym is. So it's like not a, whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Secret agency.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not a secret podcast is the name of the podcast.

[Richard Campbell]

I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no such podcast.

[Paul Thurrott]

No such podcast.

[Leo Laporte]

That's hysterical.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's worth.

[Leo Laporte]

No such agency. No such podcast.

[Paul Thurrott]

There you go. That's it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I love that.

[Richard Campbell]

They make fun of themselves. That's the best.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. That's smart.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yeah. You don't get a lot of marketing out of these guys. No. You know, so it's kind of interesting. I, I think it's good.

[Leo Laporte]

AI and the future of national security.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, these are the, these are the folks who are like, hey, you need to start in earnest moving away from prime key based encryption, which is just an implication of we know what to do about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you see? I was so happy. NIST finally updated their recommendations on changing your passwords regularly. They said, in fact, don't require password changes and you will no longer get certification if you do.

[Paul Thurrott]

So. That's funny. When I started Throttle.com in 2015, one of the first, I wrote a bunch of kind of back to basics type articles. I introduced my friend Sean Duby, who also used to write at the Windows IT Pro about this identity expert. And he gave me this exact advice. He said, changing passwords, like, why, it's.

[Richard Campbell]

The worst, terrible idea.

[Paul Thurrott]

People think this is like a sanitary thing, like every six months or whatever you get. It's like, no, you don't change password.

[Leo Laporte]

In fact, the guy who wrote that recommendation in the original NIST documentation 20 or 30 years ago, NIST said in its most recent thing, we didn't really understand security that well. No, I was all new. And the guy who wrote it recanted it some years later, saying, right. I just made that up and it was wrong.

[Richard Campbell]

It's created more problems.

[Paul Thurrott]

It falls. There's a category of things that just sound right, you know, and you're like, yeah, that makes sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Change it every six months. Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, yeah, but there are no One.

[Leo Laporte]

Would question IT companies, including, by the way, my old company, iHeartMedia. And I only logged in every few months. So every time I logged in, I needed a new password.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, it's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

It was terrible.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. It's a terrible experience, but it's also really dangerous. And yeah, you know, just whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Hallelujah.

[Leo Laporte]

They finally backed down. I'm sorry, that was a dis.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's, that's, it's a good digression. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

That in the NSA podcast too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just a random, brilliant, random stuff. So we kind of got through the new copilot stuff. So this chatbot is turning into Cortana. Whatever. Great.

[Richard Campbell]

Bit by bit.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then on the Copilot plus PC thing. Now remember, these are today all Snapdragon X computers, soon to be Lunar Lake and Zen 5 based PCs.

[Leo Laporte]

So they won't always require Snapdragon. They will run on Intel.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think that's coming. Is it November? They said, I think for the other machines. I think so.

[Leo Laporte]

Does anybody have Lunar Lake yet?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it as impressive as.

[Paul Thurrott]

So here's how Lunar Lake has fallen out. Lunar Lake is the result of competitive pressures on intel, obviously, which has always.

[Richard Campbell]

Been good for Intel.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's always been good for everybody, actually. Microsoft too. Right. But in this case they've kind of changed the way that these things come out. So Lunar Lake is specifically the U series mobile chips. It's not the mobile chips, it's the U series. Right. So there will be, I think it's Arrow Lake is the next one which will include desktop and higher end like H series mobile processors as well and they'll be a little bit different and then they're going to rev that again with what, you know, xx, Lake, whatever the names are pretty rapidly after that. So the first. I love the Lunar Lake thing. I don't have one. I can, I don't have one as I'll say that, but I will. And what I've heard from everybody is this is like the anti intel chip. This is Intel's apology. It is the thing they should have done 10 years ago. Right. So it's low, it's super high efficiency. The place where it doesn't fall apart but the place where it actually falls short of its predecessors is just basic CPU performance.

[Richard Campbell]

Right, right.

[Paul Thurrott]

But GPU up dramatically, NPU obviously dramatically integrated ram, you know, we all do that. You know, this is the standard SOC design these days and a bunch of other things that are on the chip, you know, related to communications and so forth. Intel has this kind of unique design where because it's this temporary condition where they can't manufacture these. I want to say it was a 4 probably 4 nanometer whatever the design is. So the base package of the chip is actually manufactured by TSMC and then.

[Leo Laporte]

10Nm and then it'll super glues them.

[Paul Thurrott]

Together and they make a chip out of it. So it's the right chip for mobile PCs. It's the right chip for. It's not for you know, high end gamers, it's not for work. People need workstations or scientists or programmers or whatever. It's literally addressing that thing that intel has frankly just kind of ignored for the most part for a very, very long time. So I love that they led with it and I think AMD is going to come out ahead in just basically raw CPU performance. Battery life is kind of up in the air. I can tell you. This thing that I'm on now has pretty much settled in around 8 hours and 45 minutes on average of battery life.

[Richard Campbell]

There's a great debate on that whole the AMD chip design versus the intel chip design because the AMD pipeline is quite short. So they're sort of counting on the fact that most instructions are simply don't need the longer pipeline. And when they do get the longer instructions which they do support. They actually run them quite slowly in comparison. Where intel has the long pipeline is great with the long instruction sets, but you have to have done a long pipeline whether it's short instruction or not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Intel, you know, got rid of hyper threading infamously. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Another problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But they're all trying to optimize for almost the same thing. Right. They're all placing a bet on we're going to be a little slow here, but the overall experience is going to be great. And I think in both cases it is.

[Richard Campbell]

Well. And I strongly argue for a long time that CPUs were unnecessarily fast.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

They were mostly waiting on memory anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. So interesting. So you know, we'll see again, it's Intel. I mean, hopefully there won't be reliability issues, etc. But this is all looking pretty good. So whatever the time. I can't believe I can't remember this but October or November, if you have a Lunar Lake or Zen 5 based PC, you will get those copilot plus PC features. The things that launched back in May with the Snapdragon. June, sorry with the Snapdragon computers in October, Snapdragon people will be able to test in the Insider program. Meaning you'll have to join some whatever channel. They haven't said yet, but whatever it is to get recall in preview in November, you'll be able to do that on the other machines as well. And then they've announced these other new features and these two have their own sort of schedule. But I believe they're being kind of vague on this and so we don't know exactly when this stuff's going to hit. Some of this stuff is interesting. I don't know. I love this name so much I could cry because it's so Microsoft. Click to do what?

[Leo Laporte]

What?

[Paul Thurrott]

So click to do. I know. Could you just have what does. Call it Clippy to do? Would you. What does this click to do?

[Richard Campbell]

What can I do for you?

[Paul Thurrott]

So click to do is their attempt at doing context aware AI something. Right. You click on an image and it's like oh, did you want to.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the same thing as Google's. You circle an image.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. That's circle to search. Exactly right.

[Leo Laporte]

Circle to search. But you don't circle, you just click to do.

[Paul Thurrott]

You click to do. Exactly. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. It's not. It's not a. It's not a trash can like the Mac Leo. It's a recycle bin. It's completely different and free of whatever intellectual property it is you think you own. Yeah. The big one I'm interested in though, because to me, this is the holy grail of AI, potentially is the search experience in File Explorer. So we talked about this, I think as recently as last week. This notion that Microsoft for years was working on this database backed file system, never really got it to work. We've been using indexing forever. It's not great. Sometimes you can search from start or you can search from File Explorer and one of the two will work better than the other. Sometimes they just don't work. I often find myself going to onedrive.com to find things because that experience can be so terrible. So they're going to add natural language prompts to File Explorer, get off of the file name thing and sort of do a recall type thing where you're thinking, like, I worked on a document, it had whatever this metadata really, but it had whatever content. And then they're going to expand this to Windows Search, meaning he's been there.

[Leo Laporte]

Holy grail for so long.

[Paul Thurrott]

Forever.

[Richard Campbell]

Computers. I often remember key phrase from a document, right? Like some line I use and you don't know if it's in a doc or in an Excel or whatever. Like I don't care. It's like I use this phrase, show me all the things I've ever.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this is bad enough for just a normal person, right? But I have 30 years of archives. I probably write 10 thousands of words a week and I know I wrote about this.

[Leo Laporte]

You should turn it into a podcast.

[Richard Campbell]

Nobody listens to those. It's not a thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's an oral telling of my archives, which technically this has been since 2006. But yeah, I need this kind of thing and I look to see where it might appear. Copilot for OneDrive might be one of those places, right? This might be. Maybe. We'll see. I need for something good here.

[Leo Laporte]

It's funny how long we've been trying to do this.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. Well, listen, one of the greatest moments ever, and it was a real negative for Microsoft was when Apple did a WWDC and they had that. I don't remember his name, that French guy who was running Mac OS 10 at the time. Yeah. And he would just crap all over them and how they were copying Mac and invest in Longhorn, whatever. But they did the. Actually, no, I'm sorry. This was Steve Jobs who did this one. They were talking. I'm sorry, sorry, let me step back. It was Tiger and they said, oh, Microsoft's working on this Longhorn search thing. It's like. Well, like we do search in itunes. We could just do that. And then he did all these instant searches right from the finder, and it was like, oh, kill me now, please. Like, seriously, they just. They just did it, you know, and they didn't use any advanced computer science, you know, blah creative platform. They were just like. They just did it, you know, looked good then.

[Leo Laporte]

But Apple is not notoriously good at search.

[Richard Campbell]

I must say, search is a hard problem. It's very.

[Leo Laporte]

It turns out to be really hard. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, this is what we want. We want to be able to hum a song into our phone and say, what is that song again?

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

The reason. Yeah, so the reason file search is hard is because for it to work properly, it actually, the files need to have proper metadata, and it's hard. And anyone. Look, every one of us has probably at one point or another said, all right, I'm going to. When I import from my camera, I'm going to say, this is Paris, this is Paul, this is Stephanie. And you do that for about two seconds and you give up on it. And then later you search for a picture of Paul and Paris.

[Leo Laporte]

Mary Jo giving Stephanie the middle finger.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, she was giving me the middle finger.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks like. I hate to tell you what it looks like.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, well, in any who. This is, like you said, it is.

[Leo Laporte]

The hologram, hence the difficulty. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

But this is where the machine learning comes into play, is that it can.

[Paul Thurrott]

Figure out the metadata problem. This is the Holy Grail. It analyzes the content, and whether it makes metadata or not, I guess is sort of beside the point. I guess would almost have to. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Make sure that Google Photos does, for instance, so that you don't have to write that in.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. So it's a good idea. I feel like it's going to be solved. I need it like yesterday, but I keep waiting for that to happen.

[Richard Campbell]

It's arguably the best use of this because it is a generalized case. Right. That this generalized language model that understands our world would work very well for generating metadata for whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

I hate to interrupt this fabulous conversation, but I better get an ad in now because we have four and the show is already an hour and a half in. And let's do another one. Let's do another one. What do you say? All right, so whatever thoughts you had, hold them and we will get to those in moments. You're watching Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat, Richard Campbell. So glad you're here. Our show today, brought to you by 1Password. I know you know that name, but they have a new thing that is so cool you're going to need it. It's called Extended Access Management. Now this is for business. Well, let me ask you a question. Do your end users always work? Always, all the time on company owned devices? They never bring their phones or their laptops in. They always use IT approved apps. They've never got plex running in the background. Oh yeah, right. So let's be real, right? How do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on unmanaged devices using unapproved apps, BYOD, et cetera, et cetera? 1Password has the answer. Extended Access Management. And your ears should perk up at that because this really does solve something that's going on in the real world. 1Password. Extended access management helps you secure every sign in for every app on every device. It solves problems traditional IAM and MDM can't touch. You can't put MDM on a contractor's computer. Try and get MDM on my phone. Think of it this way. Your company's security is like the quadrangle of a college campus. Beautiful lawn, nice brick paths leading from ivy covered building to ivy covered building. Right? Those are the company owned devices, the IT approved apps, the managed employee identities. But they're not the real world because there's also on every college quadrangle, those paths people actually use. The mud shortcuts worn through the grass, the straightest line from building A to building B. Those are the unmanaged devices, the shadow IT apps, the non employee identities like contractors and most security tools just pretend they don't exist. They said, oh yeah, you had brick paths. Yeah, well we can handle that. They work only on the, on the nice paved areas and the nice buildings. But a lot of security problems, you know where they happen. On the shortcuts, on the BYOD devices, on the unmanaged apps. So that's why you need 1Password. Extended Access Management. It's the first security solution that brings all these unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy and every app is visible. It's security for the way people actually work. Today now generally available to companies that use Okta or Microsoft Entra for authentication and in beta for Google Workspace customers. So pretty much everybody's going to be able to use this. I think you need to check it out. It is it kind of fills in that missing piece. 1Password.com WindowsWeekly that's the number. 1Password.com 1Password.com and don't forget the slash Windows Weekly. So they know you heard it here. Thank you, 1Password for supporting Windows Weekly and Paul and Richard and the work they're doing here. And thank you for supporting Windows Weekly by using that special address. So they know you saw it here.

[Richard Campbell]

You know that muddy path thing? A UX guy once told me it's called an affordance.

[Leo Laporte]

Affordance.

[Richard Campbell]

An affordance.

[Leo Laporte]

An affordance.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. The actual emergent path.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what I say when I can afford to go to a restaurant. It's an affordance.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't afford an affordance. You can't handle the affordance.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm having an affordance. I need to run to the men's room.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, So I didn't mean to interrupt. I'm sorry. Continue on. Pretend I don't. In fact, watch this.

[Richard Campbell]

Boom.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm gone. Wow. I'm gone. Okay, so Also coming to copilot plus PCs is a super resolution feature in the Photos app. This will be delivered via a Microsoft Store update. Right. So uses the MPU in the computer to turn, you know, low quality, low resolution images into high quality, high resolution images. Yep. Up to 8x supposedly. I guess we'll see.

[Richard Campbell]

Making people look better than they really do.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, you know, we all have those. You get. For some reason, you have like one copy of a photo and it's 1200 by 600 instead of, you know, and it's like, okay, so I, this, I'm eager to try this. If it works, great.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, I have a, you know, I ended up remaking a bunch of the old Microsoft conference logos from like 2000 stuff because they were only 320 by 200. This is.

[Paul Thurrott]

I, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Literally paid a designer to remake at 1080p.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know there are things like this, but there are videos that, you know, from the early days that are, you know, 320 by 240, basically. And I got it. I just. Could we get it to even 720? I mean, I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Everybody wants an HD version of Santa versus Frosty. Like clearly I was.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. I was thinking of like an early Bill Gates video or something. Yeah, yeah. I mean that too. But so, okay. And then Microsoft paint, which on copilot plus PCs today has a co create feature. Right. In addition to the other stuff, just.

[Richard Campbell]

The language they're using. I know it's so anthropomorphic, but Check this one out.

[Paul Thurrott]

Generative fill and generative erase capabilities. So generative erase, obviously, is like magic race or like Google has and Apple's about to have and Apple intelligence, something.

[Richard Campbell]

Stalin specialized in back in the day.

[Paul Thurrott]

Generative fill is a new feature in the Photos app on the new Pixels, where you have. Maybe just make it a simple example. You have like a square photo, but you want it to be widescreen and it fills in, which it feels like should be there. The one that's in the pixel. Surprisingly good. Like it's.

[Richard Campbell]

By the way. By the way. Yeah. Pixel nine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Oh, you got one. Did you get it?

[Richard Campbell]

I got it, yeah, yeah. And sent this and sent to. It came with a box to send the old phone away and it didn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Fit in because it was too.

[Richard Campbell]

It's welling too far. No, I got. I got it in there and it's like, now it's the male. It's the. It's the male's problem. Yeah. Gets out of here.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're like, is this Ted Kaczynski? Because we got your phone and I.

[Richard Campbell]

Didn'T ask for the trade in. You know, I think they were only offering 100 bucks anyway. It's like, it's not going to make any.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, okay. Right, right, right. That's right.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a six. A slightly swollen six.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And that's actually it for the new features. Although Microsoft kind of highlighted some new apps from third parties that are now running natively on arm. There's nothing in here that's actually new to me, but InDesign, Illustrator and Premiere from Adobe LibreOffice 1Password ExpressVPN, and there's another VPN that they're not mentioning here. But all the good browsers, mostly browsers. ARC is on there and I'm sorry, ARC is no, ARC is there? Yeah, ARC's there. Google Drive is coming soon. Vegas Pro is coming soon. Fantastical. Whatever that is, is coming soon. And some other things like that. So good. Okay, that's good. We already talked about the trust stuff behind the copilot vision, and there's no reason to beat that to death. And we also jumped into the recall stuff. So that just leaves us with one final thing. This is kind of a related feature or a related story, rather. I went to a Google event. I guess now it might have been. No, it was a week ago. Feels like it was like an eternity ago because a lot of travel all of a sudden. So new features coming to Chromebook. Chromebook plus, it's like, yeah, who cares? But no, something very interesting is happening, starting with a new version of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, which is now a Chromebook plus device. Big, you know, 15 inch, really thin. If you're familiar with these designs, like, beautiful laptop.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, beautiful. They don't run any software. They're awesome.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. And that's why, you know, and the battery life is fantastic.

[Richard Campbell]

Fantastic as well, especially because you don't run any software on it.

[Paul Thurrott]

So they're changing the keyboard for the first time since the original Chromebook. One of the key.

[Richard Campbell]

They're adding a copilot key. Tell me. They're adding a copy.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're adding a. You're hilarious. Because that's exactly what they're doing.

[Richard Campbell]

So when the Gemini key, I presume.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, they have a different name, but they. But yes.

[Richard Campbell]

What's the icon on it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So you're making me lose my train of thought. When they started Chromebook, they looked at the keyboard and said, okay, there's some superfluous things going on here. And one of the things they got rid of was caps lock and. Yes, thank you. The caps lock is where they put something originally called the everything key, but now I think they just call it launcher. It says a circular icon. If you tap it, it brings up their version of the start menu.

[Richard Campbell]

It's the Windows key.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Basically the version of the Windows key.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But they put it where Caps lock was. Right. So now what they're doing, they're not.

[Richard Campbell]

Going to cause any problems at all.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you know, it's whatever. But now they're turning into something called a quick insert key and this is that context sensitive. It will depending on what you're doing at the time you hit the thing and it will look at what you're doing and do the. Right. Gemini thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

The Launcher key has moved to where the Windows key is and it now is a G. Right. The Google G, which is kind of fun. So I just thought it was kind of interesting that obviously a Google logo key.

[Richard Campbell]

I presume it would pull up Google search, but okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, honestly, you probably could search from there. I'm sure it's just like start where you can start typing and it would do that. But yeah, in some ways this design makes a little more sense because the G key, the Launcher key is where the Windows key is. Right. So that makes sense to me. And then repurposing this key no one wants for anything would be fine. Using it for this is okay. Like, I don't have a. I don't have any quibble. With that. But it is interesting that I've spent the past however many months since they first announced it complaining about this stupid new key and Google's like, yeah, let's do one of those.

[Richard Campbell]

Let's do it. So great.

[Paul Thurrott]

So it's honestly, it's, you know, it's not a horrible idea. It's fine.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But the cynical approach still works, right? What's the worst thing they could do? Make a go copy. All right, let's go there.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're going to do that.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is kind of funny. Okay. Do we need to halt again because of.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I think that was. We did the ad break just as such early, but yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right.

[Richard Campbell]

We can move on so late at the same time. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is a little a catch all for a couple things but starting with some Microsoft 360. Well I don't know if this is 365. Whatever it is.

[Richard Campbell]

We really are discontinuing the headset after all of this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, so I heard. I. I just got some. Some inside info on this and one of the. One of the bits I got confirmed something I've been saying for a long time. So it's nice to hear from someone else which is that when Satya Nadella took over as CEO, he had all the product groups come in one at a time for a mass execution. Basically where they needed to justify their existence on. Right. In two ways. One is you had to make sense financially as a business and prove that you could if you didn't now were you ramping up to that and also that this business could make sense in this new Microsoft which was a cloud company. Right. You have to make sense in the context of this thing that we are more globally Xbox. Infamously Phil Spencer got through somehow. This would have seemed like maybe an obvious one to get rid of. But they're on that strategy now where they have subscription services, a bunch of them. They bought a bunch of gaming studios to help bolster the content that they'll offer through there. And this is the way Xbox can make sense as a business potentially. Right. De emphasize the hardware eventually maybe get rid of it but have this ongoing volume licensing style thing.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't even think you have to be profitable. What you have to show is cash flow. And so turning into finding a way to make monthly revenue will at least postpone your death if not actually keep you alive.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. So with HoloLens. HoloLens is kind of an interesting case. He was actually he was really gung ho about hololens. And to be fair, anyone who sees Hololens or has experienced it would agree it's incredible technology.

[Richard Campbell]

Until ChatGPT came along, this was the future. AR was the future. ChatGPT just changed us, changed the course.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So the bit I heard was basically that to push this out, Microsoft could come up with a few ideas about how this thing might be used. But the strategy was literally, let's just put it out in the world and.

[Richard Campbell]

Someone, somewhere, Alice Kipman did not do that. The correct thing they should have done was published all the APIs, set it loose on developers and let it go. And that's what we did. You had to submit a proposal for markets and he was very particular about where to go.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I'm sorry, but the thing I heard was that to get companies excited about it, Microsoft would do demos of their stuff using Hololens and they would pay for it. And these things cost a million or more dollars each time. What Didela said was, look, we're going to do this for two years and then we're going to go back and we're going to charge them for this. And when they did that, not a single partner agreed to pay for it.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So they were happy to get it for free, but would not pay for it.

[Richard Campbell]

They couldn't see the roi.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this is, this coincides with the time period where they were actually getting ready to ship a Hololens 3. There had started to be rumors about.

[Richard Campbell]

This and it was in the room, they built it, they just.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I mean, but no, I know, I mean, what I meant, what I mean is it, it was being, you know, people were writing about it and it was true, but what they came out and said at the time was, you know, we're actually looking for kind of a bigger breakthrough with the hardware. Yeah, we're going to wait and see how that pans out. But really what was happening was they just weren't getting buy in on this. And so.

[Richard Campbell]

And they. And they got creamed by the US military. The US military completely distracted them with their future warfighter thing. They poured a huge amount of time and energy into it and then the budgets got slashed. Just suddenly all of that effort was for naught.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, the notion of a person with a rifle running around with a HoloLens is horrifying to me, but I don't know, I'd have to go look at the exact timing.

[Richard Campbell]

To be clear, it's not a person with a rifle, is a person with a drone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. Oh, fair enough. Okay, so. Okay. That's okay. So.

[Richard Campbell]

But okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, it's better than a person with a gun, I guess.

[Richard Campbell]

No, they've got a gun. It's just that they.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let me. Stop talking about that. I'm saying things that actually, as I say them, sound terrible to me. I don't mean that. Stop. That's not what I want. But the. My guess here is that there will be third parties that come out with these platforms. Obviously Meta is one. Meta and Microsoft had partnered on this, bringing Microsoft 365 to that platform. Meta, for a while, remember, was selling or trying to sell its own kind of alternative to Microsoft 365. Just like Amazon has tried to foist this kind of thing on the world and that went nowhere and they canceled it. And I'm wondering if this isn't part of it. It's like, well, we have this partner building this thing and if you want this experience, you can get it from them and maybe we'll build software for it. We'll see. But, you know, it was awesome technology and there were some good vertical market demos for sure, but it just didn't, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it's never been a consumer device. It's been a vertical device. I've always equated it to the BlackBerry circa 1998, where you need an army of guys in white lab coats to keep the thing running. And they were expensive as all get out. It's not just that the headset was 3,500 bucks, is that it was $1,000 a month in Azure IoT per headset.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not like any consumer company would try to sell a $3,500 headset. Sorry, Apple's doing that right now.

[Richard Campbell]

How's it going?

[Paul Thurrott]

Probably not very well, but if it ever took off for whatever reason, and of course Apple, I'm sure has next gen designs and whatever glasses down the road, but Microsoft, of course, could target that. It's a very familiar development environment, so if they had to, they could go there. I guess long story short is I'm not surprised this happened. It kind of died the way a lot of Microsoft products die, which is like slowly, without a lot of talking. And then it just kind of happens.

[Richard Campbell]

And it suddenly becomes apparent to everyone we're wasting here.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's just too bad because there were some good ideas there.

[Richard Campbell]

But, well. And I don't think it's over. I think they just killed this device. Like, they haven't talked about layoffs.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, okay. That's a good point. So, yeah, it could be tied to that US army stuff. Maybe we're going to wait and see what happens there. Who knows?

[Richard Campbell]

The waiting for another rev of chip sets makes a lot of sense because that was part of the line. But I think also in general it's the breakthrough piece. And I think you think about the implicit machine learning models that we're building now around marking up documents, identifying the world, all of that sort of stuff. The headset suddenly becomes the input device for those machine models to serve you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, that's true.

[Richard Campbell]

It's basically a dash cam on your face.

[Paul Thurrott]

I agree. The thing I keep thinking back to is when Microsoft was first pushing this and they also had Windows mixed reality headsets for consumers and they were talking about holograms and basically we call ar. I guess Apple came out with something, I think it was called AR Kit. And you would have apps on a phone or an iPad that, you know, we're not as elegant because you're looking at a screen. But you know, I always use the example, you walk into a museum and there's a designer, hello, dinosaur skeleton. And you hold that thing up and it shows you what the animal would look like. Yeah, it's kind of anything. So yeah, it's not the same immersive whatever the crazy part was.

[Leo Laporte]

But remember they're building for the Vision Pro. That was the, you know, they knew what they were going to do. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And it was exactly what you should do, which is you get the API in the hands of devs as soon.

[Leo Laporte]

As possible so you have content. Yeah, but do you think killing hololens is should chill Micro?

[Richard Campbell]

I mean Apple, they didn't kill HoloLens, they discontinued the HoloLens 2.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's dead.

[Richard Campbell]

Which is a five year old device.

[Leo Laporte]

But they aren't doing a HoloLens 3, are they?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, they already built a HoloLens 3. The question is. Yeah, but that's just HoloLens 4. Like what we don't know is next month they announce a new piece of hard hardware.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I'm going to guess no, because why not just wait on this? Why would you do this now? It's tough timing. Maybe it's associated with the life cycle of whatever version of Windows is underneath it. And maybe it's something like that, but.

[Richard Campbell]

It might even be just fiscal, budget, fiscal timing. How do you want to report it?

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know that killing a product like this, having nothing to sell and then coming out a year from now with Tollins 3 or whatever, they Call it makes any sense, you know, but you know, who knows? Look, maybe if it's classes it will make sense. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know. I don't know the answer to it, but it's like I don't either. It is a five year old device. If you're going to get new hardware, you probably should have by now, so.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, that's true if you're German. I'm going to ask you to cover your ears for a moment. You got. All right.

[Richard Campbell]

What are you doing?

[Leo Laporte]

What are you doing?

[Paul Thurrott]

There is a regulatory body in Germany that I'm going to butcher its name. It's Bunder Scott to let the month or something. I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

The good news is they don't even know what you're trying to say.

[Paul Thurrott]

So they don't know how BK Art A. I'm going to just call them. Germany's antitrust authority six months ago announced they were investigating Microsoft to determine. I got to find this exact language. This is classic. If Microsoft as a. A whole was somehow of such paramount significance across markets that it would need to be regulated over and above the EU dma. So they did this for six months and they determined, perhaps unsurprisingly, that yes, Microsoft is that significant. And now they will regulate Microsoft, all of Microsoft, every product and service that they sell as if it was under the gatekeeper clause of the dma.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

Flight simulator.

[Paul Thurrott]

So they're gonna. In other words, if you're. Well, I mean, it doesn't mean they're not gonna be found guilty of flight simulator, Richard. Like, you know, I mean, you know, obviously the weird thing about the DMA for Mike, for the Microsoft guy or whatever is Windows, obviously. What's the other Microsoft product that falls under this? Do you know?

[Richard Campbell]

LinkedIn?

[Paul Thurrott]

LinkedIn? What? LinkedIn.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's because the DMA is a lot about social.

[Richard Campbell]

Social media. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And I guess in, you know, how we just choose to define this market, it's kind of the only social media service for careers and things like that, I guess. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Anyway, I was just asked by a high school to come and do a talk about LinkedIn with them.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, geez. Okay, I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

And we are streaming right now on LinkedIn.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, good. I love LinkedIn. LinkedIn's fantastic. If you can see me through the way.

[Leo Laporte]

I love the picture, Paul, that you put in your blog post of the Bundeskartelamt.

[Paul Thurrott]

Thank you. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

What a beautiful building.

[Paul Thurrott]

I had to use AI to correct this photo to make it look even better than it was originally. There was just all this crap in front of it. It was really strange. So I did generative erase on this and then a little fill.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

But this is building.

[Leo Laporte]

There is a use for that stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's in Bonn, Germany and.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So basically this gives them the. They enacted a log three years ago. Ish. That gives them the power to do this. And the idea is that we will use what, you know, we'll look at the DMA as the guide and we will apply this to other products. So you could maybe picture them looking at teams or just office or being even or whatever. And even though it doesn't qualify to be regulated under the dma, they can choose to do so independently. So. Interesting. It's just interesting. We'll see. And they'll do this for five years and then they'll look at it again and maybe something has changed.

[Leo Laporte]

I wonder if they'll do that to other companies like Apple because many parts of Apple are not big enough, are not enough of a percentage of the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Market to qualify for the dma. I always wonder about Apple in Europe because in my experience, and I don't go there as much as I used to, but the people I know in Europe, a lot of iPhones, you know, in Western Europe. But really I feel like the mix of Android and iPhone is more diverse.

[Leo Laporte]

There are a lot more Android phones.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So maybe there is a case to be made that they're not as dominant or whatever as they are in the United States. I don't really have a good handle on it, but I do wonder about it because, well, let's say they decide.

[Leo Laporte]

The iPhone is obviously the Mac is not. MacOS is not. But then they could under the same strategy, say, well, we're going to keep an eye on macOS as well.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, macOS or Apple has a monopoly of. On macOS. You know, I mean, you could define the market however you want, I guess. It's still millions of it.

[Richard Campbell]

Definitely should be. Apple run other operating systems on Macs.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's a great answer. Yeah, I mean, I. Yeah, I'm.

[Richard Campbell]

If I'm Microsoft out of this circuit, what do you do? I think nothing. You wait to see what they bring.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because this doesn't mean anything.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft's record here is pretty good. It's better than Apple's. And what I mean by that is, you know, confronted by the gdpr, they said, look, this is going to be hard to implement. It's going to take a little while. We're just going to do it everywhere. It doesn't make sense to maintain two versions of this stuff. We'll just do the right thing everywhere. Right? I like that Microsoft doesn't always get it right like that. I'm not trying to be overly complimentary there, but if there were. Well, they're not doing it with Windows 11. Right. So if you're required by law in the EU to do certain things with Windows 11, to me, you should just do those things everywhere. And they're not doing that. So there's a. There's no.

[Richard Campbell]

And then I mean, going all the way back to Windows N. Right. Like, yep, there's Windows. It wasn't a right thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

This one's for the craziest.

[Richard Campbell]

And so is the pulling teams out of Office.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. Although I will tell you that the. We just renewed all our MVP licenses and the MVP license for your E5s.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Does not include teams. But then they gave you a separate license to go get teams.

[Paul Thurrott]

That one Teams was free.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't understand.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, yeah, so it is when it's bundled with Office. Right. So.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. But then the EU demanded it be unbundled from Office.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, see, that's the. They actually technically didn't demand that. They just said, we'd like you to make some changes. And then Microsoft said, okay, what would you like us to like? They'd like you to make some changes. So Microsoft lowered the price. They.

[Richard Campbell]

They didn't like that.

[Paul Thurrott]

I guess it wasn't enough. They pulled teams out. They just did it. And they're like, all right, there you go. Like, yeah, no, we don't like that either. And there seems to be some feeling that this is the rare example of the EU not being very explicit. I feel like they've done a pretty good job about explaining what they want of these companies, but in this one case, they've never explained it and still this day have not explained it. So I don't. They bent over backwards to prevent any sort of action being taken against them by the European Commission in that case. And it did not work. So I don't know. Boy. All right, so about 10 days ago, ish. Microsoft announced the Office L. What is it? Office L long term LTSC long term servicing channel version of Office 2024. This is the in time version that doesn't get updated all the time like the Microsoft 365 version.

[Leo Laporte]

Do they not want you to use this one either?

[Paul Thurrott]

They. They literally do not want you to use this. They are Very explicit about that. We are offering this, do not buy this. And so they obviously skew it, which honestly is a good play on words on my part, if you know what I'm talking about. To be horrible. Right. On purpose.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a little fun. That's good.

[Richard Campbell]

As painful as possible to own.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So for businesses, you know, they have a couple of versions and now for consumers. Well, for consumers, they have one version, Office Home. They have one version for small businesses as well. Office, Home and Business, both of them include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, which is free anyway. The Home and Business includes Outlook, plus the right to use the apps for commercial purposes. They're both licensed for only one PC or Mac. And on the. Well, I mean, obviously Windows 10 and 11 are the only supported versions. So they work on that. They work on the most recent and three versions of the macOS. They require a Microsoft account, which is kind of interesting, and an Internet connection. And someone looked into this because they were like, wait a minute, what's happening here? And I guess you have to. It does a heartbeat check every once in a while just to make sure your license is good or whatever. So it will go into some kind of reduced functionality mode if you're offline for two months or whatever. You just get to check in with the home office every once in a while. So same basic features we talked about 10 days ago, that new default Office theme, which is. Isn't that new, but it was new a couple of years ago. Open document 1.4 support, yada yada, it doesn't matter. It's not very interesting. But these are the versions that you buy when you don't want to get a subscription. And maybe you're a normal person, you have one computer. See, to me, I look at this, I'm like, oh, I couldn't do this. This is crazy. But I do like the idea of a thing that's not going to bug me to save to OneDrive because OneDrive is not part of this. Can I look at the code somehow and just maybe make that change in the version I do have? I kind of like the idea of that.

[Richard Campbell]

Like a certain Registry key that Marks found.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm convinced there's something. It has to be somewhere. It's controlled somewhere.

[Leo Laporte]

It's this. What is this? I didn't hear about this.

[Paul Thurrott]

So if you open. So I don't use OneDrive folder backup and I have my own system for doing things. So I like to default save to the desktop. I don't leave anything on my desktop that's not what that's for. It's just a scratch base. Because I write things that are ephemeral.

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's the best way to use a desktop. Not like Stephanie does, where everything's there.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. So I will move my things to where I want them. It's still in OneDrive, right? I'm still using the service. But when you do this with it's painful. It's a multi step process. A very specific configuration. I go into Microsoft Word, tell it I want to save it to the computer and not to onedrive. I want it. Here's the folder. It throws up a banner every time. You know we could be backing this thing up.

[Leo Laporte]

You should save it to OneDrive.

[Paul Thurrott]

We could autosave. Come on, do it for you. You could autosave for the desktop. You're just being a jerk. But it just bugs you all the time. So the perpetual version which they stop using that language by the way. But these limited time whatever they are one PC versions, perpetual license.

[Leo Laporte]

The boxed version.

[Paul Thurrott]

The boxed version I assume is not going to bug you about this because they can't assume you have onedrive so.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I like it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I like it too. I'd like that. That is a buy one.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure.

[Richard Campbell]

There's a register key. We just have to hunt that key.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm going to try.

[Richard Campbell]

Otherwise I guarantee every update resets the key. But you know, whatever it's otherwise every.

[Leo Laporte]

Respect identical except for one byte.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm going to. So I will. That's probably true too. But I will write an app that is a D and certification thing for Windows 11 and part of it's going to be a background service rather just runs reset.

[Richard Campbell]

Reset all those things again.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well it doesn't reset. I'm going to look at it and see if anything changed and when it changes it's going to pop up and show me because I need to see. I want to know when and how this stuff changes. That really irritates me.

[Leo Laporte]

Great project.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that will happen.

[Richard Campbell]

I can't just keeping snapshots of the reg and then comparing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean the problem is that on update there's going to be thousands of changes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. No, I mean most people would probably just want it to make those changes every time, not worry about it. I want to see when it happens. It's important me to figure out.

[Richard Campbell]

You want to know what piece of offensive saw.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So you do like a calculator. You have a paper tape.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. Well and it's personalized. Right. So I mean I'm writing it for myself. But anyone could go through the list of things and say I want this, this, this and this and someone else might have different ones. So it will compare your configuration with the actual configuration and see if anything changed, you know. And I think it's going to show I haven't done it yet. So this is what I'm guessing going.

[Leo Laporte]

To write it in Visual Basic. What are you going to write?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's going to be in cobol.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's Please.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's going to be a C app. Well, it's probably going to be wpf, honestly, because it's disease for me. I'm just so used to it now.

[Leo Laporte]

I couldn't do anything else after your net.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is net. Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

Last one.

[Leo Laporte]

Before you do that, let me do.

[Richard Campbell]

A pause last piece for the break.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no, I see. But okay, go ahead.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a goodies.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's quick on this week in intel is doomed. Bloomberg reported that arm. Arm, the company like the company arms offered to buy Intel.

[Leo Laporte]

Not the whole thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Nope.

[Paul Thurrott]

The product group, which a little bit of it.

[Richard Campbell]

The right thing means they buy the right thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

The chip design part, I guess the chip designs.

[Leo Laporte]

Not the fabs. Just no foundry.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Which is what ARM is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well.

[Richard Campbell]

And Qualcomm wants the foundries. Qualcomm wants the fabs.

[Leo Laporte]

They want the fabs.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, this is the thing is this is what happens when a company like this unravels. Is there a home for all the pieces? Like I think for ARM to come out publicly and say this now signals to someone to signals to a big private equity firm. We have homes. Let's go cut up it.

[Leo Laporte]

Put it in play. Basically.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Intel.

[Leo Laporte]

All we need now is Carly Fiorina.

[Paul Thurrott]

To run it and have a. I have a blue iPad or what is it called, an ipod. No one else is going to have it.

[Richard Campbell]

But you know what happens to old companies who can't modernize is that any.

[Leo Laporte]

Of this will happen.

[Richard Campbell]

Just a question of timing. It's the. This comes down to price.

[Leo Laporte]

The good thing about a breakup like that is you don't have the issue. The monopoly issue. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

No.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Makes it a little easier to get regulatory also.

[Richard Campbell]

And plus arm's a UK company, which the SEC is going to be a whole lot happier about.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, the fact that it almost doesn't matter what that company is because I think the chip design part, I think most people are going to say who cares? It's the fab thing they need to keep in the United States.

[Richard Campbell]

No I mean there's an argument for what's itar here, what needs to be protected. But that doesn't mean you don't create a US subsidiary. All of that is trivial. But the bottom line is the chips need to keep flowing and separating those entities. There's a strong case for this, Will. This is what Gerstlinger was talking about the first place. If you separate these entities, you will actually get more better intel chips in the process.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, this was the argument for splitting up Microsoft. What would a Microsoft Office company look.

[Richard Campbell]

Like that if they had to live.

[Paul Thurrott]

Offline, targeted other platforms and could do what they wanted, they probably would have gone to the web a lot faster and better with actual offline apps and so forth.

[Richard Campbell]

They were held off of being on the phones for a couple of years because of a certain someone. But anyway, I mean the point here is like to me this play is totally all right. The pieces are in place. Like in comes a large that we've already, we've seen an. We've seen the positioning for an activist share, a board member. We've seen someone interested in the fabs, we've seen someone interested in the intellectual property. Right, you're ready, you're ready now to go fast, pull down a few hundred billion dollars and make the moves.

[Leo Laporte]

So I just want to warn you, if this does happen, we're going to have to turn this attic into a war room. We're going to do a 247 broadcast. We're going to pull people in. This is a huge story. Breaking news. Are you ready? I mean, pulling you both in, it would.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's the. God, it's the end of an era.

[Leo Laporte]

It would be, wouldn't it? It's huge.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're the US steel chip making markets.

[Richard Campbell]

I can see ARM saying it's ARM with Intel inside.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh gross. It's ARM with maybe with x86 IP inside. Maybe this is the.

[Richard Campbell]

Well in airlines. One of the interesting things is a lot of these emulators been hampered by the fact that IBM that Intel has been litigious about it. So emulators could get.

[Leo Laporte]

And there's also the issue of the cross licensing with amd. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

That would have to be preserved.

[Leo Laporte]

I think that's according to the reg. It technically on any acquisition has to be renegotiated. Those agreements do not survive an acquisition.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I feel like that's going to be one of. Especially if it goes to arm. This maybe has to be part of that.

[Leo Laporte]

The only reason ARM would want them. Yeah, right.

[Paul Thurrott]

But you know, ARM probably has Qualcomm.

[Leo Laporte]

Licensing with AMD as well, I would bet.

[Richard Campbell]

Possibly.

[Paul Thurrott]

But AMD is an ARM licensing.

[Richard Campbell]

But the reason that AMD was brought into existence was to provide an alternative supplier. And if you've got ARM able to emulate the instructions that perfectly, there's your alternative supplier.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good point.

[Paul Thurrott]

So ARM is suing qualcomm because their X86 emulating Snapdragon X chips are not being, you know, not giving them an extra license fee or whatever it is.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

ARM has its own ideas about PC type designs based on arm. Right. They have their own reference designs. If they could get intel x86 rights, they would then have something superior and might force Qualcomm to bite because otherwise their competitors will have it and they'll have some advantage.

[Leo Laporte]

All your future computers will be arm based emulating x86.

[Paul Thurrott]

I have to say, it just popped into my brain, but the thought that ARM might be doing this just to screw over Qualcomm is especially delicious to.

[Richard Campbell]

Me and it totally makes sense. And it's what good competition looks like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

This is interesting. So you think this might happen?

[Richard Campbell]

I think unless a new CEO comes in that can actually write the ship, intel needs to become what these guys are offering.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, that was what Pat Gelzinger was.

[Richard Campbell]

Talking about and was planning and possibly the best way to do it is to cut board.

[Leo Laporte]

Just hasn't given him enough time.

[Richard Campbell]

I think. He can't move the ship. The ship's too heavy and slow. Right. You mentioned the one way to. So you have a choice with these ships. You either cut them up or you let them hit an iceberg like one or the other.

[Paul Thurrott]

And neither of us is great.

[Leo Laporte]

But if the US government would let that happen, honestly.

[Paul Thurrott]

But if the AMD relicensing had to happen, maybe that's something that is being discussed now and has to happen before we can say, okay, now we're going to.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the option where you send a high level emissary from the government in to say, boys, this is too important to our national security. This is how it's, this is how this is going to come down.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I think from the US government perspective, they're going to say, yeah, we don't care about your stupid ip, you just have to make fabs.

[Richard Campbell]

So, you know, you kind of need.

[Leo Laporte]

To remember the chip prevents IP from going to China. Yeah, there's, there's, that's also considered a, you know, a national asset.

[Paul Thurrott]

I want them saddled with Intel's last generation designs you know, why are these phones running so hot? But my phone has a fan. What's happening, you know, that's the perfect thing to happen to China.

[Leo Laporte]

14 nanometer or nothing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

And there's such a good case for. They could actually bring. You know, you do have the government emissary who just makes sure that the FTC signs off on it, that these legal constraints are taken care of. But you facilitate graceful dismantlement.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what. That's absolutely possible. Yeah. Right now.

[Richard Campbell]

And that's why you do these public announcements. Right. Like you put that out there to show these pieces are in place. None of this is a surprise.

[Leo Laporte]

I think also it's so technical and inside baseball that you're not going to see a lot of coverage of it. Maybe here is the only place it's going to be delicate, but it's going to happen.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I mean, I think everyone has this vague idea that intel is this thing. You know, I was just reminded of this today because my mother.

[Leo Laporte]

It's U.S. steel. It's exactly as you said, Richard.

[Paul Thurrott]

My mother asked. It's okay. My mother one time who doesn't understand my job asked me how Microsoft was doing. I think she might think I work there. And I said, oh, they're doing good. And then she said, what about that other company? And I'm like, what? She goes, remember, it was Microsoft and then it was the other company. I said, Apple. She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, those guys. I'm like, yeah, they're doing great.

[Leo Laporte]

How are they doing?

[Paul Thurrott]

They're the biggest company on Earth.

[Leo Laporte]

Paul, is your job secure is what I really want to know.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I think for a lot of people, that's intel too.

[Richard Campbell]

Biggest one, right.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's like this vague, you know, like they're a thing. Like people might think that.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it just our crowd that says Wintel and stuff like that?

[Richard Campbell]

It's pretty much, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, probably people. I mean, that's why intel had those stickers on all those laptops that said intel and that's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. And that probably helps with people like that. Might be the association aware of that?

[Richard Campbell]

That mostly Windtel is a term from 2001. Right. Like it's. It's been 20 something years, man.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hey, windows is a term from 1985. What's your point? You know, I mean, I. Yeah, I don't know. Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

That's okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is, this is big. I. I mean, whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

Make a note of this. Now, intel rejected the buyout offer, but.

[Richard Campbell]

As well they should. They don't really have a Choice until the board tells them otherwise.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. Or the shareholders, they could go. Arm could make it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was going to say it's the shareholders that. I mean ultimately it's going to be the problem because if you want to do send every signal you can that you're in control, everything's good.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we're going to be fine. Pay no attention to that giant.

[Richard Campbell]

You have to present a completed plan. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

This is really good.

[Richard Campbell]

But again, you use these public pieces just to put all to show. Okay, this is where the plan came from. We were keep it a secret. It was out there. Right. But we had to put all the pieces together.

[Leo Laporte]

Juicy. I'm looking forward to.

[Paul Thurrott]

You could wake up any day. That's the thing. This could happen to an announcement tomorrow. Could happen six months from now.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, appreciate.

[Leo Laporte]

We're going, we're going to the. We're going to the. Oh, look at this stock chart. Wait a minute.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're like, you're like, like a news organization that like proactively writes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we want bad news.

[Paul Thurrott]

An obit for some celebrities.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm writing the obit right now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's, let's, let's go to the one year.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Boy thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look at that.

[Leo Laporte]

Holy kimole.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look at is two years. What's two years like? It's just the.

[Leo Laporte]

There was a climb, climb, climb until the peak early 2024 and then it has been downhill all year.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

So something what happened at the beginning of the year.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sure.

[Leo Laporte]

People believed him. This is the. I believe Pat Gelzinger is going to make the transition growth. And then this is. Oh, it's not gonna happen. Isn't that interesting?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. It's not great.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. I mean if you believe that the stock market is the wisdom of the crowds or something.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is. I don't believe that but it's, it still establishes the worth of the company matters. You know, I actually wish it was. I wish it was.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, this is why it's in play. Because the price is so low. That's why it's in play.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. It makes it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. The sharks are circling, of course.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Makes it feasible to have enough cash to be able to do the maneuvering here.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow. Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. I don't normally follow, you know, finance like that because I'm, you know, I'm, Yeah, of course use myself from investing in any of these companies, but still.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's fascinating.

[Leo Laporte]

It is. This is like barbarians at the gate.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's tough. It's, it's hard. It's not good. You know, every company that was once like big and important, you know, word perfect, Ashton Tate, all the companies that Microsoft killed, these companies talk about long time ago.

[Richard Campbell]

That is not Lotus. This is more Standard Oil. This is.

[Leo Laporte]

I think you're right. Isn't this Standard Oil? This is. This is a massive wow.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's. You take apart the old guy because it's not running well.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the book you should write. Richard, we finally found your book.

[Richard Campbell]

No, please, no. Well, I got enough pressure on. The book says.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, I used to pester Mary Jo to help write me a book. Maybe I should start doing that to you.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

Because writing with you is a pleasure.

[Leo Laporte]

So I think that would be great. I'd buy it. Speaking of books, my son's book came out.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah, I watched that show. I saw him in action.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, here it is. Salt, Hank. A five napkin situation.

[Richard Campbell]

It's so great.

[Leo Laporte]

He's gonna be on in our this week in Google. We're going to talk to him about the book. He's on book tour right now. Look at that. Pickled onions book tour in San Diego.

[Richard Campbell]

Photography is gorgeous.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's a gorgeous. It's really not. It's food porn. It's not a cookbook. Yes, it's a book to make you go, I need to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's, that's, that's how I design Windows everywhere. You know, it's the same thing. It's just porn.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, sure. Windows porn.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's a picture. There's a picture of an image. Intel 8086 processor.

[Richard Campbell]

I should be taking.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, baby.

[Richard Campbell]

Should be taking more photos of these whiskey bottles through this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you could do that. You absolutely could do that. Hey, let's take a little time out now. I can. Because we're going to do the Xbox segment and that's coming up next as you continue through your journey through the land of Wintel. But first, a word from our sponsor. It's actually about Intel. Well, with two L's Intelligence. Our show today brought to you by Flashpoint. You know, governments have intelligence agencies to keep an eye on flashpoints around the world and what's going on. As a business, you need the same info. You need Flashpoint for security leaders. Oh boy. This has been some year, right? Just look at the intel stock. 2024 has been a year like no other cyber threats. Physical security concerns have continued to increase. In fact, I bet a lot of you listen to Windows Weekly specifically because you're trying to get that intelligence and now look. Oh man. Geopolitical instability. Adding a new layer of risk and uncertainty. All this affects your business. I mean, I'll just give you a few numbers. Last year, a staggering 84% increase in ransomware attacks. That's almost double. 34% jump in data breaches. And that means trillions of dollars in financial losses. Threats to safety worldwide. This is serious stuff. And this is where Flashpoint comes in. Flashpoint empowers organizations to make those mission critical decisions that will keep their people and assets safe. You can't make decisions unless you've got the information. By combining cutting edge technology with the expertise of world class analyst teams, the best in the business. And with Ignite, Flashpoint's award winning threat intelligence platform, you get access to critical data. Finished intelligence, you get alerts, you get analytics. And it's all in one place, all under one roof. Ignite from Flashpoint. Maximize your existing security investments. Some Flashpoint customers avoid $500 million in fraud loss annually and have a 482% ROI in six months. Not a surprise. Flashpoint earned Frost and Sullivan's 2024 Global Product Leadership Award for unrivaled threat data and intelligence. As an SVP of cyber operations at a big US financial institution. You would know the name. I'm not allowed to say it. They said Flashpoint saves us over $80 million in fraud losses every year. Their proactive approach and sharp insights are crucial in keeping our financial institutions secure. They're not just a solution, they're a strategic partner, helping us stay ahead of cyber threats. You need this. It's no surprise Flashpoint is trusted not just by mission critical businesses, but by governments worldwide too. That's. That's true intelligence. To access the industry's best threat data and intelligence, visit Flashpoint IO today. Flashpoint. Flashpoint IO man. Write that down. Make that. Put that on your top of your to do list. Flashpoint IO. We thank him so much for supporting Windows Weekly. Of course you support us when you go there. Flashpoint. I. Oh, I think people listen to the show for intelligence too. They may be disappointed, but I think.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm so sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I think this intel thing, for instance.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Big blip on my radar all of a sudden. Yep, very interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

Especially the Xbox news, that is. You need.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's why I listen. As a. As a.

[Richard Campbell]

Don't we have an Xbox thing now? Didn't I hear one?

[Paul Thurrott]

There's a. There's a reason Richard does the whiskey thing after Xbox. And this year it's been painfully obvious Richard, are you.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you. Are you implying that you might have created something for us?

[Richard Campbell]

No, I thought. I thought Kev had it.

[Leo Laporte]

Kevin, do you have. Is that it? That's not much. Can you do better than that?

[Paul Thurrott]

Listen, if this was my wake up alarm, I'd still be asleep. That's pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

Do it again, baby. Oh, this is the backwards Halo theme. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. If it's. You play it backwards. It says Xbox is dead.

[Leo Laporte]

It is not dead. And it's time now for the Xbox segment. Do it again, baby.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not a lot of great news this week, but there was a Tokyo Game show. So Microsoft showed off a bunch of new games that were coming to Game Pass. None of these really jump out at me. They're remastering the original Starcraft and Starcraft 2, so those are coming to PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate. This is actually one of the other problems with Game Pass because with Game Pass standard, they're not getting a lot of these new games day and date. Right. So as they announce these things, they're also announcing games that are coming to Xbox Game Pass standard that are actually older games that have been elsewhere before, whatever. So there's just nothing. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

It's hard to get excited about both new and old in one.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I know. Bunch, there is something. Something that Indiana Jones game is coming on December 9, which I feel like we knew, but I don't know. Like I said, nothing super, super exciting sticks out there, which is a good segue to this next thing because they just announced the first Game Pass games coming to. The first games coming. Coming to Game Pass for October and will be the show 24. So that's a good one.

[Richard Campbell]

One year after the acquisition.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, yeah. How did I write it? Finally, I wrote first Game Pass titles of October reveal a bonanza of Activision titles is what I wish we were discussing, but it's not what happened. Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Somehow they feel like they're turning Game Passes into a humble bundle. Right. It's like where you get your old titles from.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, that was actually the original strategy for it, oddly.

[Leo Laporte]

But, yeah, so, yeah, the Show 24.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So the Show 24 and Open Roads are actually two games that were previously made available on Xbox Game Pass, but now they're coming to Game Pass standard for the first time. So these are. These are two examples of older games coming. Not. Not old, but games that launched day and date originally on the old version of the subscription and are now coming to the version.

[Richard Campbell]

I like this strategy. You've Run out of games to deploy. So you create a new standard for what Game Pass is and then you slowly move the games over to them to have a new release schedule. This is brilliant.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. Brilliance is a strong word.

[Leo Laporte]

It's brilliant.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then other games. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Genius.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Inscription. Mad Streets and Sifu.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I don't know. Starfield has been. It's been a year. How long Starfield been a couple years. Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

Seems like more than that. I love Starfield.

[Paul Thurrott]

I feel like it might be. Yeah. So there's a new DLC coming for. It's called Shattered space, the story September 23rd.

[Richard Campbell]

So, yeah. More than a year.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And that's coming. Xbox consoles, PC and Game Pass. Game Pass. Now it's going to be so hard to even explain. Will it come to Game Pass standard on day one? I think not, but I guess we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this a hit? Is it a hit? Or did we expect more from the creators of Elder Scrolls and Skyrim?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know it's hard to say. I do think Game Pass, with its day one thing has kind of muddled the water a little bit. When you bring a movie that might have gone to Netflix or I'm sorry, to the theaters and you just put it on Netflix or Apple TV on day one. And is it a hit? I mean, I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Somebody built a spreadsheet about how much money they were throwing away by putting it on Game Pass and everything has changed.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. I don't know. I don't know. It's getting hard to gauge these things, which I think, honestly, from the perspective of these companies might be part of the plan. I mean, maybe it's better if we don't know. Because they get to control the narrative? No, because they can kind of control it. You know, I don't know. And then this. I wasn't sure where else to put this. This happened just. Or I became aware of it just before we started the show. But former Microsoft executive Jay Allard is joining Amazon, where he's going to report to. Former Microsoft executive. Yeah, little cult.

[Richard Campbell]

A little cult's being built inside and they own a. This is awesome.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Richard Campbell]

Weird.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's.

[Leo Laporte]

Did Allard work for Penne that.

[Paul Thurrott]

No. No, he did not.

[Richard Campbell]

So alerts Allard's older school than Penne is.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, he was a big shot, right? He was. What did he run? Windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

He was the CTO and something else of Xbox for many years. He's most famous, stupidly, for the courier tablet that never came to Exist that.

[Richard Campbell]

Was killed at the last minute because it didn't have email.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, the last. So the fun coincidence there is that courier was killed by Stephen Stanofsky, who was Panos Panay's old boss.

[Leo Laporte]

So it all goes around, comes around.

[Paul Thurrott]

But here's Gerald's real claim to fame. In 1994, he tried to convince Bill Gates that the Internet was real and we need to start paying attention to it.

[Leo Laporte]

That's where I know the name.

[Paul Thurrott]

And Gates ignored him, and he finally Internet tidal wave happened.

[Richard Campbell]

Silverberg was in on that too, back in the day.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, no, he wasn't the only one. But, I mean, but he was. But he penned the original. He explained it in plain English. And you know, how to distribute it around the company. We need to do this. And he was an early voice.

[Richard Campbell]

Listen. But listen, that's not a bad team to revamp the Alexa stack.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

A set of outsiders, you know, they might even had a little cortana contaminant, and they're now trying to figure out how to turn that into a product that Amazon cares about. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So another Microsoft coincidence. The reason Amazon has a lot is because a guy named Charlie Kendall, who used to be com and whatever else at Microsoft, actually Media center, home server, a bunch of stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

He was in dev Dev for a while too. He was. Great guy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah, no comm is. He was basically. He was. I don't want to say architect. It's kind of a story.

[Richard Campbell]

One of the comm gods.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think he was one of the com gods. So he tried to get Microsoft to do what became Alexa, and Mike didn't see a use for it, so he left and went to Amazon. So there's a whole little circle of inbreeding going on here that is not necessarily healthy.

[Richard Campbell]

Small group. Really. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting. All right.

[Richard Campbell]

I presume Panos recruited Alard.

[Leo Laporte]

Must be. Huh?

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, that would be my presumption.

[Paul Thurrott]

Mary Jo is the one who told me about this, and my. My response was, that's insane. And then who is reporting to who?

[Richard Campbell]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, because.

[Richard Campbell]

No question.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So I guess it's jail. Jay Allard is reporting to.

[Leo Laporte]

An answer.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm pumped. Are you pumped?

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, I'm as pumped as I could be, I guess.

[Leo Laporte]

I want you to go to an event with your electricity in your hand and have Panos take it from you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Right. And then a programmer to only respond to his voice. He's such a jerk.

[Leo Laporte]

I think we're due for a voice assistant. That is better.

[Richard Campbell]

You know what? And Alard got out at the darkest time at Microsoft and he got out in 2010.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what I was trying to just look up. So that.

[Leo Laporte]

What's he been doing since?

[Richard Campbell]

He had like a business for law enforcement and.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, it was for. Yeah, it was for. But it was a company that was. Could recover stolen bikes, which sounds kind of. Sounds kind of weird. He worked at Intellivision for one day.

[Leo Laporte]

This is not good.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

I can see Panos coming to him.

[Paul Thurrott]

He's what we would call a serial entrepreneur.

[Leo Laporte]

You can help people recover their stolen bikes or you can change the world.

[Paul Thurrott]

I like it.

[Richard Campbell]

Did you just want to make sugar water for the rest of your life?

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. You figured out what I was talking about. All right, let's take a little break. Back of the book coming up, we got a tip of the week, an app of the week, a runners radio pick of the week, and then brown lickers back baby never left. Well, okay, if you want to be pedantic about it, that's Richard Campbell on your right. In between we're making a Paul Therat sandwich and you are watching Windows Weekly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Soft Nuggety center, today's show.

[Leo Laporte]

He's tasty, isn't he? He's tasty. Our show today, brought to you by Melissa, the data quality expert since 1985. I've been telling you about Melissa for a long time. If you have data, you need to keep it clean. It decays, it erodes, it gets bad over time faster than you might be thinking. But Melissa can help. Whether you need the full white glove service or just the nuts and bolts, Melissa is the best choice for your enterprise. For data cleansing, Melissa has helped over 10,000 businesses worldwide harness accurate data with their industry leading solutions processing over, get this 1 trillion with a T addresses, emails, names and phone records. Melissa offers integrations and apps and platforms and spreadsheet editors like Microsoft 365, like your Google Sheets, your Dynamics 365 S3 Stripe Shopify, you can have it in it. So when you're doing the data thing, it automatically checks it, corrects it, augments it. Melissa makes it easy for you to cleanse and standardize your data within popular platforms you're already using. That helps improve roi. That optimizes business efficiency and I gotta be honest, it elevates the customer experience. Customers don't like getting four catalogs to the same address. Customers don't like it when you misdeliver their products. Be sure to check out Melissa Marketplace. There you'll see an amazing selection on demand access to premium third party data. You can use it to improve campaign performance, to enhance your data visualizations to drive better business decisions. Some of the resources just as an example. I mean it's a big the marketplace has got all sorts of stuff, but there's consumer property owner and business contact data broken down by industry, location, job title and over 400 other attributes. There's a global address database, a master list of get this 200/million 200/million verified US Postal Service addresses, coverage for 40/plus countries as well as well as USPS carrier route and boundaries, zip code data, parcel boundaries, other location data for the US and Canada too. Melissa now offers transparent pricing for all its services so you don't have to guess you know exactly what it's going to cost when you're estimating your business budget. And you'll be glad to know that your data is just as precious to Melissa as it is to you. Melissa's services use secure encryption for all file transfers and an information security ecosystem built on the ISO 27001 framework. They adhere to GDPR policies, they maintain SOC2 compliance. Of course they do. Your data is gold. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com twit melissa m e l I s s a melissa.com we thank him so much for supporting Windows Weekly. You support Windows Weekly too when you go to that address. Melissa.com twit back of the book time. Let's kick things off with Paul Thurat's Tip of the Week.

[Paul Thurrott]

So Microsoft has made Windows 1124H2 available, which means you can now go download the ISO. Unless you have an ARM computer, but that's coming. So just Google download Windows 11 ISO to get to the site. If you're on Bing, you'll probably get there eventually and there's a bunch of different options. But the advice here, or the tip so to speak, is that you should have some kind of external recovery media of whatever kind you can make a recovery disk in Windows. But I actually think it's better to use the Windows 7 I'm sorry, the Windows 11 installation media.

[Leo Laporte]

Use the Windows 7 installation.

[Paul Thurrott]

It would probably be faster honestly, it hasn't change change much oddly. But yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So the one that burn a new driver.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah so if you have one, you should always have at least one like a usb C whatever. Yeah, it's time to refresh. That is the is the point. And maybe you need the ISO for other reasons for VMs or whatever, but that is Available now, so you should grab that.

[Leo Laporte]

As soon as I get my Snapdragon Elite Developers Kit, I'm going to burn myself an ISO of Windows 24H2.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you? I don't trust you.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe something else. I don't know. We'll see.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, well, so Adobe announced and released the latest versions of Photoshop and Premiere Elements. So these things are, you know, 99 each new, $79 an upgrade or as a bundle together for 149, I would wait for a sale. They're always on sale or not always on sale.

[Leo Laporte]

But this is not a subscription product.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, this is the, you know, again, they don't call it this, but the perpetual thing. So you can. Premiere is still not available through the store. So if you buy it through the Microsoft Store, the Proto Shop version, you get that nice liberal licensing thing where you can put it on up to 10 computers, which is really nice. 10? Yeah, yeah, it's good. So the version on that you buy directly from Adobe or from wherever else is limited to two, I believe. And you have to, you know, it's the type of thing we have to deactivate it and remember to do that. But just it's. It's the stuff that's in Photoshop that is like normal people would need, you know, so they have some of the generative IRA stuff and you know, the ability to adjust or create a depth of blur in a photo that doesn't have it or.

[Leo Laporte]

So a lot of the AI stuff is migrating into elements that. Interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So I think elements based on many, many years of experience, I would say is the type of thing you upgrade maybe every second or third year. You know, you don't go year to year to year. It's not always that big of an.

[Richard Campbell]

Update, but if you're gonna go down that path, you get Creative Cloud, right? Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, if you never want to stop paying Adobe, they actually, they have that plan a month, something like that. It's a lot of money. Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but, you know, it's. What do you need? Right. If you want all the bits and you want to be up to date, that's the big one. Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, this is for.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm surprised they still sell standalone software like Cloud, Creative Cloud or nothing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think. I'm surprised they make Premiere Elements, honestly. Photoshop elements I can make a case for because it's just kind of a standard need, but maybe they just sell enough of it. It makes sense.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's a gateway drug.

[Paul Thurrott]

It gets people Started.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it's gateway drugging.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that could be.

[Richard Campbell]

And I'm sure there's 101T inside those softwares. Oh, that's part of the whole product.

[Paul Thurrott]

I really want a little yellow banner appears. You know, if you get to save this to Adobe Cloud, you can, you.

[Richard Campbell]

Know, and I bet you anything that will apply your $99 immediately, too. That's three months of creative Cloud for.

[Paul Thurrott]

Your month and a half of.

[Richard Campbell]

That's it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or whatever. Creative Cloud. Yeah. Maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

I can never remember if I have a subscription to Adobe or not because I periodically get angry.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And cancel it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And then I go, oh, but I need it. And then I resubscribe.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I would argue we're on this path. Right. Because it's become very normal now for you to sign up to Netflix to watch a set of shows and then cancel and so forth. Like, those are a little further down the consumer utilization path than these things.

[Leo Laporte]

Adobe knows this. So they charge you when you can.

[Richard Campbell]

They want.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Well, they. A lot of this. They want you to sign up for a year.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. And if you cancel after three months, they still charge you.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, you know who's further down the path? Our New York Times Waypo those kinds of things. Because when you go to cancel those, they immediately offer you a discount year.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's right. I just did this. Yeah. It's kind of amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

But anyone who has had a serious radio, whatever it's called, has done this where they try to charge you the full amount. Talk your way through it. And it's like, all right, I got it. I think they paid me actually to use it. I. It's bizarre.

[Leo Laporte]

I think Ben Stiller should do a show called the Retention Division.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Where it's all about the people behind the scenes who are there to get you to sign up.

[Paul Thurrott]

You gotta have like. The mole on the inside is like, listen, I don't like what they're doing to you either. I had a person, actually, I had a person at rcn. I finally. They would hang up on me. Yeah. And I finally got through to someone. I'm like, I think they're overcharging me. She goes, they are. You know, it was unbelievable.

[Leo Laporte]

This is good.

[Richard Campbell]

This is good.

[Leo Laporte]

I think we see a new Apple Plus TV show.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go.

[Paul Thurrott]

They are Retention division.

[Leo Laporte]

You thought you were out, but you are not.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're never getting out. You're never getting out.

[Richard Campbell]

We're keeping you now. When I canceled the cable Internet service here to switch to the Fiber. It's like, can you tell me why you're canceling? I'm buying a faster product for less money and. Any questions?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you know, though you could I say, like, I died, I moved. I've tried everything.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm calling for Leo laporte. He's dead now and he doesn't want his Comcast. I must have told this, but I could give it to you for 99 cents a month.

[Paul Thurrott]

When the Jehovah Witnesses would come to the door, my friend Gary, who got me into writing, would tell him he was all set because he was a Masonite. And the first time he said it, I was like, masonite? And he goes, yeah, it's a countertop. But they always felt. They were always like, oh, that's great. They thought there was like a. I don't know what they thought. Like a Mennonite. Maybe like a Mennonite or something.

[Leo Laporte]

A Masonite.

[Paul Thurrott]

A Masonite.

[Leo Laporte]

You're a kind of a Korean. Myself, but okay, fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

I've reached the level of coriander, granted, all the way.

[Richard Campbell]

I like my countertops radioactive.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. Richard Campbell. Yes, Run as radio.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I got an adult show this week. I've talked to Nikki Chapel, who's a fellow podcaster, actually does a podcast on the governance of M365.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, wow.

[Richard Campbell]

It's called the M365 Compliance Podcast.

[Leo Laporte]

If I need to get to sleep sometime soon, I will.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, this is about being a grown up. And a lot of sis admit that's their job. Right. And we dug into the classic one for, you know, there's a big. A lot of pressure right now on turning on Copilot for M365, but it includes that little phrase, you have to make sure your data estate is in order.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, God.

[Richard Campbell]

And so it's like, what does this mean, really? And to Nikki's credit, like, she knows exactly what it means. Here you go. First off, knowing you will never be in order. Right. It's a path, just like every other security requirement. All you're doing is trying to be better. And it involves tools like Purview. And in general, especially at the beginning, because she does this for a lot of companies. Like the 80. Pareto's law says it's mostly about retiring old data, about at least moving it into something that identifies as an archive to be left out of Co Pilot's machination because it just causes problems. And we also dove down this, you know, pick a small project, pick an internal project, like if you're going to, if you're going to do this. And so you just taking off pieces of the organization like HR and getting it well organized and then maybe that can be co pilotified and so on. So it was very constructive to have, you know, to talk to someone who's really done it for a bunch of organizations to say this is what it means to move down that path and have more confidence that you're this thing you've, you're, you're this thing your employers always presume you have. Squared away. Data governance is closer to squared away. That's all I got.

[Leo Laporte]

That's all.

[Richard Campbell]

That's it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, then I think you have earned your brown liquor pick of the week time.

[Richard Campbell]

I was looking back through the list and I realized a couple of couple, three times now over the past couple of months I've been. Because I've been reorganizing here. I dug into, you know, a stash of whiskey and I, I think I had this Russell's on the shelf there stored away in a box because it moved with us for a couple of years, maybe three. So it's an excuse to open it up and take a taste. And you've never heard of it, I imagine. Russell's Reserve is a bourbon. It is one of the, it's in fact the only secondary brand product owned by Wild Turkey. I've never talked about Wild Turkey on the show before. It's one of your sort of, well, kind of whiskeys. It's one of the originals and it's an, you know, it's got a story behind it like all of them do.

[Leo Laporte]

I always associate it with drunks, to be honest.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, when you think about your basic bourbons, right, like when you talk about real, basic bourbon, what do you talk about? You talk about Wild Turkey, you talk about Jim Beam, you probably talk about Jack as well. Although nominally Jack is not a bourbon because of the maple filtration. It's. But these are all kind of, well, they're well whiskeys. They are basic, basic whiskeys that are reasonably priced.

[Leo Laporte]

Are they good?

[Richard Campbell]

Often? Mock. Well, that's a great question and I'm glad you asked it. Right. In this particular case where you talk about the story of Wild Turkey and I'm going to spend a lot of time on it because we're not actually talking about Wild Turkey per se, is a gentleman by the name of Thomas rippey back in 1891, builds the old Hickory Distillery outside of Lawrenceburg. They survive Prohibition but kind of lose their brand. They kind of go away from that really, as they get back into distilling bourbon in the 1930s, they're just selling it to wholesalers. And this is where an organization called Austin Nichols, named for the man, is one of the largest wholesale wholesalers of the whiskey that's being made by the Old Hooky distillery. And then in 1940, an executive at Austin Nichols, a guy named Thomas McCarthy, takes some of the samples of the versions that the, that the Old Hickory distiller is making with him on a turkey hunting trip. And they're good enough that his friends keep asking him for that Wild Turkey bourbon. This might be an apocryphal story. Nobody can really nail it down.

[Leo Laporte]

Sounds like it.

[Richard Campbell]

But that's where the name sort of comes from. And so, I mean, it's important. The fun part is thinking here. This staple whiskey was originally made by a company that was not doing their own distillation. Austin Nichols created the labels and actually ran that as a business for several years, buying from the other distillery until they finally purchased the distillery in 1971 and named it the Wild Turkey Distillery. That didn't last for very long. Nine years later, Pernod Ricard buys it. That's one of the big conglomerates buying up alcohol all over the world, although they spun it off to the Campari group in 2009, and that's how it's resided ever since. And that's. There's a dozen, maybe 18 different versions of Wild Turkey you can buy. And we're not going to talk about any. We're going to talk about Russell's instead, because Russell's is actually about a man, a guy named Jimmy Russell. Jimmy Russell went to work for Austin Nichols in 1953 and he still works there.

[Leo Laporte]

What?

[Richard Campbell]

His son has joined the company. He's been a master distiller now for 60 plus years. His son has been a master distiller for 20 years. And back in 1998, the company basically said, if you want your own label, we'll produce it for you. Russell's Reserve is literally the mass distiller of Wild Turkey. Still making his own whiskey from Wild Turkey. So their first Release was in 2001. You don't make a whiskey that quickly. It clearly was just directly from the Wild Turkey collection. And it was a 101. This is basically the 2005 style, which is a 90 proof, 45% ABV. They also make a rye. So literally the same mash bill. You know, if there's anything you can complain about with Wild Turkey, it's that it's Awfully sweet. And there's a reason for that. The mash bill is 75% corn, 13% rye. That's your flavor grain. And 12% barley, which is a relatively high amount of barley. But with that much corn, you kind of need more barley because you need the amylase from the barley to digest the corn and make it into ethanol instead of methanol and poisoning people. So if you're going to run corn that high, you got to run barley high, which is one of the reasons this thing smells like candy, right? Like it is sweet. Sweet. Yeah. You know what? Lucky Charms has nothing on this. It's very sweet. It's not burning at all. A little bit of heat comes down real nice. Like, not a lot of spice to it. It's pretty harmless.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like a sugar drink. It sounds like it's like soda pop.

[Richard Campbell]

Except it's 45% alcohol. Now, part of what they're doing here is that they only. Their new make when it comes off the line is only at 55%, which is very low. Typically you barrel it in the early 60s. 62 is common. So, you know, one of Turkey's claims to fame is that they only come up to 55%. And there's another reason for that, which is they use more of the run. So when you think back to when we were talking about how they do distillation with this idea that you have heads, hearts and tails, Right? So the initial thing that comes out of the still is pretty bad. It's the heads. And you don't use that directly. It's. You don't want to drink that stuff. It'll make you go blind. You put it back into the mash and it gets recycled. The heart is the part that you're going to keep to actually put it in.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you slaughtering an animal or are.

[Richard Campbell]

You talking about what is that entails? Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And that'll kill you.

[Richard Campbell]

And with the tail, the heart is good.

[Leo Laporte]

What happens to the tail?

[Richard Campbell]

The tails is when the alcohol level starts to tail off and you start to get more of the longer congeners. And so, you know, some distilleries focus on a very narrow heart. Right. They use less of the overall thing now, and especially in bourbon, you would take everything that's left over all those heads and tails and put it back into the still. It's part of the sour mash process. But in the case of Wild Turkey, and I think this is an optimization point, and it's one of the reasons their alcohol level is so low. They keep a lot more of the tail in, so they produce more alcohol per run in the process at a lower level, which is a little easier on the barrel too. Which is also why they, you know, their barrels sell very well because they haven't had a lot of the flavors pulled from the wood near as much. So it's the. What makes it a reserve then. Knowing this is literally Wild Turkey is where the barrels come from. So there's only one. There's a set of rick houses. They're all the same at Wild Turkey. They're seven floors high and they're wooden and stacking on and so they're horizontal mounts. And Russell's comes from the center floor. So the higher floors tend to be hotter. So they lose.

[Paul Thurrott]

They.

[Richard Campbell]

They lose faster. Lower floors tend to be slower. So they're literally of the seven floors they're pulling from three, four, and five for everything that's in the reserve. And that's why it's also 10 years old, which is not normal for bourbon. Bourbon tends to be in the five year range. It's a pretty old bourbon compared to most. Again, very sweet. You know what I would do with this? I'd be making cocktails with it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I noticed they kind of emphasize the boulevardier and stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

And the boulevardier is great. You know why? Why? It's got Campari in it, which is a bitter.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah. To cut the sweet.

[Richard Campbell]

Cut the sweet back a bit. On the other hand. And so this is a special edition, like regular turkeys. 20 bucks a bottle. This is 40. So arguably, if you want that sweeter mixer, I'd buy this. It's a nicer bottle than the regular turkey. 45% is a good number to come in in and it'll mix nicely. It's usable. There's nothing wrong with this. Put this in. You put this in your. Well, as a little higher class than the turkey and make yourself some good bourbon cocktails and you'll be happy drinking it neat. You know, you might as well be sucking a lollipop.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's the seven. A picture of the seven stories. Wow. That is.

[Richard Campbell]

There's Jimmy and Eddie. Yeah, that's Jimmy and Eddie.

[Leo Laporte]

Jimmy and Eddie.

[Richard Campbell]

Mm.

[Leo Laporte]

There they are.

[Richard Campbell]

There they are.

[Leo Laporte]

Eddie Russell of so and Jimmy. Look at Jimmy. Jimmy's been doing this a while.

[Richard Campbell]

A long time. More than 60 years. They're. And they're. They're both in like the bourbon hall of fame. Like, they're both seriously successful, you know, great whiskey makers.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's really cool.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But enough a father and son working together and nothing bad to say about that. It's all good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So listen, this is not my, you know, I'm a neat drinker most of the time. This is not something I'm going to pick, but it's a nice little well elevation. It's going to go on in my liquor cabinet.

[Leo Laporte]

For mixing Russell's Reserve, it's Wild Turkey for fancy people.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go. He nailed it. Nailed it.

[Leo Laporte]

Very good as always. The whiskey segment's always the most fun. Thank you very much. Richard Campbell for pleasure. Great stories and pictures and the website is worth checking out too. The Russell's Reserve. But that's about it for this edition of Windows Weekly. I hate to say it, but our time has come. Paul Thurat, you're heading down from Dallas to is the conference you're there for over.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. It ends. Yeah. Today's long term.

[Richard Campbell]

Your tech, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. So people's chance to see you is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is diminishing. They're having a party tonight, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Go to the party if you're in.

[Leo Laporte]

Dallas and then you're on to your home in Mexico City, which is great. I'm jealous. That'll be fun. You'll find Paul's work online@the rot.com he doesn't matter where he is. He's always filing. Always be filing is his motto. T H U r r o doublegood.com his book books Windows Everywhere. The one with all the pictures.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's a picture book. I went a different direction.

[Leo Laporte]

History of Windows through its development environments. Lots of pictures. No, no pictures. But a great book, a great read is [e-mail] along with the must have for everybody who has Windows 11, the field guide to Windows 11 with Windows 10 built in. Actually, that, that one does have a lot of pictures, but they're screenshots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, Paul. Have safe travels and we'll see you next week. From Mexico. Richard Campbell is of course the host of two fabulous podcast shows, Run as Radio and Net Rocks. You'll find them all@run as radio.com also a much in demand public speaker who is heading out soon.

[Richard Campbell]

It begins. Yeah, this weekend I'm headed out. I've got a couple of days in the Netherlands doing a keynote there. Perils and promise of AI.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh boy.

[Richard Campbell]

But also doing a talk on the future of power. And whenever I do that talk, I include the power grid of that country. Oh, interesting to talk about how it's evolving. So I've been studying for the Past couple of weeks, the Netherlands power grid and it's my favorite.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just like a terrorist would.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. No, I pretty much know pretty much all the pieces now. They have a. Exactly one.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know where all the vulnerabilities.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I think this is just fascinating. So you're an autodidact and they bring you in because of your ability to absorb and synthesize information and deliver it in a. In an enjoyable way.

[Richard Campbell]

That's it. But it's really great. On the Wednesday next week, I will that morning fly to Ibiza. So in theory, if everything goes well, I will be in Ibiza for the show.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. The Bees Club, Netherlands are exactly the same.

[Richard Campbell]

Basically the same thing. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Where they. At midnight they fill the entire club with foam and it's just a real fun time.

[Richard Campbell]

I. I am there to do a wedding renewal for the couple that convinced me to do weddings in the first place. It's their 15th anniversary and they do a renewal every five years. But we're doing it in an ABBA theme, so goodness knows what I'll be wearing for the show.

[Leo Laporte]

Mamma Mia.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

There may be silver lame in my immediate.

[Paul Thurrott]

Fernando, Richard.

[Leo Laporte]

Richard Campbell.

[Paul Thurrott]

Richard. Fernando Campbell.

[Richard Campbell]

And then I'm going on from there to NDC Porto and then over to Warsaw and then home.

[Leo Laporte]

How exciting it'll be. You're gonna have a great time. Well, we will talk to you in all those places, I'm sure.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I hope so.

[Leo Laporte]

Every. We do Windows weekly every Wednesday, 11:00am Pacific. That would be. Let's see, that would be 2:00pm Eastern Time.

[Richard Campbell]

8:00 at night in Ibiza.

[Leo Laporte]

8:00 in Ibiza time. If you're in Ibiza, you'll enjoy it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, it will be well before you're going out to the club, so no problem.

[Leo Laporte]

Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. If he comes back foam covered will know.

[Paul Thurrott]

You look kind of shiny. Richard, is there something we need to know?

[Leo Laporte]

You can watch us do this show on seven, count them, seven different streams. Now the best one is my favorite is the club Twitter Discord. If you're a member of the club, seven bucks a month. Of course you can always listen after the fact that ad free versions of our shows, which is in and of itself a valuable thing. But you also get access to the Discord where there's a really great group of people conversing a conversation about all the things that we do on Twit. And you also can watch the show there live and talk with people behind the scenes. But that's just one of seven streams there's also YouTube.com twitch live, there's Twitch TV, twit, there's Kik, there's Facebook, there's LinkedIn and there's X.com so pick the place you want to watch. 754 people watching live right now. We appreciate of that, but the vast majority of people find it easier to watch after the fact. On demand versions of the show available at TWiT TV WW. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to Windows Weekly. And of course you can always subscribe in your favorite podcast player and get it automatically. Windows Weekly Audio, Windows Weekly Video. Just search for the one you want and Club Twit members. You know where to go to get your ad free versions. If you're not yet a member of the club, we'd love to have you. You. It's a great way to support what we do. If you like what you hear here. If you for instance, make any money at all on intel breaking up, you should say spend some of that money at Club Twit. Twit tv. Club Twit. We love having our members. Lisa Laporte. Yes. Oh, we have a new feature in our club which we just announced. I actually, I don't know if we've announced it. I might be the first to tell you about it. We now offer you additional time in the club if you refer it. How much do they get if somebody joins? A month free. For every person that joins, up to 12 months free. So here's a way to subsidize your Club Twit membership. Get a friend to join. It's good for us, it's good for you, it's good for America. Again, Twit tv.

[Paul Thurrott]

You had me. You had me right till the end. I don't. It's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's good for everybody. I'm running for office. Sure. Twit tv Slash Club. Twitter. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Richard. Safe travels to you both.

[Richard Campbell]

Thank you, friend.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll see you right back here next Wednesday for Windows Weekly. Bye bye.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's better over here at&T customers switching to T Mobile has never been easier. We'll pay off your existing phone and give you a new one free.

[Leo Laporte]

All on America's largest 5G network.

[Paul Thurrott]

Visit t mobile.com carrierfreedom to switch today.

[Richard Campbell]

Pay off up to $650 via virtual.

[Leo Laporte]

Prepaid MasterCard in 15 days.

[Richard Campbell]

Free phone up to $830 via 24.

[Paul Thurrott]

Monthly bill credits plus tax.

[Richard Campbell]

Qualifying port and trade in service on Go 5G next and credit required.

[Leo Laporte]

Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance and required finance agreement is due.