WW 903: Absolutely Seamless! - Swag store, x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, Jameson

Summary

Windows Weekly (Episode 903: Absolutely Seamless!) – October 16, 2024

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell
Release Date: October 16, 2024
Podcast Description: Windows Weekly delves deep into Microsoft’s expansive ecosystem, covering everything from consumer products to enterprise solutions, AI advancements, and Xbox developments.

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1. Snapdragon Dev Kit Unboxing and Setup

Leo Laporte introduces the episode with excitement about receiving the Snapdragon development kit for Windows. The trio—Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell—joins him to unbox and set up the device.

• Unboxing Experience:

  • Leo reveals the Snapdragon dev kit, noting its resemblance to a Mac Mini with a power brick.
  • Discussion about the absence of a direct HDMI port: "There is no HDMI port on the case. But look at what comes in the power supply. It's a USB-C to HDMI adapter." ([04:17])

• Device Specifications and Initial Impressions:

  • Paul expresses skepticism about the device's hardware: "This thing looks like a utilitarian router." ([07:02])
  • Discussion on the device being powered by "Snapdragon Elite X" and the potential for different cores: "Let me see if it says anything. Yes. Snapdragon X Elite." ([09:21])

• Setup Challenges:

  • Leo struggles with the Windows setup on the Snapdragon device, particularly with the mandatory feature updates: "You'd probably experience the extended out-of-box experience where it installs the latest feature update whether you want it or not before you can touch it." ([08:10])
  • Paul likens the mandatory updates to an "unpleasant experience," comparing it to a "prostate exam." ([08:26])

2. Intel and AMD Form x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group

The hosts shift focus to a significant industry development: Intel and AMD's collaboration to form the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group.

• Purpose and Participants:

  • The group aims to standardize x86 implementations to counter the growing dominance of ARM architecture in various markets.
  • Paul highlights the group's members: "Dell, Lenovo, HP, Red Hat, Oracle, Microsoft... Tim Sweeney and Linus Torvalds." ([10:16])

• Implications for the Industry:

  • Paul discusses Intel's strategy to simplify the x86 architecture by removing outdated elements, enhancing reliability, and reducing die size: "Their goal is to simplify the resulting die... make these things more reliable as well." ([13:36])
  • Richard speculates on the potential dismantling of Intel to satisfy regulatory concerns: "The simplest solution might be to dismantle Intel." ([14:16])

• Competitive Dynamics:

  • The collaboration indicates a desire to preserve competition within the x86 market, ensuring both Intel and AMD can continue to innovate without overstepping legal boundaries.
  • Paul notes, "This is ensuring that competition survives. We're setting up a structure where both Intel and AMD can continue to compete." ([17:32])

3. Windows 24H2 Update and OneDrive Synchronization Issues

A substantial portion of the discussion centers on the problematic Windows 24H2 update, particularly its impact on OneDrive synchronization.

• Update Installation Problems:

  • Leo experiences repeated delays and errors during the update process: "This has resulted in an unprecedented list of problems even in the short history of Windows 11." ([41:03])
  • Issues include significant space discrepancies, frequent blue screens with certain SSDs, disappearing cursor in text fields, and prolonged update times: "8.63 gigabytes of space missing... blue screens... vanishing mouse cursor." ([41:30])

• OneDrive Sync Challenges:

  • Leo encounters extensive synchronization of OneDrive files, leading to sluggish performance: "I have to let it go, see what happens." ([87:38])
  • Paul provides troubleshooting steps to manage OneDrive, emphasizing pausing syncing and managing backup settings to mitigate issues: "I recommend clicking Learn more and then click Not downloading the previous terrible Windows and ARM computer you used to have." ([54:14])

• Impact on User Experience:

  • The update's forced nature and integration with OneDrive create a frustrating out-of-box experience, overshadowing the device's potential: "This is my life. How are you guys doing?" ([16:39])

4. Passkeys and Passwordless Authentication

The conversation transitions to the evolving landscape of authentication, focusing on passkeys as a step toward a passwordless future.

• Current State and Adoption:

  • Paul explains that passkeys are per-device but cites efforts to standardize portability across ecosystems: "Third-party passkey managers are working on making these things portable." ([93:08])
  • Leo expresses frustration with multiple authentication methods: "This stuff is confusing. This is the world we live in." ([119:54])

• Industry Movements:

  • Companies like Google and Apple are advancing passkey implementations, with Apple enabling cross-platform sync via iCloud and Google integrating passkeys into Chrome: "Google is bringing this capability to Chrome." ([95:23])

• Future Implications:

  • Paul anticipates passkeys becoming the default authentication method, reducing reliance on traditional passwords and enhancing security: "I think the spread of passkeys will result in more online accounts giving you the option and maybe one day mandating that you do not have a password." ([94:20])
  • Richard adds that passkeys streamline the authentication process, making it more user-friendly: "Passkeys are the most convenient form of passwordless." ([94:02])

5. Xbox News and Activision Acquisition Updates

The hosts touch upon recent developments in the Xbox ecosystem, particularly concerning Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

• Activision Blizzard Acquisition:

  • Paul highlights that despite the acquisition being a year old, tangible results are limited: "Microsoft has had a lot of layoffs this year... but we also have this week is the one-year anniversary of the Xbox, the Microsoft acquisition of Activision." ([116:59])
  • Discussions revolve around integration challenges and the slow rollout of new features post-acquisition.

• Game Pass Expansion:

  • Paul announces that several Activision Blizzard titles are being added to Xbox Game Pass, including Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and Modern Warfare 3: "We are finally getting some Activision Blizzard games on Game Pass this month." ([118:57])
  • Leo and Richard express skepticism about the performance of cloud gaming for these titles but acknowledge the expanding library: "It's like an alternative to the Google Play Store." ([118:54])

• Console Refreshes:

  • Paul expresses disappointment with the lack of substantive updates in Microsoft's recent console refreshes, noting minimal design changes and minor power efficiency improvements: "They never really discussed that before... they can make these things even." ([114:29])
  • Richard concurs, pointing out the underwhelming nature of the refreshes compared to industry standards: "It's disappointing on those levels." ([114:29])

6. Whiskey Segment and Tips of the Week

The episode concludes with a lighter segment focusing on whiskey, particularly Jameson Irish Whiskey.

• Historical Overview:

  • Richard provides an in-depth history of Jameson, tracing its origins back to the 18th century and its evolution through regulatory changes and ownership transitions: "By 1821, John Jameson II has taken over... by 1891, they incorporated the company." ([136:18])

• Tasting and Recommendations:

  • Leo and Richard share their appreciation for Jameson, highlighting its versatility and smoothness: "I really like Jameson... It's incredibly versatile, unpretentious, and it is good." ([147:55])
  • Paul discusses the nuances of Jameson's production, including triple distillation and its impact on flavor profiles: "All Irish whiskey is triple distilled... smoother or stripped of any substantial character." ([148:41])

• Whiskey Verse Playlist:

  • The hosts mention a curated "Whiskey Verse" playlist created by their producer, featuring various scotches and whiskey-related content, enhancing the show's community engagement: "We've put together an entire playlist of his scotch because there's quite a few now." ([149:22])

Notable Quotes

• Paul Thurrott: "This thing looks like a utilitarian router." ([07:02])
• Paul Thurrott: "It's like the plain Windows logo. You get kind of a Surface-like experience." ([08:23])
• Paul Thurrott: "Passkeys are the most convenient form of passwordless because you don't need another device." ([94:02])
• Paul Thurrott: "This is ensuring that competition survives. We're setting up a structure where both Intel and AMD can continue to compete." ([17:32])
• Leo Laporte: "I might just turn off OneDrive right out of this system." ([98:35])

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Conclusion

Episode 903 of Windows Weekly delivers a comprehensive discussion on critical developments within the Microsoft ecosystem, including hardware innovations, strategic partnerships between Intel and AMD, and the ongoing challenges with Windows updates. The conversation seamlessly transitions into the future of authentication with passkeys and delves into the nuances of Xbox’s recent moves post-Activision Blizzard acquisition. Concluding with a heartfelt appreciation for Jameson Irish Whiskey, the hosts balance technical depth with personal insights, catering to a diverse audience keen on Microsoft’s multifaceted landscape.

For a more interactive experience, listeners are encouraged to engage with the hosts through various platforms, join the club for exclusive content, and explore the curated Whiskey Verse playlist for enthusiasts.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Therott's here, Richard Campbell's here. And you know what else is here? It came my Snapdragon dev kit for Windows. We're going to set it up, install it and fight OneDrive to the death. All of that coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is twit.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Episode 903 recorded 10-16-2024. Absolutely seamless. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hey dozers. Hey winners. The show where we talk about Microsoft with these cats right here on my over there.

[Richard Campbell]

Directions are hard.

[Leo Laporte]

Paul the from THOT.com he is of course the major domo there and his books [e-mail] today. He's broadcasting from a minorte in beautiful Mexico City. Hello, Paul.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hello. Hola, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Hola. What's the. What's Spanish for Paul?

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. Well, I just so Pablo. But I used to say Paul, you know too, I like Pablo.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm going to call you Pablo from now on.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm the second most famous Pablo. Pablo Therat gonna go down in the same way too.

[Leo Laporte]

And then to his other side is Mr. Richard Campbell from Run asradio.com and.net rocks and or I, I'm as I call him Ricardo and he is coming to us from Portugal today.

[Richard Campbell]

Portugal? Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Tell us you're in Porto.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. So when last we were together I was in Ibiza for the ABBA party. So I was in silver Lemay.

[Leo Laporte]

How was that? You did. You wore silver pictures or it didn't happen?

[Richard Campbell]

Oh no, there are pictures. I'm just not gonna post them here.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

But yeah, fantastic party. We had such a ton of fun. And then we left on Saturday, went to Lisbon, spent a couple of days.

[Leo Laporte]

Love Lisbon. Love Lisbon.

[Richard Campbell]

Ate all the octopus and then. And then we. Yesterday we took the train down to Porto and straight into a nice seafood place. It was a 40th birthday party for a friend, so got a 40 year old port for her. As you do heaven. Yeah. And. And here I am today. Did my first talk this afternoon. The nuclear power talk. So good. I'm ready to stream. And I got my notes together and I picked up whiskey based on what we were drinking in Ibiza.

[Leo Laporte]

And before we go too much farther, I want to show you something.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, did you get your shipping notice?

[Leo Laporte]

More than a notice, my friend.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

How does that happen?

[Leo Laporte]

The snapdragon dev kit is here. Did you Richard, I got a Ship.

[Richard Campbell]

I got my shipping notice, but of course I'm not home. It's got across the border.

[Leo Laporte]

Can I. Can I unbox it?

[Richard Campbell]

Absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. This is exciting. I'll show you.

[Paul Thurrott]

I didn't expect to do this until February.

[Leo Laporte]

I know it was saying January.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay, January.

[Leo Laporte]

They want for YouTube. I have to do a little thing. Yeah, okay. You got it. Our YouTube thumbnail, requested by Kevin. This is the. Let's see. I guess I should put it under the. I have a special camera for just such occasions. First time we've used it. First of all, look at this envelope. What is this? Is this something exciting in here? An invitation.

[Richard Campbell]

It says, thank you for being a developer.

[Leo Laporte]

Welcome. It does. It says, congratulations on purchasing the Snapdragon dev kit. Get ready to take your development skills to the next level. I wonder if they support Lisp. And then here.

[Richard Campbell]

Does anyone?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, actually they do. I could put Lisp on this. There she. There she is. I actually pre unwrapped from plastic. So this is. It's kind of like a Mac mini. Let me get the box out of the way here and I can. I have it set up so I can plug it in while you guys talk about other things.

[Richard Campbell]

That's fantastic.

[Leo Laporte]

To answer the question.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Let's look at some. Let's look at that HDMI port that I. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So you asked a question about the HDMI port. To answer that, there is no HDMI port on the case. But look at what comes in the power supply. It's a USB C to HDMI adapter.

[Paul Thurrott]

I bet if you open the box, you'd see a port, though. That's.

[Leo Laporte]

I will. I'll take it apart. I don't want to do that on the show today, but I'll take it apart. There is on this side a opening for the fan. In fact, you can see inside, there's a little copper.

[Richard Campbell]

Cooling heat sinks.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. Heatsink on the back, there's ethernet. There's the power adapter. It has a big brick.

[Paul Thurrott]

This thing looks like a utilitarian router.

[Leo Laporte]

It does, doesn't it? It's black. Black.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

VantaBlack. It's got two USB.

[Richard Campbell]

A type threes, but no covered up HDMI port.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like.

[Richard Campbell]

No, they may.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I'm wondering if it's not a piece of hard plastic.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but it would show. We'd have a seam or something on it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there is something on the front that maybe is related. Okay, so here's the front with another. Another Thunderbolt.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's Thunderbolt. It just says 2.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's HB USB 4.

[Leo Laporte]

Slash USB 4.

[Paul Thurrott]

They just don't have the certification.

[Leo Laporte]

On, off switch and then this, which is a weird cover.

[Paul Thurrott]

It looks like a micro sd or.

[Leo Laporte]

It is, it's micro sd. But it's weird that they, they're covering it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Why would you do that? Why would you say that?

[Leo Laporte]

So I wonder if that has something to do with. I don't know, I don't know what that is. That's weird. And then the light for power underneath. More, more venting.

[Richard Campbell]

All we know for sure is that their shipping scheduling software does not work.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Evaluation only. Not FCC approved for resale.

[Paul Thurrott]

Interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, well remember, this was the issue. They didn't get FCC approval apparently for the hdmi. So maybe you're evaluating it, Leo, that's why I am only. Well, it is exactly what I'm doing. I'm evaluating it. So I have, I have a K. You know, I have attached the HDMI and I've got a keyboard and a mouse and I'm ready to, to do this. In fact, let me, let me get my HDMI cable over here, plug it in to their adapter because who knows, maybe this is a proprietary. No, it's not braided cable though. It's nice. It's a nice adapter. I'll put that in the front of it.

[Richard Campbell]

They definitely went for the fancy adapter.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So this is exciting. I'll plug it in and fire it up and. But so yeah, presumably yours is awaiting you when I get home.

[Richard Campbell]

I, when I do a three week trip, I do hold mail. Like.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's smart.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's just too much stuff. And generally, generally speaking, I, the local post office, they'll keep stuff for a week for me. Like I just tell them I'm going to be away for a week. Don't clog up the boxes.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

But at some point they need to start sending stuff back. Unless I put in a hold mail.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the brick. Reminds me of the, of a Lenovo brick. And it is unfortunately proprietary. Well, not. It's that I. You couldn't call it proprietary. It's a, it's a plug.

[Paul Thurrott]

You could probably buy a replacement pretty easily, but you'd have to figure out exactly what.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not proprietary. This is a, this comes from the well known Hunt Key company.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I love those guys.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. It actually is labeled on the back 19v DC. So yeah, obviously it's not, it's not proprietary, but I wish it were my bill. Do I wish it were type C powered? I mean, maybe not. Maybe I not.

[Paul Thurrott]

You wouldn't want to take up a port, Honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right. Yeah. On a laptop maybe, but not on a. Not on a desktop.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't mind this brick.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know. Those are. I bet the USB power supplies that are that big are kind of expensive still. AM I?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. 200 watts is about the limit on PD, so it's coming in at 180. That's pushing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, good. I will. I'll fire this up and we'll do the cool. The welcome experience. It'll be just like a normal Windows machine, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Well, I mean, it should be.

[Leo Laporte]

Who knows?

[Paul Thurrott]

Actually, you'll probably experience the extended out of box experience where it installs the latest feature update whether you want it or not before you can touch it. That's. That's. It's nice.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good. That's a good thing, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

It's a required thing. It doesn't matter. It's. It's like a prostate exam, Leo. You know, we know you don't like it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not a good thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's happening, but you need. So you know, it's all right.

[Leo Laporte]

I didn't mean to hijack the show, but I just am so excited. We've been talking about this since we ordered them in July. Yeah, the last.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can assure you this will be the most interesting thing we talk about today.

[Richard Campbell]

Once I get home. We could do an all Snapdragon show, right? Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm using Snapdragon right now.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is the equivalent of a Copla plus PC, right? Is it?

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is. Actually. That's a good thing right there. I wonder if you get that stuff so we'll find out.

[Richard Campbell]

Just running.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

It says powered by Snapdragon Elite X on the front. Oh, you can't really see that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Also, we should find. What's the. Which chip is it? Is it the highest end one?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because if so, those are pretty rare. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me. Let me see if it says anything. Yes. Strap Dragon X Elite. But you would only know by the number of cores, right? Is that how you would tell?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you can. Yeah. If it doesn't say on the box, you'll. You'll be able to tell when you get into Windows.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I don't. It may say, but it's so tiny.

[Paul Thurrott]

I feel like it might be the good one.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe you guys can read it. Well, what wouldn't I Mean, that's why the holdup, right? Yeah. What does that say?

[Richard Campbell]

I think the holdup was the FCC losing their minds and having to remove the HDMI port.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but it says not for resale, so they didn't get full fc.

[Richard Campbell]

What did they get?

[Leo Laporte]

So, I mean, I can use it in this. If I plug it in and everything goes dark, then we have a problem. Right, because of the RF or something coming off.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, I'm going to plug it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look at it.

[Richard Campbell]

Now that Leo's knocked himself out of the circuit, should we talk about what intel and AMD are up to?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this kind of came out of the blue yesterday, so to speak. Big blue, I guess. No, it's IBM. So intel and AMD both beefed the same announcement, which was that they are partnering to form something called the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group.

[Richard Campbell]

Why do I never ghostbusters when they say that?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they never mentioned arm. No, once. But this is very clearly aimed at countering arm. Right. So we've got all the major PC makers who are involved. Dell, Lenovo, hp, Red Hat, Oracle, Microsoft, of course, hpe, Broadcom and Meta. Just like throw a. Throw a bone to the kids table, I guess. I don't know. And then two individuals which are also both kind of curious choices or as they refer to them, luminaries. Tim Sweeney, the founder and CEO of Epic Games, and Lindis Torvalds, who invented a little operating system you might have heard of. Name is escaping me. Doesn't matter. Anyway, I will just sidebar and say Linus was heavily involved with Transmeta, which did the translation in a chip stuff to emulate x86, actually. Yeah, well, I'm not sure if it was emulating. I think it was almost compiling it live and running it in real time or something. But in those, Crusoe, I think was the name of the chip transmitter Crusoe, if I remember correctly. So that's kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that was a weird.

[Paul Thurrott]

This was. Jerry Purnell was a huge fan of the one. It was an HP compact tablet PC that ran this chip.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was slower than molasses in January. It was a beautiful machine and in fact was the iPad basically by design, you know, a decade before the iPad came out. But God, what a piece of junk that thing was as far as performance and whatever. But so I'm sure he's. I'm sure he's, you know, he's good for that anyhow. So the point of this, like I said, clearly is to counter ARM. ARM is everywhere except the PC, although they're trying there as well. I mean, x86 has basically lost every market there is for microprocessors. They're still strong in the data center, obviously, but I think we all understand intuitively, like that's going to disappear or at least go, you know, become a minimal thing. And then the PC becomes their kind of last major platform. Right. It certainly is today. So their goal is to kind of standardize x86 implementations. There's only really the two major players that make these things anyway. Right. Like intel and amd. And this is interesting to me. This wasn't mentioned in the announcement and I'm not even sure I wrote about this, but there was a story recently, or I guess intel was just talking about this, that they're actually looking at x86 and removing some of the bytecode or opcode or whatever it is that's in these chips or in the architecture, their IA x86 architectural standard or whatever, because it's dated and there are newer versions of things and it's just kind of there. And the backwards compatibility bit is not important anymore. And so their goal is to simplify the resulting die, if you will, that is created from these designs. Right. So today there's wasted space and we're getting into a weird area with chip design where it's getting so small that you see intel does things like leave a blank space on the die so it can fit. So the rest of it just kind of fits. But they can make these things even. This is part of that kind of size reduction effort, but also simplification and then will help make these things more reliable as well. Right. So you get rid of the older. The older stuff. So that's kind of. I. I assume that's going to be part of this, I feel.

[Richard Campbell]

Let me take you another spin on this, Paul.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

If you were going to dismantle intel and you wanted to keep the FTC calm.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

You would need to spin off the responsibility for certain chip designs into an entity that could be governed.

[Paul Thurrott]

I love how your brain works. I mean, because you're right. One of the big conversations we've had over the past several weeks now, I guess, is anytime we talk about intel and splitting it up, the company, someone always raises their hand and says, hold on a second. They have this license with amd and that thing is immediately cast aside. We got to figure that out. And to me, this was always a solvable problem. But this kind of partnership where these two companies are still going to compete, of course, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yes, of course.

[Paul Thurrott]

But suggests. Yes, exactly what you just said. For sure. For sure.

[Richard Campbell]

This is. We're back to find a home for all the pieces that deals with the legal and trade related issues and this doing it in public covered in different things. So it becomes a fair accompli when you actually go to pull the truck.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Intel might become an equal to AMD from an x86 licensing perspective, if you will. Like this organization might become what ARM holding is on the ARM side and they'll bring these designs and chip makers can build off of them and go on their own directions, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, you could say that this is another example of even if ARM doesn't win in this space, ARM has had its impact. Right. So yeah, that's kind of.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, in any end I still think this is Intel's issue. That intel has allowed themselves to get to this position.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

And quite possibly the simplest solution to it is a dismantle it. But was it Kira in the. In the chat was saying that Bloomberg was talking about leave this till after the election. That's legit. I could see that you don't want a, you know, long term DOW member to get delisted right before an election.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, what. But is it as if whoever gets elected would make an impact on this? No.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, but it's just another thing, you know. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Just another uncertainty, you say.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we have enough controversy this election as it is.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and. And the reality, of course it won't be done by then. I'm being facetious about. They'll delete the list that quickly. It'll. This will be years of work.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It's also what happens to companies when they get old enough that their best. Their parts are sold off.

[Paul Thurrott]

Also if you're watching the show, I just want to warn you now that the last 25 minutes is going to be us playing music and I'm going to be doing an old guy dance. So, you know, just look forward to that. Yeah, we're going to start. There's going to be some weird choices. Yeah, we'll have fun though.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, so this is. This intel x86 ARM or AMD thing is fascinating to me. I wish we knew more, frankly. So we'll see.

[Richard Campbell]

No, but I'm enjoying all this. This is a very interest way to approach this. Right. To kind of do it in public without saying what you're doing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, right. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because. Because if you try and do it behind closed doors, you get these regulator problems. So it's like it's dead.

[Leo Laporte]

It's collusion. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Isn't it?

[Richard Campbell]

Anyway, well, it's not collusion if the government's involved.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah, intel has its own concerns. Right. Things are happening there. Whatever's going to happen, intel happens. There is this thing, like I said, you know, there's this discussion about licensing and whatnot. And honestly, what this is doing in many ways is sort of the opposite of collusion. Although it is 100% collusion in the sense that, well, it's ensuring that competition survives. In other words.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good point.

[Paul Thurrott]

X86 for itself. We're setting up a structure where both of us can continue to compete and. And that's right.

[Richard Campbell]

It's also 100% reversible.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So should the, should the climate change on this, where it's like this is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not, as it were, then should intel have some amazing technical breakthrough in the next 30 seconds somehow.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you know, in. In the form of, I don't know, a hundred billion dollars. You know, they. Then things would just continue and it's like, ah, we know after some, after some reflection, we've realized this committee is unnecessary and it's folded.

[Leo Laporte]

I have to say though, I might just throw in a thought. If you want to take on a competitor, is the best way to do it, to start a committee?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, if you want to beat somebody.

[Leo Laporte]

In the marketplace, is a committee the best way?

[Paul Thurrott]

There are ways to do things right. And this is one of the ones that feels weird because we don't know what the outcome is. But when Google announced Android, if you actually go back to the original announcement, no idea what they were talking about. What they actually announced was aosp. They didn't use the word committee, but it was a. I don't know how they describe it. It was a weird. It was a similar thing. So it's like, so is there a product or what are we doing here? And it wasn't until later when we started to see how Android evolved and then there were phones and so forth. So their first announcement was like, wait, what are you doing? And I think it's purposeful. So I think this is simple.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it a standards body?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, so they didn't say that, but they. I bet the word standard appears in this. Let me see. You know, to kind. Let's see.

[Leo Laporte]

So is there a post x86 standard that competes with AMD?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So they're going to standardized interfaces across x86 product offerings. From intel and AMD. Right. Along with simplifying the architectural guidelines. Right. That will enhance consistency, reliability, etc.

[Leo Laporte]

So when they're talking more APIs, coding interfaces.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, I would assume. I assume so. I mean there's also. So remember, there's also this bit where intel and intel does these other things. Right. So they did. It's interesting. They talked about how they collaborated with AMD on usb, which I don't recall being the case, but they do things like Thunderbolt kind of on their own.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right. They even work with Apple.

[Paul Thurrott]

Thunderbolt is the type of thing where AMD only can belatedly offer it in the beginning. They can't call it that. We have this USB thing. It's as fast as Thunderbolt something something because it literally is that. But they don't have that certification yet. Now they do. Right. So now you can buy AMD PCs with Thunderbolt 4. We just talked about this with Snapdragon. Qualcomm will get that. It is going to happen. But for today, if you ask them, well, is it Thunderbolt 4? They say, well, you know, it's USB 4. It technically provides all of the capabilities of Thunderbolt 4 and you can plug it into a Thunderbolt 4 dock and it works.

[Leo Laporte]

They can't call it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Thunderbolt can't call. You have to pay for that. So maybe this has to do with that kind of interface as well. Right. The outward facing interfaces for. I don't know what you would call this, other hardware architectures or whatever designs. It's hard to say because it's very vague, but they talk. Like I said, the word standard or standardized does come up several times in this document. The introduction of standards, security, vulnerability, mitigation, blah, blah, blah. And they, like I said, work with AMD on developing usb, a vital connectivity standard.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense of x86 is it survived because AMD adopted it. Intel was ready to move away with Itanium.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a version where they could have walked away because Itanium tanked so badly.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, but they didn't know that they were ready to walk away.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, well, they, I don't know that they could have gone forward with Titanium on PC. I don't know. God, that's the ultimate intel going in the wrong direction.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, really. And thank God they had this skunk works in Israel that was working on.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, the core.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. Because otherwise they would have been out of luck. And I Think AMD by continuing the x 80s, I mean, they made it. AMD wanted to make a compatible processor. Right. That was the point.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Well, they had been doing that since the very early 90s, if not. Right, right. I bought an AMD 386 SX in probably 93, 94 maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

Really? That long ago?

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Back when 46 was the current concern and you had, you know, the DX and SX variants and. And I had no money, so I went with an AMD sx, you know, because that's what you did.

[Leo Laporte]

I bought an Eagle PC compatible instead of a compact.

[Paul Thurrott]

It probably two apps too. It's, you know, one of those weird things.

[Leo Laporte]

That thing was so overclocked, it crashed. All the time.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, that's funny.

[Leo Laporte]

All the time. Because they were really trying to beat the. Whatever.

[Paul Thurrott]

I had to use a special boot disc to play Doom on this thing. It was so underpowered, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. So nothing was running except it was.

[Paul Thurrott]

The only thing you did.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You really need that Math Co processor, man, without the Math Co process.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, what I needed was more than probably one megabyte of RAM or whatever it had. I mean, it was some garbage amount of ram, but it's hard. It's hard to even think. It's so stupid.

[Richard Campbell]

So long ago.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. How small?

[Leo Laporte]

Can't. So do you think this will save x86?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Because really the future is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let's face it, the future is the present. It's arm, it's here. I think ARM is inevitable and I think. When? When.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, now you're talking about the other aspect that this committee could really do, which is to license the Caruso.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

As long as we're talking about it, should we.

[Richard Campbell]

You got all the plugs in.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I think they're going to try that. I think that's a big part of it. And I think they're trying to spread x86 to counterarm. But I just, I feel like I said, I think it's inevitable. The last holdout really is the PC and that's just a. That's a legacy workload, really. And you know, and I don't know, you know, there's still COBOL in the world, so it's sort of like that.

[Richard Campbell]

Somebody selling these machines.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not the future.

[Leo Laporte]

So the screen is dark because as you saw Snapdragon and Windows are booting.

[Paul Thurrott]

But it's like the plain Windows logo. You get kind of a Surface like experience There.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's very. Just simple. Okay. Now, just a moment.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So you're gonna go into this white screen with the. You know, the Autobox.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. It wants to know who I am and what I'm doing here.

[Richard Campbell]

Tries to be all friendly. Hi, I'm your creepy piece software.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not Cortana during your skit and scat routine. Little WI fi here, a little WI fi there.

[Leo Laporte]

If you were. If you were just seeing this, you wouldn't know if it's x86 or ARM.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, there's nothing. No, there won't be anything in this whole process that would tell you that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just not.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's kind of the point of Windows, right? I mean. Yes. You don't think about the hardware.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. Hardware doesn't matter.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. That's the right country. Let me see. I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

We do a live bypassing of the Microsoft account requirement. If you.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, should I do that? No, I'm an American. I'm happy. I'm. Do I want. Skip. That's. Why do they always ask that? Why would you have two key. Oh, because you want to speak different.

[Paul Thurrott]

Accessibility, that's why.

[Leo Laporte]

This is WI fi, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

All right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now, this is one of the areas.

[Leo Laporte]

Where you can show this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Run a command line bypass if you wanted to not have this, but there's no reason to. Are you. Oh, you.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, I should connect the. You know, I'm going to go back to you guys because I think I might. Well, I just think I might connect Ethernet and then we couldn't. We can forget that.

[Richard Campbell]

Cables.

[Leo Laporte]

Who knew I got cables and it's got an Ethernet port. Wouldn't that be better?

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, WI fi is also the future, Leo. I wish you would embrace the future.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, I'm going to keep going and I'll connect some more cables.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, coincidental to this partnership announcement, AMD and Intel both announced new chips in the past week. The amd, they're both kind of curious in a way. The AMD version. So AMD already released desktop and mobile versions of their latest architecture. Right, Right. This is a desktop series. Is that true? Yeah, no, sorry. A mobile processor, but for commercial PCs. So this is their version of V Pro, basically. Right. Okay. It's basically what they had before, but with hardware management capabilities built in that IT pros can ignore because it's amd. Who cares? So. But they. Whatever. So they do that. So that's not particularly interesting. Of more interest is the new Core Ultra 2002 series. These are desktop CPUs for AI PCs made by intel, of course, the so called Arrow Lake variant. But it's the first, the first of.

[Richard Campbell]

Those first of the Arrow Lakes. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

The one thing that everyone points out is that this thing has the same NPU essentially that was in the Meteor Lake chips from last December. It doesn't have the new 50 Plus NPU that they just announced for the Lunar Lake processor. What? Gibbs? I actually don't know the answer to this question. In fact, intel alluded to it in their most recent earnings announcement or one of the reasons for their horrible quarter was that they overspent to deliver Lunar Lake faster than they were going to originally. And the inside story is that Microsoft had come to intel, of course sometime in the past year and a half or whatever and said, look, we're doing this Copilot plus PC thing. They might not have known the name at the time. It's going to require an NPU that's 40 plus tops. And intel said we're not going to have one of those for three years or maybe four years, whatever the timeframe was, because they were going to iterate on whatever. Well, Meteor Lake and then whatever the. I guess it was Arrow Lake essentially, you know, we're going to iterate on those things on desktop and mobile. And they were like, well, I mean you can do that if you want, but then you're going to be left out of the party because AMD is doing it and Qualcomm is doing it. So of course intel pushed all, you know, pushed to make that happen and they went with what they correctly perceive as the volume part of the market. So they did Lunar Lake as a new design with this faster GPU npu. Sorry. So what we're seeing in Arrow Lake S, which is this thing is the vestiges of the old tick tock tock talk strategy where this was, this is what the mobile version of the Meteor Lake follow up would have looked like if Microsoft hadn't done Copilot plus PC. So we would have seen the same NPU mobile and desktop. So you know, it's, it was very expensive for intel to do what it did with Lunar Lake. It couldn't afford to do it with this. They lose money on every chip that they sell.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's a, you know, they can only lose so much money. Right. They've, I don't, this has been in the news. They're losing a lot of money.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So it's kind of a problem. And here we are. So, yeah, like, so that explains Dragon.

[Leo Laporte]

That red snapdragon that pops up.

[Richard Campbell]

That's the best part so far.

[Leo Laporte]

So far it's the highlight. Now we're trying to figure out if it's going to install those features that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you have to get by. You'll sign in first.

[Leo Laporte]

There's more. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll let you guys.

[Paul Thurrott]

I just wrote a guide for this if you want to follow along.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that would be nice if I could. I should.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's actually, it doesn't require a guide, but I have a book, so I have to write it. But it's not. It's not complicated.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. I'm going to just see if I can figure it out all by my lungs.

[Paul Thurrott]

I feel like my years of knowledge of you and your capabilities.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel strongly, you know, I'll screw it up.

[Paul Thurrott]

That you're going to screw this up. No, I think you got this now.

[Leo Laporte]

It's doing something here. Wait a minute. Let's see. All right, so I already did that part.

[Paul Thurrott]

Says no Internet connection.

[Leo Laporte]

I just did that. It just did that. It came back to this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, well, can I just connect to the WI fi so we can move this along?

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, I'll let you guys continue because I plugged in an Ethernet cable and it saw it. So I'm very frustrated now that it came back.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, you shouldn't have to. You don't have to leave that screen if you plug in Ethernet. And it's going to work. It will work. Right there. No, there is a little install driver, but there it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Now it senses it. See, it has to sense it. And now it says it. And I don't know who Google, WI Fi or Jupiter are, but actually I.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just said there was a little install driver thing there. There isn't. So. And actually I think the reason is because you have. It did detect WI Fi, so it wouldn't put it there unless you needed the WI fi.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, so I. But see, it says it sees it's connected.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're good. You can discuss.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you're good.

[Leo Laporte]

I can do next. I'm not going to connect automatically to any of those access points. But why is. I don't like the wifi. Okay, see, I think I could open.

[Paul Thurrott]

The WI Fi thing.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like it went back again.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, because you got an update to be able to go get more updates.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, is it updated? Oh, you're going to see checking for Windows updates at least twice in this process.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it already did it once.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the second trip.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, this is the Thing I was talking about, actually, it happens now, so this is going to take about 20 minutes.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is gonna take a long time. If you click next, you can go through a series of screens where it talks about how wonderful.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't have a copilot key.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So this is new. This is new.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that interesting? Because I don't have one because I didn't get a keyboard with this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you sure Order one from this company. You'll get it next July.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want a copilot key.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's how you get it. We won't even be using copilot keys anymore.

[Richard Campbell]

But first they'll tell you, you got it this August.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

The last thing I saw, I was going to get it in January. So I was really shocked when I saw it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can't believe this thing appeared. That's amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

It's amazing. Recall. Yay. That's exciting.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're not stealing. You did it.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so there's a lot of caveats in there. I will come back when it's done. It's downloading. That's why connecting it, though, is a lot faster, I think.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think that's actually it for the x86 stuff anyway.

[Richard Campbell]

You have to tell me why the desktop chips won't make the CO PC spec. Because I want to build one.

[Leo Laporte]

Why won't they? Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no. It's not necessarily true that future ones won't. There's, like, Panther Lake and whatever's coming this year. It's possible that there will be an Arrow Lake, something that does have a faster gpu, but this kind of mainstream chip, which is, you know, remember last year they did the core. I think it was the 14th gen, without any MPU.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think this is sort of that, you know, in that space. It's just.

[Richard Campbell]

It's in that line.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

We're not. But the fact that I could introduce my NPU as a RTX 4090 is not.

[Paul Thurrott]

We'll get there.

[Richard Campbell]

I got me. I got me an NPU. It cost me 1500 bucks and I can kill small animals with it. Right. Like, come on.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft is doing everything they can for the environment, as you know, and including.

[Richard Campbell]

Renting Three Mile Island.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. Hey, I got a question. So they're acting as if I have a copilot plus PC because of the key.

[Paul Thurrott]

And these studio effects are so. Yeah, the key. Fair enough. I would say. Yeah. I mean, you do, right? So Windows Studio effects will work on any PC that has An NPU of any kind. Right. So actually step through there and see if you see any other Copilot plus PC features like Copilot.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. There's quite a few. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. All right. These are all Copilot plus PC translate.

[Leo Laporte]

And caption, audio and video in real time. Recall.

[Paul Thurrott]

Recall, of course. I'm sorry. So, yes. So co creator, it is your PC as a Copilot plus PC.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which makes sense because.

[Leo Laporte]

But I don't need a hello camera or a special camera to do the studio effects.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, what's going to happen? So that's going to be very interesting because you just won't have Windows hello ess. So that's. You'll just have normal window slow. So this is a configuration no one has ever seen. Right. This is not a retail configuration. So it's going to be interesting to see, you know, if you actually get Recall later, for example, like, you're supposed to have to have ESS to get that. So I don't know. It's a Matrix.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm glad to be the guinea pig. This is why I ordered it.

[Paul Thurrott]

If you move away from the Matrix, it looks like a little pile of dog crap.

[Leo Laporte]

When's bullet time start? That's all.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. All right.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is gonna take a little while.

[Richard Campbell]

AD break.

[Leo Laporte]

Ad break while we're doing this. And then we'll come back, we'll talk more about Windows. You're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat, Richard Campbell. We do this every Wednesday and we are now streaming on eight platforms because we just added TikTok.

[Paul Thurrott]

I pledged I would never be on TikTok.

[Leo Laporte]

Too late.

[Richard Campbell]

You are incorrect.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm curious because I don't know what the vertical video is doing. It may be that Paul and I are not on TikTok.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. It's just rich as centers over. We have like a sliver on either side of Richard. You know what? That's what everyone wants to see. Richard.

[Richard Campbell]

Who cares?

[Paul Thurrott]

It's good.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't. I don't. Yeah. Anyway, this is thanks to restream, which we use for the show. We are able to be on Discord for our club members. If you're not a member, join the club because you can watch a Discord, but you can also chat in Discord. YouTube, Twitch, X.com, linkedIn, Facebook, Kik, TikTok. And am I missing anything? I think there might be more. They told me eight Arctic fox. Arctic fox. Sleipnir.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sleipnir.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, this is exciting. So if you're watching live, welcome it's good to have you there. 737 people in here right now watching us do the show live, and they are very glad they're here because I'm going to tell them about something that they need to know about. This episode of Windows Weekly, brought to you by Lookout, our sponsor for this segment. Every company today is in the business really of managing data, right? It's all about the data. That means every company is at increased risk, I'm sad to say, of data exposure and loss you see in the headlines every day. Cyber threats, breaches, leaks, and cybercriminals are growing more sophisticated every single day. And modern breaches now happen in minutes, not months. So at a time when the majority of sensitive corporate data is distributed out into the cloud, traditional boundaries no longer exist. And the strategies for securing that data have fundamentally changed, which is why you need Lookout. From the first phishing text to the final data grab, Lookout stops modern breaches as swiftly as they unfold. So whether you're on a device in the cloud, across networks, maybe you're working remotely at the local coffee shop, it doesn't matter. Lookout gives you clear visibility into all your data at rest and in motion. You can monitor, assess and protect without sacrificing productivity for security. And by the way, your IT department will love it. With a single unified cloud platform, Lookout simplifies and strengthens reimagining security for the world. That will be today. I want you to check it out. Go to Lookout.com right now. Learn how to safeguard data, how to secure hybrid work, how to reduce IT complexity, security without sacrificing productivity. That's Lookout.com. we thank them so much for supporting Windows Weekly. We thank you for supporting Windows Weekly by. Go into that website, lookout.com Something's happening. Something's happening. You're 25% there. You're 26. Never mind.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's like saying nothing's happening.

[Leo Laporte]

Nothing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nothing happened. Preparing to install. You're saying you're not installing? Just say it.

[Leo Laporte]

It did download, though. I mean, it downloaded whatever that update was. Now you think there'll be more than that? What we're curious about is the features get installed.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. I think you're going to see them. I think you're going to get all the copilot PC features that exist.

[Leo Laporte]

Sounds like it. They showed me that slideshow.

[Paul Thurrott]

It makes sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Like that. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, no, I'm sorry. You're right. Yes, we will. Sorry to interrupt. I have not tested this myself, but I Did download and install it to do this later because I'm updating my book 24H2. This process that you just went through, I have gone through possibly 20 times in the past week.

[Leo Laporte]

So sorry, would you like to go through it again, Paul?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's fine. The reason it's a problem is because of the thing you just did. So 20 minutes every single time. I'm doing all kinds of different configurations. A lot of them are in vm, some are in physical hardware and that takes a long time. Since then they've released a new version of the ISO to that download Windows 11 page that allegedly already incorporates this update, which is that final October 24h2 update. So supposedly if you were to install off of that ISO using the media creation tool or otherwise you won't have to do that anymore because that's nice integrated. Yeah, so I've not tested it, but that's the story.

[Leo Laporte]

I think honestly when people get a new device they expect a certain amount of this updating. I mean even my meta glasses had to do this, right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well the thing is though, in you know, let's say it's November, well probably after Christmas at this point, but November, December, January, certainly new PCs will start appearing in the channel that have this integrated. And so you won't see that during setup. You'll see a cumulative update in Windows update for whatever the latest month is. You might see a net update, some driver updates, that kind of thing. But you won't see this ginormous 5ish gigabyte feature update. So you're doing a thing that is temporary. In the future you won't have to deal with it on this computer. Within a few months it will integrate the installer. If you reset it, you won't have to go through this anymore.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple is reportedly for their iPhones has a thing that they can just put like injection wise put the iPhone on it and will update it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, through a lot of things.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean it's the same problem. You make something and then you have a system update.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's a bad first experience. You know, you're so excited or expensive toy you just got, you finally arrived, you turn it on, you're like now you have to wait 20 minutes for updates.

[Leo Laporte]

Like seriously, I love, by the way, I love this ruby red Snapdragon.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know it'd look even better on is one of those red laptops they have, right? Why don't they sell those? Come on guys.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's really pretty.

[Richard Campbell]

Really need a, need a vinyl wrap for your Snapdragon laptop.

[Leo Laporte]

It has that logo on the top of the box, but it's black and white.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's best in red, I would say.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it really looks pretty in red. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I mean interrupt 24H2.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So inexplicably we haven't written about any of this and here on the show we've not talked about this, but 24H2 came out a little over two weeks ago. Came out. You know, came out.

[Richard Campbell]

We should have brought that up.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're a human being that actually got this organically. I'd love to talk to him. But it's come out. Right. And it has resulted in what may be an unprecedented list of problems even in the short history of Windows 11. Right. It's bad. So, for example, there's 8.63 gigabytes of space missing on the disk afterwards. It's actually just a reporting error. It's actually there. But curious bug everyone sees if you look for it.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

Certain Western Digital SSDs, if you have that kind of hardware in your computer, just blue screens all over the place. There's a vanishing mouse cursor issued that I actually raised over the summer, where the I beam cursor, as it's called. I think of it as the text insertion cursor. And any app that you can enter text, if you mouse over it, it disappears into the background. It turns out Microsoft actually selected the wrong cursor for that one thing as the default.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

I've never picked it up in a year of messing with 24.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's insane. Some people don't have Internet access after the update. I've not experienced that one.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then System File Checker, which granted is a tool not many people would use command line tools. So when this thing runs, if it detects corrupt files, it will then fix them using those side by side files that are on disk. Right. It always corrects or detects corporate corrupt files and then it fixes them, which is unnecessary, but it takes a long time because you're replacing system files. And that's the tip of this iceberg of that's what 24H2 has done. And as a result, there are certain features we'll talk about soon that are coming that they just put into the release preview that obviously are aimed at next week's Week D Preview update and then the stable version of the Patch Tuesday update that comes in November. Microsoft has already delayed two of those because there were problems with them as well. Let's see. I get it from Your end. I guess this is right. Yeah. You can chart the quality of Windows. It's a linear graph. It's a 45 degree angle.

[Richard Campbell]

Pretty consistent slope.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's a slope. It's a slippery slope. And look, there were problems with Windows 8 from a usability perspective, but from reliability and quality perspective, not so much. But when you go to 10 and the versions of 10 Windows as a Service and Kindles are crashing Windows and move into Windows 11, which is Surface level, blah, blah, blah, I think of it as The Windows Mobile 6.5 of the Windows world, where they just change a couple of surface level interfaces, make power users upset, that features are gone, and then normal people, like, I've asked my wife this last friends, it's like, so what do you think of Windows 11? They're like, I don't really notice anything. Okay, so that was worth all the effort. Great. And now Pano Spinet comes and goes and you think, okay, we got this DAVOLURI Guy, engineer, 20 plus years of experience, maybe things are going to turn around. Nope. Right off the bottom, it's like you think you've cratered, but it turns out you can go into the earth and.

[Richard Campbell]

Keep going, digging down.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, think about the past year. He came on board last August, a year ago August. Think of all every. The sheer amount of complaining I've done every single month. The chaos, the uncertainty, the lack of clarity. 24H2 split into two separate releases, which they didn't even acknowledge until they released it to x64. Like, it's bizarre. And now they finally released this thing, which, like you said, had a year to do it and. Are you serious? Are you serious? But here we are and I just turned on everyone's. Siri, I'm so sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Siri.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because mine just like, mine just lit.

[Leo Laporte]

Up like a little. Seriously, every time.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can't. My problem is I say that phrase a lot.

[Richard Campbell]

So I gotta tell you, on the sysadmin side of things, they're like, well, I think I'm ready to move to 23H2 now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

They're getting off a 22H2, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

So the big story of Windows 10, to me, you know, kind of looking back at it, is something we found out later, which was that Terry Meyerson was tasked with making Windows make sense in this world. I think it was last week. This world. Sorry, this world being Microsoft cloud computing superpower. Right. And that's why we got Windows as a service. I just confirmed this like a week or two ago, satya Nadella literally brought in every product group and said, explain yourself, and if you can't, you're gone. We're getting rid of this thing. Oh, fuck. Give it. Give that a second. Give it a second. Let it.

[Leo Laporte]

I like the ice cream falling. It says, oops, you've lost the Internet Conn.

[Paul Thurrott]

So anyway, so Windows as a service was the result. It was a time at which Apple had stopped charging for OS upgrades. Microsoft had to. They made Windows 8 really cheap. They made Windows 10 free. How can this thing fit within the scheme of cloud computing? We'll update it as if it were a cloud service. But then Windows 11 comes along, and now they call it continuous, you know, continuous innovation. But now we're doing AI, so they're just throwing AI at the wall and we get all this, and that's why they jammed Copilot down everyone's throat. That was going to be what 23H2 was, but they put it out as the second to last, I guess, cumulative update for 22H2 to make sure everyone got it, because that update was mandatory and you could not skip it. You could delay it a little bit, but you had to take it. And that's why 23H2 is an enablement package just the same. It's the same code, it's exactly the same. So we don't have that kind of a problem. Now. They moved copilot, what, 17 times in the past year, et cetera, et cetera. But now Windows has to make sense in this AI world, and it's a slightly better fit than cloud computing, but it's still not great. So this is my life. How are you guys doing?

[Leo Laporte]

You mentioned Panos Panay. He had a big day yesterday announcing the new Kindle stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I refuse to acknowledge what you just said. I'm not even sure it happened. Just.

[Leo Laporte]

He had some superlatives. I don't think he said pumped, but he had some superlatives.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's hard for me to express. What's the malicious form of ambivalence?

[Leo Laporte]

Malevolence. Malevolence.

[Paul Thurrott]

Malevolence. I have just a Big Nothing burger over there, so. Yeah. Anyway, I'm excited about the Kindle, for whatever that's worth. I did order a color Kindle.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you? Oh, good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, yeah. I've been waiting for this for 10 years, Leo. I mean, I wish it was bigger. I'd get a Kindle scribe color if I could right now. You know, he.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's see here. Oh, here's. Oh. Oh, you're gonna enjoy this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Here we go.

[Richard Campbell]

Here we go.

[Leo Laporte]

You're gonna like this. He. Here he is, Panos holding up a Kindle. Is his hair green? It's not green.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't. I look at that and I see a thing on a wall and then a tablet floating in space. I don't even.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a blank. If copilot, nothing else.

[Paul Thurrott]

I am apparently doing AI Magic eraser.

[Leo Laporte]

He says the future is awesome.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it is.

[Leo Laporte]

It is. Future is so bright. I got to wear shades.

[Paul Thurrott]

I got to wear a lot of gold chains. Oh, wait, that's not the song. It's. That's a different song.

[Leo Laporte]

That's. That's the Panos Bene song. I'm waiting to for some reason. My keyboard.

[Paul Thurrott]

So go back to the screen. Let's. What is. What do we got? It's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the sign in thing. But my keyboard, which I was seeing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Earlier, this is a seamless experience that I think speaks well.

[Richard Campbell]

It just noticed you didn't have a copilot key and it won't let you type.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. It's weird. Your copilot key to continue.

[Leo Laporte]

I had to unplug it twice. It's the same thing. It's really wants WI fi. It really. It says.

[Paul Thurrott]

It really does. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Why don't you have WI fi? Come on.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. That's true. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. I just didn't. I don't want people to think it's taking longer than it is. Password. Oh, wait a minute. I can use my Microsoft app. I'm going to use that. So I'll. I'll get back to you guys while I do that.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you enjoying it? Are you enjoying this thing that you have to do every 20 minutes?

[Paul Thurrott]

This is my life. It literally.

[Leo Laporte]

Microsoft.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is how I spend my time.

[Leo Laporte]

So now I have to do the authenticator 94. I really like, frankly. This particular workflow is this thing. This is what you call single sign on. Right?

[Richard Campbell]

This is multi tracker communication.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, oh, shoot. I forgot. I have a new iPhone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I have to add the account to my iPhone.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's awesome. Oh, so just say you can't do it and they'll. They'll do. Otherwise you'll be able to do. Send yourself a text probably or whatever. Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. I don't get by it.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can get by it.

[Leo Laporte]

I can see the other.

[Paul Thurrott]

It says something like. See the.

[Leo Laporte]

See. See all the devices. This was sent below.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look below. Scroll.

[Leo Laporte]

Look below. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's gonna be another. There's gonna be an Alternative.

[Leo Laporte]

Use your password instead. No, let's see. I don't have access to my Authenticator app. Oh, yeah, it'll just email me.

[Richard Campbell]

It'll mail your code.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Oh, God. You know.

[Paul Thurrott]

I would like at this point to try to sell you on something called the Windows 11 Field Guide.

[Leo Laporte]

L E O, I believe is my name.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

To do the whole email address, it's not your.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like. Yeah, I don't think so.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, I know why. Because I use. When I do that, I use special, special names that no one. Let me just add the account to my Microsoft authenticator and then try and go back because I don't have. The password is long. Obviously I don't want to enter that by hand. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, for sure. I love that we're what, 16, 17 years in the show. You're literally rebooting a computer in front of me. I do that.

[Leo Laporte]

I like that, Paul. This is us. This is us, man. It is you and me, baby.

[Paul Thurrott]

These are all in the old folks home. These are all going to mix into my brain as one memory now.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, this is great. So now the phone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Here we go.

[Leo Laporte]

Wants me to approve a request using my Microsoft app, which is on the what?

[Paul Thurrott]

The other phone. You still have your old phone? Because that would still work.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I do have my old phone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, that works. It's on there. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll get out of here. Sorry, I didn't mean to.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I. This is a problem I run into all the time because I also switch phones a lot.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, when you switch phones you have to authenticate everything else.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which is the only reason I know you could do alternatives because I often don't have the same account on the right device notification.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, sure. If the notification is from the computer or from my.

[Paul Thurrott]

The problem is you probably canceled the previous notification or you might have so.

[Leo Laporte]

Complicated new sign in request.

[Paul Thurrott]

There it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. When I saw the 94 briefly, but then it says verify. Okay. Oh, good. Okay, now. Now I'm in. Okay. Okay. This is so exciting for everybody watching at home. Oh, wait a minute though.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, you got to, you know, cancel.

[Leo Laporte]

I screwed things up and then do it again. Oh, yeah, I just typed all.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I got to start up. It's okay. You'll get it the first time this time if you will. If you get it the first time this time. It's really not the first time, is it?

[Leo Laporte]

It's the second time.

[Paul Thurrott]

I have trouble.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I don't want to. I Want to use my Microsoft app?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You can.

[Leo Laporte]

Remember that?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. You can choose it.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. This is so exciting.

[Richard Campbell]

Is it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, man. I would like to apologize for everyone listening to the audio version of this after the fact.

[Leo Laporte]

Authentication request denied. No, no, no, no. Let me. Let me be clear about this.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is amazing. No, you got it. You're.

[Leo Laporte]

It's so weird because the authenticator denied it, but apparently. Okay, now, do you recommend creating a pin? It wants.

[Paul Thurrott]

You have to create a pin. If you sign into Windows with a password, which you just did, with an account that has a password, you have to create a pin.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, all right. Create pin. Am I going to do that in public?

[Paul Thurrott]

We won't see the machine.

[Leo Laporte]

Probably you won't.

[Paul Thurrott]

And what's the difference? I don't think anyone's going to break into your home and physically get to the machine.

[Leo Laporte]

And remember, I have an evil maid. Don't you have an evil maid?

[Richard Campbell]

We all have evil maids.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can't tell if she's evil because I don't speak her language yet. She's amused.

[Richard Campbell]

She's amusing.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you have a funny maid?

[Richard Campbell]

It's amused by you, I think.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh. I think it goes.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is tradition. This is exactly what you'd see on an intel PC, too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. It's exactly the same.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Now, I always just let Microsoft be Microsoft.

[Paul Thurrott]

Don't. And I so uncheck every single one of those except for the top everybody to do this. All right. Or do that.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh. Recall coming soon. But why even say this if it's why?

[Richard Campbell]

It's this here. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. That's a good question.

[Leo Laporte]

Someday you'll have some feature that we're going to tell you about.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now they really want you to use it. Leo. So here I recommend clicking Learn more and then click Not. Not. Not downloading the previous terrible Windows and ARM computer you used to have. Click. Learn more.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, it's from my Mac. It's the. It's the Windows unarm. But you want to clean stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

You want to clean stuff. Yeah. They badger you, but they'll let you do it.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, no, no. Just click Learn more, please.

[Leo Laporte]

I did.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, what's obvious now? Scroll down.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It. What's. I've never seen this before.

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't. It says you must.

[Richard Campbell]

There is no option.

[Paul Thurrott]

No. But you only have one backup. Hold on. So click. I've never seen this.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. So, no, scroll.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm sorry. Scroll down.

[Leo Laporte]

Scroll down here.

[Paul Thurrott]

There it is.

[Richard Campbell]

More options.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not Learn more.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't need incredibly low I have Paul Thurat. Oh, and here's all my other Set.

[Paul Thurrott]

Up a new PC. There you go. That makes more sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, start from scratch. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Paul Thurrott]

They bad you again. Ignore the badgering. But if you don't do this, we won't have your data.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but yeah, okay, look, it's pretty.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but it's going to be less pretty in a second and then they're going to start selling you on things.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to be less pretty in a second. You're such a grim sad. Okay, now this. You don't. But don't. I want development stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, you don't.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't want entertainment, gaming, school, nothing. No skip crap. Is it because it's just crap where you.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're opting into them knowing more about you and they're just going to send you ads. It's not. It doesn't do anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, should I use my phone for my PC?

[Paul Thurrott]

Skip that too. You can do that later.

[Leo Laporte]

I can do that later? Yeah. I have a Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can also do that other thing later if you wanted to back up. This is new by the way, but skip it.

[Leo Laporte]

It scan the QR code with your phone's camera to get the free OneDrive app.

[Paul Thurrott]

So in other words, it will download OneDrive and then send a message back that you did it and you set it up for backup and then it will let you continue but just skip it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we're trying to expedite this because.

[Paul Thurrott]

I would just skip it regardless. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I see Windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

I see oj and look, it's got the little co pilot.

[Paul Thurrott]

So do this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Launch paint. It's right there on the left which is dead center.

[Leo Laporte]

This one. Oh, this is so much fun.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then.

[Leo Laporte]

Hello. No, not hello, I'm co pilot.

[Paul Thurrott]

Here's. This is going to be your favorite keyboard shortcut control W. We'll get rid of this stupid thing. But first just run paint, please. I'll disconnect it should be right there.

[Leo Laporte]

A I t. Okay, now I'm running paint, aren't I? I hit return. It didn't help. Okay, there you go.

[Paul Thurrott]

There is open it up.

[Leo Laporte]

So you're trying to see what new features we have.

[Paul Thurrott]

I want to see if you have co creator.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

So maximize it.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Because it's going to be so exciting. I don't have it said I was going to have co creator.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I don't see it though. That's interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so even though this is a co. Should I look at update and see What?

[Paul Thurrott]

We're going to do that in a second. But hold on a second. I will do that. We will do that. Open up photos.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course. Actually, you know, one of the problems here is these apps might need to be updated too.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I think maybe because you're going to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Want to update the system. So in photos is there. Let me look at your screen. Sorry, I'm looking at my screen. If you. You don't even have a photo. So I need a photo.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me do the update. Should I run the store maybe and say what's what? Update all these.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that thing. And then I guess you might as well do Windows Update as well.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because if you open like open the widgets thing down in the lower corner left, you probably don't have anything but widgets. Like you don't have a feed yet, I would imagine. Oh, let's see. Hold on. That looks like a feed I got. So this thing's gonna update too. So go into the store and update.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then open. You were gonna do this anyway, but open settings and update there too. Yeah. So lower corner. Sorry, Go to Library in the lower left corner.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah, Library.

[Paul Thurrott]

And that's going to change later. But don't worry about that.

[Leo Laporte]

Updates. Oh, there's a lot. And there's a copilot update.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that stuff. That stuff is already updated. You're going to have. So you're going to want to check for updates twice. I know that sounds stupid.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I see.

[Paul Thurrott]

But click it and then let it do.

[Leo Laporte]

Its going to say, oh no, you just got this because it says modified minutes ago.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you might get something. You'll get some small number of apps maybe. But if you only get a few apps or several apps, you're going to want to actually click check updates again. Then you'll get basically every app probably.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Yeah. It's thinking, all right, we can go back to the show. This is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I mean I would just get. And also get Windows Update going. And you should have the. I bet it's. Well, you probably just installed the October update, so you might have some driver updates, you might have a. Net update, etc. So we'll see the Settings app.

[Leo Laporte]

I do.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, okay. They can do it this way too. But I would just run the Settings app and then Windows Update from there.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, this has been absolutely seamless.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at it in a window that's about three inches wide.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, me too. That's the problem. I tried to put a second screen on it, but I didn't like it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Actually, go back real quick because it looks like you have a bunch of app updates in there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, let me go to the black.

[Paul Thurrott]

Buttons in the upper left there. Yeah, so scroll down to see what it looks like.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a lot of stuff here.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, okay, that's good. But yeah, there you want. That's good. It's all good.

[Leo Laporte]

Web search, Xbox identity provider, app install. Look at all MSN weather. So do. Here's the thing. Is Candy Crush on here?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, that was Windows 10. That's long gone.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, really? They don't do that anymore. Oh, they should.

[Paul Thurrott]

They own that company now, hilariously.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they do, but they don't put it on Windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, so just run the Settings app and then go to. Did you leave the store? You closed the store up, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it closed itself.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, maybe it's updating the store because the store is gonna have a rely when you come back.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So bottom left, you gotta scroll down is Windows Update. Windows Updates, I guess, or Windows Update. And then you probably see if you have to click the button. Yeah. Down.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. Security Intelligence Update. Cumulative Update for. Net.

[Paul Thurrott]

So you actually do have. Oh, for. Net. Yes. Okay, good. Okay. Yeah, I was going to say the thing you installed before was the 202410 cumulative update for Windows 11.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So that's already installed. Like that's the thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I see. They don't need that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, the middle ones, I think it's. I can point out by the way.

[Leo Laporte]

During this entire process while the fan is on and I hear it kind of going into gear a little bit. It didn't. It's not hot, it's not warm, it's not blowing real hard and it's not noisy. Yeah, well, it's a little noisy here. You want to hear it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you hear that?

[Richard Campbell]

They barely.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's not. It's not bad. I mean, it's not absolutely silent, but. Because it has a fan. But it's not.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm using Surface Laptop 7 connected to a Thunderbolt 4 dock and an external display, external webcam, etc. Etc.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's trying to lift off.

[Paul Thurrott]

No fan. No. No problem at all.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, that's the part of the point of this. Right. Is it's a very low power.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hopefully. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Sipping, sipping power device.

[Paul Thurrott]

So for the heck of it, Leo, open File Explorer.

[Leo Laporte]

I see that little manila folder. Because everybody knows what a folder looks like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. On the left. Go to this PC on the bottom there.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Disahir PC, then open that one drive. Open Windows.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, we're going deep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just type W, hit the W key, and then find Web and open that. And then I think wallpaper, probably.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then open any fold. Just find a picture.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. There's a double click to open it.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Oh, in photos. You want to see if I have.

[Paul Thurrott]

I want to see if it's there. Yeah. So let's see. I gotta try to blame or squint. Maximize that, if you don't mind. Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Clip champ. Hey, go away. Clip camp. I don't want Clip Champ.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they'll be. Yeah, they like to quit trying.

[Richard Campbell]

Trying to help me.

[Paul Thurrott]

So upper left, I think, is edit. Yeah, yeah. And then let's see what you got. You do have this. All right, so the last two buttons, there's AI.

[Leo Laporte]

There's AI, baby.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah. Yeah. Is that everywhere that.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't have a model.

[Paul Thurrott]

Does it say Restyle Image? Yes, it does. Okay, There you go. That's a Copilot PC feature.

[Leo Laporte]

But I don't have a model.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Shouldn't it come with a model?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, copilot PCs do, but you can download it.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, well, I'm going to get it. It's the image generation extension.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Provides AI models. So now I'm gonna have to choose a model.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't think you're not gonna choose a model. This isn't Linux, Leo. It will choose the model.

[Leo Laporte]

There's no choice involved.

[Paul Thurrott]

What's the size of that thing, by the way?

[Leo Laporte]

1.14 gigabytes. So it's a model that's definitely.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, they said. What was the number over? 20, 23, 24 models pre installed on a copilot plus PC.

[Leo Laporte]

But not. Or.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is not a copilot plus PC. Right. This is. That's what's interesting about what you're doing. Like you're getting the thing that PC.

[Leo Laporte]

Makers sort of am.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, that's why this is fascinating. So if you do a. Like, if I were to take this Surface laptop and do a reset this PC off of an external ISO, not the one that's built in, this is what would happen to me on this PC.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because those models aren't on the ISO.

[Leo Laporte]

How big is the hard drive on this, Richard? Do you remember?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you just. Look, just open File Explorer again and go to this PC.

[Leo Laporte]

I have too many mice. I'm clicking the wrong mouse. Here we go.

[Paul Thurrott]

You have used a mouse before.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but I have several mice now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Lower left. This PC and it will say on the drive how big it is.

[Leo Laporte]

This is four gigabytes. No, that can't be.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, no. It can't be 4 gigabytes. What?

[Richard Campbell]

It's a half a terabyte.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a half. It's 512. Yeah, it's not very big. So. Okay, that's good to know.

[Paul Thurrott]

The minimum for a co pilot plus PC I think is 256.

[Leo Laporte]

Geez, that's not much. And it's 16 gigs of RAM. Right. I think that's.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's the minimum. But let's see what you have. Right click the Start menu.

[Leo Laporte]

This is such galvanizing entertainment here.

[Paul Thurrott]

And hit system.

[Leo Laporte]

Right click the Start menu strap button.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sorry, where is the Start button on your computer? There it is. I can't see it. Well, it's so small in the.

[Leo Laporte]

It's so tiny. I know. Oh, hey, I got widgets. I had widgets that might have been Widgets update system.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And then it will device specification 32 gigs. Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

There you go. Yeah, that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

That's pretty good. That's hefty. It says doesn't. Yeah. Okay, good. And it is. And you confirming that this is the Snapdragon, the high end.

[Paul Thurrott]

It says something at the end or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I can't remember. 4.3 gigahertz. Yeah, it's hard for me.

[Richard Campbell]

Extra Snappy Dragon.

[Paul Thurrott]

Extra snappy. That's the Snappier Dragon.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry everybody.

[Paul Thurrott]

In Spanish, the Snappissimo.

[Leo Laporte]

But I thought there would be some interest in this box.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's interesting if you're on video. For those listening, I think our entry for the worst audio podcast of 2024 is pretty much assured. Sorry, everybody.

[Leo Laporte]

Now we all make faces. Let me see here. Where are we in the flow? Do we want to do.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, we can quickly go through the Windows Insider stuff. There's not much going on. There have been three. Well, four updates, four releases since last week's show. The beta build from last week. Not much going on. This minor stuff. The dev build has some minor changes to the taskbar that are kind of interesting. They're redoing some small UIs there with animations and whatnot. I wish I had a visual of this, but that's kind of interesting. Kind of interesting. The release preview one is the more interesting because there are two separate builds depending on whether or not you're on 23 or 24H2. So that's a little bit new. And they have basically the same features in both Right. Because they're still doing that. One of the features that is in this, allegedly, although it's a controlled feature release and I bet nobody has actually seen it, is that phone link add on thing to the start menu that was delayed. So that's actually not going to come. We're not going to see that in the November patch Tuesday day. And then the other things are small. This is stupid. Like the all Apps list and also the all Apps button in the Start menu is being renamed to All. Hilarious. Great. So I have to change it.

[Richard Campbell]

Surprise me that all these stacks derailed if 24H2 is going that badly. All the experienced people have been yanked to Firefight.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Everything that's on the list right now is essentially on hold.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So one of the things we were going to get, and this might still happen, I suppose, is the new version of Windows Sandbox in Preview. So instable in preview, if that makes sense. Right. And this is the one that has like clipboard redirection and audio and video input control, et cetera, et cetera. So actually pretty useful. Windows Sandbox is an interesting thing because it's designed for testing an app before you put it on your actual computer. Because it's. I don't know if stateless is the right term, but you shut it down and it just blurts, you know, it's gone. There's no. It doesn't save the state.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a virtual machine.

[Paul Thurrott]

But it's a virtual machine. Yeah. So. But it could become more of a general purpose virtual machine, I think. Think.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's like there's this whole idea that every app should run on its own sandbox so they just can't mess with each other.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, 100%. That's what Chrome OS does. That's what mobile apps, mobile platforms do, right? No, no.

[Richard Campbell]

And every time they try to do it on Windows, it's broken some badly piece of behavior, piece of software that everybody wants.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. So Windows 10X was the original Windows 11. The big architectural piece was this container based system where they were going to contain all of the Win32 apps into their own container. And then the more modern apps would each have their own container. And what we got was a lipstick on a clown and none of the architectural work.

[Richard Campbell]

Be clear, clowns wear lipstick. Anyway, this is nothing.

[Leo Laporte]

It's additional.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look, I can't promise it's going to make sense or make sense as a sentence. I can just promise there will be words.

[Richard Campbell]

Let's not fact check Paul's metaphor.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hold on a second. I'm going to follow that up. Cue the music please. I'm losing it.

[Leo Laporte]

So it downloaded these and now I can do some fantastic things.

[Richard Campbell]

Swirly swirly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which is by the way, Copilot plus PC specifically. So you've got it. So maybe in the Paint app it might have just been. Because either it wasn't up to date or just the resolution of the system is such. You can see it easily in the toolbar.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I do not want to save whatever that is, so.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, and by the way, you should have. I would pop an eye on Windows.

[Leo Laporte]

Knows where I am and everything. So that's good.

[Paul Thurrott]

So you only have. Okay. So by the way, widgets still has to be updated. That's not done.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because you don't have the feed. But that will happen organically. It's going to happen. And then I would keep an eye on that downloads view that just appeared in the new version of Store and keep checking for updates until there aren't any. You're sure there aren't any.

[Leo Laporte]

Why is it so slow? It feels like it's really.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I actually. I'm watching this and I'm like, man, this feels like you're running it in a virtual machine. It's really does.

[Leo Laporte]

It's as fast. It's faster.

[Richard Campbell]

I would also. I bet it's still doing a lot of updates and I bet it's indexing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. By the way, it might also be downloading those models. Right. Which could be multi gigabytes.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it's just slammed. It's updating too many things.

[Paul Thurrott]

So in addition to what you're doing, make sure you fire up Resource Manager.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, should I? Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I mean, it's not like you're gonna be able to clear up resources.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, just to see what's going on.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. I mean I would. Okay. I would use Taskman for this personally, but.

[Richard Campbell]

No disk is pinned.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Look at that. It's all.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's all. Oh, did we tell you it was emmc? Sorry about that. Actually, that's what the SD card slots for. Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

I can put more memory in. That's true. That'd be your fast storage. Yeah. All right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, I would get that. You got to bring the Settings app back. See what Windows Update is doing. You're almost. I assume you're gonna have to reboot, but you also want to check for optional updates and that's where you're going to find driver updates and so forth. So. Yeah, it's all the way at the bottom. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, it looks like it did it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So scroll down, see where it says optional updates at the bottom.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I want to turn those on.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, to see what it's there. I would click on that and I bet you'll have something. I would imagine there's gonna be some traffic.

[Leo Laporte]

You mean advanced options?

[Paul Thurrott]

No. Oh, sorry. Yes, advanced options and then.

[Leo Laporte]

Active hours. Now this is all the silly stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, additional optional updates.

[Leo Laporte]

Here we go.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it says. Oh, it says zero. No, you don't have any.

[Leo Laporte]

There are none. So you're up to date only get help. So I don't need any help because I've got Mr. Thurat on my belt here.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I probably should have just full screen this thing. It's so hard to see.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no, I attached. So one of the things that happened is I was not able to attach a second screen for the initial experience, but I now have a second screen attached to it. So I can see it a lot better now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So I think from here I would just update the apps and then you're in like Flynn.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm curious about speed. What's a good way to test how fast this is?

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure what I could write. I just use the computer. It looks very slow to me, but.

[Leo Laporte]

It feels pretty sluggish. But let's wait. It's always the out of box experience.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let it do its thing though. Yeah. This is not a retail box. Right. So this probably disc indexing and things that happen before you get.

[Richard Campbell]

I literally would leave this overnight. Now I would leave it just be grinding.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let it do his thing.

[Richard Campbell]

But let it calm itself down.

[Leo Laporte]

The good news is all the updates are done.

[Paul Thurrott]

Check again just to be sure. Like in other words, when you in the store check up with nothing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Then you're good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, came. Came up with nothing. And then let's check the store again.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, that's the one I meant. I'm sorry. Check the store again.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, because it says it's done, but. Done, done, done.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but. All right, so just click on some other thing on the sidebar and then go back to this view, which is downloads. Well, no, I'm sorry. Not. Except for that one thing that you clicked on, which is a pop up window. Click on anything other than that. Okay. Then go back to downloads. Get updates. That's awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

Again.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, do it again. I know.

[Richard Campbell]

Thank God. I hope it doesn't come up with something.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now when I do this, it usually comes up with 27 new updates. All right, you're good.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You're relatively up to date. That's good.

[Leo Laporte]

We're all up to date. So now I think index.

[Richard Campbell]

All you've done is install installers and it's working its way through them, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I think you're right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who knows, maybe when you did that thing in photos because again, this is not a supported scenario like you, you know, people just don't see that. So it's possible that that triggered a bunch of LL or SLM downloads. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

I'd be in my ubiquity desktop right now looking at the network traffic going to that machine, saying, what is it up to?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, oh, I can do that. Yeah. All right, I shall.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think you're going to see a lot of startup Microsoft.com hopefully not a lot of start msn.com but you never know.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you done with week D?

[Paul Thurrott]

I am week D. Are you done? We're done.

[Leo Laporte]

You're done? Then let me take a little break and then we'll come back, we'll bore you even more.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know that we could bore them even more, but we could try. We'll try.

[Leo Laporte]

The chat room says just use your if for those of you listening, use your imagination.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we should just have some speech to text thing on the screen. That should be the whole show.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Describes a lot of ahs.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's good stuff. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Attach it to a pie hole. I wonder how much I owe there is from just a meeple. Greg M says attach it to a pie hole. Scooter X says Check activity monitor. Keith512 says my old machine gets a Geekbench 6.3 score of around 6900 multi core. I could. That's not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Has Geekbench been made for arm? I don't even know. No.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, there is a Geekbench for. Yeah. This episode we should. We'll pause and we'll come back with more excitement. But first, a word from our sponsor. This episode of Windows Weekly brought to you by Threat Locker. Threat Locker is amazing. It's. It's zero trust. Done right, done easy. If zero day exploits and supply chain attacks are keeping you up at night, join the club. And if they're not keeping you up at night, you should be worried because this. We live in a tough situation. The world is crazy right now, but fortunately you can harden your security with Threat Locker and stop worrying. Worldwide companies like JetBlue, for instance, trust Threat Locker to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high if you will. Imagine taking a proactive deny by this is the key deny by default approach to cybersecurity. Deny by default means you block every action, every process, every user unless authorized by your team. That's what zero trust means and it really really works. Threat Locker helps you do this and this is important too. Provides a full audit of every action for risk management and compliance. Plus the support is fantastic. Their 247 US based support team fully supports onboarding and beyond. Stop the exploitation of trusted applications within your organization. Keep your business secure and protected from ransomware. Organizations across any industry can benefit from Threat Lockers. Ring fencing. That's what they call it. Ring fencing. By isolating critical and trusted applications put them, put them inside the ring from unintended uses weaponization limiting attackers lateral movement within the network. Threat Lockers Ring fencing works so well it was able to foil a number of attacks that traditional EDR just couldn't stop. Perfect example, the SolarWinds Orion attack. Remember that? Stopped cold by ring fencing. Oh, and Threat Locker works for Macs too. So your whole enterprise get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily and cost effectively. Threat Locker's zero trust endpoint protection platform offers a unified approach to protecting users, devices and networks against the exploitation of zero day vulnerabilities. This is such a good solution. Get a free 30 day trial. Learn more about how Threat Locker can help mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance by visiting threatlocker.com that's threatlocker.com we thank them so much for supporting Windows Weekly and we thank you for supporting us by going to that site and if they ask, say I heard it on Windows Weekly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Threatlocker.com I think the next logical step here is for you to open a command line window and we'll do some Winget stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually that is probably the sound of.

[Paul Thurrott]

A thousand podcast players closing.

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's almost certainly exactly what I would.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it is actually, but I don't recommend that for the show. No, but I will tell you that Winget Update all will get you or upgrade. I think Dash Dash all will do it if you're interested anyhow. All right.

[Leo Laporte]

Really? Just do all. Just do everything Dash dash all?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, well first you can say just type in Winget Upgrade and see what's there.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

And then you have 512 gigs of storage. You're not going to run out?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's not a storage issue. It's just you probably don't have that many things in There, it's right. Like dev home. It'll just be a couple of things.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let me. I don't see.

[Paul Thurrott]

I didn't mean to grind us to a halt again. I don't. But.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I guess this is called des. This is great. This is called desktop co5 from Vectron is apparently the name of this device. I don't know if I can get a. I don't know if I can get a history or maybe I can. Let's see what's happening. Oh, yeah, look at all this.

[Richard Campbell]

Look at that.

[Leo Laporte]

3.63 gigs web transfer. 585 megabytes windows update. There's Microsoft live. World Wide Web teams. Oh, thank you. I'm glad I have teams now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Somehow Bing is in the mix.

[Leo Laporte]

Bing got in there somehow. 5 megabytes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Bing. Another Bing user.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, for the books. Look at that. It got pretty busy, but it's calmed down now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Last hour. It's, it's. It's definitely calmed down. So I think we're all right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let's.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's go. Are you bored?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think just, you know, we've had enough.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's move on, shall we?

[Richard Campbell]

I'm really excited at my future. When I get home, I'm really.

[Leo Laporte]

This is going to be fun, isn't it?

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's some good news. In fact, so good that Steve Gibson says he's probably going to devote the entire. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I moved ahead too fast. We'll talk about that in a moment. Let's first talk about the thing that really matters. Microsoft 365.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this is tangential, but I feel like maybe one of you knows that this is a thing now. But it seems like on both the consumer and commercial sides, there's been a lot of data egress activity on all of the major services where you can import and export data into competing services. So for example, there was Apple announced one day, hey, you can export your icloud photos to Gmail or to Google Photos or vice versa, which is like this capability you sort of figure this company would not offer unless they had to. The latest commercial version of this is something I could have used about a year ago. Google Workspace is now adding OneDrive data migration capabilities. So that I should say OneDrive for business. They just call it OneDrive just like Microsoft does, but it's for commercial accounts where you as an IT admin can sign into your IT admin account over at Microsoft and pull the data over for when you're migrating accounts from Microsoft to Google. Right. So it's kind of, I'm just throwing it out there because I feel like there's a lot of this now and I need this to happen in music playlists. That's my, that's where I want to be. You know, this is interesting, but I would like that going.

[Richard Campbell]

You just need the EU to get involved and you'll be fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, that's what I mean, maybe they did. Maybe that's what this is. Right? I mean, for this case. So kind of interesting. And then there was a leak of what is a Lunar lake based Surface Laptop 7. Right. Which doesn't exist. And the question is, is it going to exist? In other words, will they rev this in the future or is this a prototype and they decided to go Qualcomm? So according to Zach Bowden of Windows Central, who we trust explicitly, this is actually coming and it will be. We don't know that it will be called Surface Laptop 7, but remember they did the meteor like version I think in March on Intel. Right. And then they did Surface Laptop 7 in June on Qualcomm. It kind of makes sense they might call it Surface Laptop 7. Right. But yep, November, back in the day they had intel and AMD variants of Surface Laptop for at least a gen or two. So, yeah, good. And by the way, just this is not good data yet, but I now have Lunar Lake and AMD Zen 5 laptops. I have one of each, so it's not a big data pool and it's me, but I do the same things on all the computers. I will say the AMD is five stars, like it's going great and battery life is about nine hours, I believe at this point. Lunar Lake, not so much that one. Four and a half hours of battery life so far, which is not what that's supposed to be. So maybe, I don't know, maybe something something, I don't know. So that one's early, that one is. I'm going to be with that one longer, so we'll see what happens there. But the AMD one, which is a HP something something, I don't know, I can't remember the names of these things anymore. Omnibook, probably. That one's going great though. And that review I should have soon. So anyway, that's where I'm at with that stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, Paul, if I ask you a question, will you promise not to get mad at me?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I can't promise that, but go on.

[Leo Laporte]

What the hell is going on here?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So one processing 221,000 changes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So this is the. This is one of the many hells that one drives.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. I wonder why it's sluggish.

[Paul Thurrott]

So well. So these are. What do they call? Police holes. So the little X there, click that. That's just a little notification. Doesn't mean anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So where it says processing whatever number of files and the files are scrolling by, as you can see, a quarter.

[Leo Laporte]

Of a million changes.

[Paul Thurrott]

It has to get through this. So in your OneDrive for this account you have. Those are the files. Right. So it's not downloading them to your computer, but it's downloading the placeholders. There may be a more recent name for those things, but it's downloading the placeholders so you can see them. They'll like search results will show them. You can double click. They'll download on the screen.

[Leo Laporte]

That makes sense. So that way I can see that it exists in OneDrive.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it's weird how they show you this. So it's too early.

[Leo Laporte]

Much stuff in my OneDrive. That's what cracks me.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, well, you won't see all of it now.

[Leo Laporte]

Photos. That's what it is.

[Paul Thurrott]

So if you go back to. This is probably too early and it's also too soon since we just did this to people already. But if you click on OneDrive again and go to that little gear thing and then like help and Settings, I think it's called. Or Settings to help you, whatever that is. And then go to the left, top left, I think Sync and backup, or.

[Leo Laporte]

Backup and Sync, whatever it's called.

[Paul Thurrott]

Click Manage Backup. Now you're going to want to check this one again. You did not get asked if you wanted to back up during setup. So they're all off.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Gonna. Okay, I'm gonna do one more thing here. I'm so sorry. Wait for. That's gonna take a long time.

[Leo Laporte]

It's scanning.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not getting ready. Right. Click the start button again. Sorry. And go to system. And is it Windows 11 Pro or Home?

[Leo Laporte]

It is.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it's home.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a 64 bit operating system.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, but expand this. I like make Maximize. Windows Maximize.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Oh, there it is. Home. It's home.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So you don't get it. Oh, so home it will back. It will sync these to your computer. So you don't want that. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I don't get a choice in home.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, not with Home you don't. And with Pro you literally roll the dice. And sometimes you Get a choice. And sometimes you don't. So unless you. Did you close the Managed Backup window? Or is it still there somewhere, hiding?

[Leo Laporte]

This is it, isn't it? Syncing backup.

[Paul Thurrott]

Manage backup. Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, OneDrive settings.

[Paul Thurrott]

Top, top right of the window.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, so whenever this wakes up, you're going to want to turn off.

[Leo Laporte]

Those are going to turn on.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's going to download them to the computer.

[Leo Laporte]

No.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then it will just leave it there. Leave it. You got to just leave it.

[Leo Laporte]

I have to let it go. And then as soon as it's done scanning, turn.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hopefully before it's done scanning, you'll get this option. It's unclear when it comes.

[Leo Laporte]

So wait a minute. Windows Home automatically turns on OneDrive backup?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And there's. And you can only manually turn it off.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

What if you don't have a OneDrive? I mean, you have a One Drive account, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. What if you don't have it? Yep. Oh, you don't have a one. Well, you do. You sign in with.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody has a OneDrive account. But do you not. What if I only have 5 gigabytes?

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not going to be able to download all of it. Well, actually, that's not true. So let's say you actually filled a terabyte of storage and you only have a 256 card.

[Leo Laporte]

Unfortunately, I have the Office 265.

[Paul Thurrott]

I've actually not tested this scenario. I'm assuming you're going to get an error message at some point, but that would be.

[Richard Campbell]

It's going to be your fault.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're prompt to just turn that feature off.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. When I see the error saying, you don't have enough space for me to restore all of this.

[Paul Thurrott]

How much from OneDrive? How much space does that thing take up?

[Leo Laporte]

Do we know? I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

The one drive. The OneDrive app will tell you how much storage you're using.

[Richard Campbell]

I believe you're using 680 gigs of your terabyte.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, so this will be entertaining. Maybe let it go, see what happens.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm waiting for the flames to shoot out of it. This is exciting.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my. Anyway, 685 gigs. Terrified. But what am. I don't even know what's there.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't. I never use.

[Richard Campbell]

I remember when you clicked on the set up a new PC and it's like, no, no, it's going to be your old PC.

[Paul Thurrott]

Goddamn. All right. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I said I did not want this. I said that. I said I don't want this to be. I want to set up.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. You don't get a Choice with Windows 11 Home. So. No, this is optimal.

[Leo Laporte]

What kind of developer kit comes with home?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, they. So they've changed the way these things are split up. But I agree with you. Developers would want things like BitLocker control, etc. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I.

[Richard Campbell]

Presumably you could upgrade the license.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you can, you absolutely can. But don't do it through the Microsoft Store app. It's too expensive.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, now it's saying. Good. This is good. We're having trouble connecting to your one drive.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Because it's doing the download. But just let it, just leave it and wait till that thing's done. You want to make sure you get on top of this before it gets.

[Leo Laporte]

On top of you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So to speak.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you've. Okay, this raises an interesting point because I really haven't tested what happens when you have too much storage to fit on the disk. So that's something I should probably look at.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll let it go, shall I? And yeah, go ahead. Send you some screenshots and then don't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Normally recommend that people, you know, defrag an ssd. But that might, just might be a case where you might want. After you get rid of that crap.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm just going to let that window stay there and let it run and then we'll see what happens.

[Richard Campbell]

Talk about passkeys.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You know, this is what I was saying. Steve said this is so important that he's going to do a whole show on it next week.

[Paul Thurrott]

Good.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a big.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So what we all want.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

If we go back in time of year, passkeys were. Everyone was starting to do passkeys, right. Google, Microsoft In 23H2 miner, Amazon was the big one. Amazon got it right. They did a great job with it. Their implementation of passkeys is fantastic. But what started to happen was all the third party password managers were looking at making these things portable because the key spec is these things are per device. So if you have an online account and you have two computers, a laptop and a tablet, you have to individually create a passkey on each of those devices to use the. You know, it's a different passkey for each device. So the Dashlanes, Proton, Pass1, Password Bit, Warden, all have their own implementations now of this type of thing. So there's two types of portability. One is within the ecosystem. So I use Proton Pass on my computer, I use it on my phone, I use it on my tablet. So if I create A pass key on my computer and save it to get those things. Proton Pass. Thank you. I'm like, bitwarden. No, that's not it. That thing will be available to me on my phone and on my tablet. Right, that's nice. But as part of this data egress thing I just talked about, part of. So the FIDO alliance is to control the spec. So obviously these companies work with the FIDO alliance and they're trying to, you know, let's make this thing a specification. So there are two standards they're working on. One is that thing I just described, both related to portability. But the other one is that data egress thing you have either as a business or just as a human being. Say, like, hey, I want to switch to 1Password from whatever I'm using now from Chrome or whatever. Right. But I want my passkeys to come too. They're working on a standard for that as well. So you can import and export passkeys. Passkeys are a lot like Recall, right? They started. No, I mean they started. It was on device, it was only that device. There was no connectivity to the cloud. It was specific to that device. But like with recall, as I keep saying, the future of this thing is obviously it has to sync to the cloud and it's going to go everywhere. So with passkeys, third party passkey managers are already doing this. Google just had an announcement. We might have talked about it, we might not have actually last week, but Google is bringing this capability to Chrome. Right. So you'll have across Android, Chrome OS and Chrome web browsers, wherever you are, the ability to use a passkey that you might have created on another device. It's an obvious need. I think it was last week we talked about passkeys for some reason last week, I can't remember why, but I kind of raised this notion of we should really think of this as passwordless and not worry about what it is. Right. Leo was asking earlier with the Microsoft Authenticator app, what is this thing? Is this a passkey or is this. Or whatever. And it's like, well, this is. It's a. It's a passwordless authentication option, in this case, two fa. But whatever. Passwordless are passwordless. Passkeys are arguably the most convenient form of passwordless because you don't need another device. You're authenticating using the secure hardware that you might have a facial recognition system, a fingerprint recognition or a pin. A pin. You know, you have to have that fallback and it's all happening on that device, you don't have to engage with some like a security key or a phone with a 2fa app. So I think this is what passkeys, I think to most people are complicated and it's, you know, security is hard and all that kind of stuff. I think this is what's going to put passkeys over the top for just human beings. It's great for everyone, including technically. It's just easy, you know, it's more convenient, but. But I think this is the type of thing we could sell on people.

[Richard Campbell]

The name was very intentional because passwordless scares folks. But I need a password where passkeys sits in between the two.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think the spread of passkeys will result in more online accounts giving you the option and maybe one day mandating that you do not have a password. You can do that optionally with your Microsoft account. Today I feel like I'm not a technical expert when it comes to security, but I feel like I'm at least semi technical in general and I haven't done that. It feels wrong to me. But someday I think that's going to be the way things are. So this is a nice step in that direction.

[Richard Campbell]

I've had enough problems with enough different security options like Fido keys and Authenticator and things that I have a tough time giving back away any of the fallbacks.

[Leo Laporte]

But when passkeys works, it's so sweet.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, it's the best. And the problem, one of the many problems with this type of thing is that there are so many different ways to authenticate yourself and different accounts support different ranges of those things and you go from account to account like I do. You know, I'm always setting up new computers and doing this stuff and then I have to remember, okay, so did I sign into this one with my Google account and then did. Do I have a 2fa for this or do I do it? You know, it's. I think at some point we're going to just standardize on. You'll always have to have fallbacks. I mean, of course, but I think this will become the default best whatever implementation of this type of authentication and something that normal people can.

[Leo Laporte]

I agree. At least that's the hope.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, portability was critical.

[Leo Laporte]

That's critical.

[Paul Thurrott]

Portability is 100% critical. Yep, yep. Yeah, because like you want to go through this awful process and you're like, all right, now I'm just going to go do this again on my phone. Fantastic. And it's the worst. So having that stuff sync is the best.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and more saliently, it's like you do not want it to work in one place and not in another place.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's more than syncing, because my pass keys on Apple sync, it's being able to move it to a Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

Phone instead, which they do not allow today. But Apple, by the way, is part of this announcement and they will be doing that in their new password. So you will be able to do that. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

One year ago, Amazon announced their passkey implementation and I immediately scurried over to their website to set it up. And I still use it, I mean, all the time. Again, because I sign into different computers and also because I use Kindle and Audible, which are Amazon services. Sometime in the past year, they added the passkey support to Audible. They. Like I said, and I said this at the time, one of the very best passkey implementations, I think. I haven't looked at how GitHub does it in a while because I love the GitHub. GitHub was the best one ever. Yeah, I think Amazon and GitHub are right there. I think they're both.

[Leo Laporte]

I haven't tried it. I haven't tried it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they're great. But they've signed up 175 million customers to use passkeys. That's how you get something to happen. And Amazon does it. Right. It's cute when, like a little bank no one's heard of does it or, you know, whatever the service is. But when it's Amazon. Yeah, that's the general public.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a lot of gravity.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, it's good stuff. So that's neat.

[Leo Laporte]

One more little note, one more little Snapdragon piece of. No, this will be the last one. I think they're going to appreciate this. Paul, If I scroll down in the sync and backup OneDrive settings.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

There is something new. Files on demand. It says it's going to download cloud files this PC the first time you open them. Change offline access to all your file selection. Optional blow, free up disk space. Save space by setting all your files to online only.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's fine. These are overlapping features. The issue with OneDrive is that you have folder backup is three specific folders. Desktop, documents and pictures. But your OneDrive is bigger than that. There's other folders and then there's folders you might have made. Right. So if you implement your own little file system like I do actually in OneDrive, I can go in. And I do go into individual folders I've created and mark them as Being available all the time offline, that's files on demand. So technically, obviously, the technology behind this is the same used in folder backup. The question I guess you're asking, or maybe the point you're making is if I do this, will it turn. Does this turn off folder backup? I wouldn't count on that. So I would look at it.

[Leo Laporte]

It feels like it implies that, but you're right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah. Microsoft never uses dark patterns, so I'm not sure what you're implying.

[Leo Laporte]

And then as soon as I click it, it opens for some reason opens one My.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So look at. Well, but don't move, don't move, don't. So where. Where are you in the file system right now?

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, it's OneDrive, Leo.

[Paul Thurrott]

Personal.

[Leo Laporte]

It's in the prem.

[Paul Thurrott]

So that's. Okay. The root of your. Okay. So you'll see. You see the little cloud icon there next to OneDrive?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

What does it say? Processing.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Still working. So you gotta. You gotta let that happen.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's still have to do it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Because it could still enable process folder back 340,000 changes. Folder backup is also part of the Windows backup process, which is the thing you see.

[Leo Laporte]

What if I rip onedrive right out of this system?

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, you could.

[Leo Laporte]

Wouldn't that be the best thing to do at this point?

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm not going to say that, Leo. I have a book to sell. But the point is I feel like.

[Leo Laporte]

That'S what I want to do every time I install a Windows machine is to rip OneDrive right out of it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there an easy way to do that?

[Richard Campbell]

Nope.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, no, you can uninstall. This is a. It's an easy Google install.

[Richard Campbell]

It.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not like Edge. Sort of. It's not. You're sort of uninstalling it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It sounds to me, Leo, like what you really want is a local account and then you just get rid of. You don't have to deal with OneDrive.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. If I had a local account.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can sign into Microsoft account to access apps like the Microsoft Store. You can.

[Leo Laporte]

So if you don't. If I hadn't. Is it too late? I've set up a.

[Paul Thurrott]

You'd have to set up a new user account. But the thing is this is different. In 24H2, before this version of Windows, it was important to sign in once with a Microsoft account because it auto encrypted your hard drive storage, I believe. Now in 24H2, it just does that anyway, regardless of your having a Microsoft account. Although you have to deal with the, you know. So what do you call it?

[Leo Laporte]

The John Warner who is actually watching on Tick Tock. Hey, John says just. It's easy. Just turn off OneDrive.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just turn off OneDrive.

[Richard Campbell]

Everything will be fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

It'll be fine.

[Leo Laporte]

How do I do that?

[Richard Campbell]

It'll be fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Turn up OneDrive. If only.

[Richard Campbell]

We're gonna need some artillery.

[Paul Thurrott]

Turn up OneDrive.

[Leo Laporte]

Can I turn off Windows?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you could.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go. You know, if you don't connect it to the Internet, OneDrive can't bother you.

[Paul Thurrott]

There is a version that runs on this platform, by the way.

[Leo Laporte]

But that's a really good reason to sign in with a local account.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you could unlink this PC, right? OneDrive is still sitting there, but it's not doing anything. You're not signed into it. But you did sign in with a Microsoft account. Is it going to pass through at some point in the future? I don't use Windows like this. I'm actually not sure. But my experience is when you sign out of OneDrive you actually have to explicitly sign in again to use it. But it's kind of limited.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, well, I'll just let this run. 360,000.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. This is the horribleness. So when I set up Windows proxies now this has happened in the last year or so. I. Once I get everything the way I want it, put it aside, work on something else because that thing's going to churn for. Leave it overnight and then I look at. Yeah, you don't have to wait that long, hopefully, but it's going to be hours and then.

[Richard Campbell]

685 gigs.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Kind of see where you are, where.

[Leo Laporte]

You'Re at with filing at some point. Must have used OneDrive, I guess.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah. Look, the mentality is easy is right. I have this storage. I might as well put the stuff in another place. Why not?

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

But then you signed into Window and that Windows and that's why not. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I want to apologize for the wallpaper I chose. It looks like Pringles. I don't. Yeah, that's not the. That's not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Those are the type of Pringles you get here in Mexico. They're spicy and hot.

[Leo Laporte]

Spicy hot. Made of Styrofoam Pringles and made of.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. Well, they're made of the cardboard the box came in.

[Leo Laporte]

368, 369,000 changes. It's going up, not down. Why? What?

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's counting them all for you. It's having a great time. I Don't you know that was the test picture you were supposed to play with and paint. How did it become your wallpaper?

[Leo Laporte]

I chose it. Big mistake. I made it dark, which I like. It's now in dark mode.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I love that everyone in the chat is showing you how to uninstall this thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I uninstall some access. I uninstall Windows OneDrive. Every time I set up new windows, it never comes back for me on a local account.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's the point. Why even bother uninstalling it? It doesn't do anything on a local account.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

I wouldn't even take the time. Who cares? Well, I guess you don't like the icon. The icon is offensive. You know, it's in file, it's in File Explorer.

[Leo Laporte]

I guess so that's a really good argument for doing a local account. But you still have to jump through.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, I really, I really super clear about this. For the technical people listening to this. Yes. We could have this conversation for normal people like my wife. Your wife's. I would never recommend constantly broken. Yeah, never recommend that. I know, I know. Just makes so pass keys are real.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's a time for a break. Okay, we take a little break and we come back with lots more of fun stuff like this. But first I want to tell you about. Actually it's kind of timely. 1Password. This episode of Windows Weekly brought to you by 1Password. Of course, 1Password supports passkeys. But I'm not talking about the cons. Consumer password manager. 1Password. I'm talking about their enterprise. It's a new thing they call Extended Access Management. This is a great addition to passwords. So here's the problem. Your end users, let me ask you, do they always work on company owned devices? You know, they ever bring in their phones? They always work on IT approved apps. Never bring in their own. Of course they do. They we live in a BYOD world. So how do you keep your company safe when it's sitting on all those unmanaged apps? On unmanaged devices, 1Password has come up with an answer. They call it Extended Access Management. 1Password Extended Access Management helps you secure every sign in for every app on every device because it solves problems traditional IAM and MDM cannot touch. It's easy to visualize this. Just imagine your company's security like the quadrangle of a college camp. You know, this beautiful lawn, nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, the IT approved apps, the managed employee identities. Very Nice, very clean. Except then there are also those paths people actually use. The shortcuts, little muddy shortcuts worn through the grass. The actual straightest lines from point A to point B, those are the unmanaged devices, the shadow IT apps, the non employee identities. Like contractors, most security tools work on the happy brick paths just fine. But a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts, right? 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all those unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control. 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 we actually work today. Now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra in beta for Google Workspace customers. This is something you can really use. Check it [e-mail] Windows Weekly that's the number one password.com Windows Weekly 1 passwords Extended Access Management. Okay, okay. In that case, let's continue with the show. What do you say?

[Paul Thurrott]

I say yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Xbox time, kids. The moment you've all been waiting for.

[Richard Campbell]

It's happy time. It's happy time.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's actually a pretty big week too.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice, nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Google recently lost a little anti trust case. Little one, sorry. It was in the news. You know, you might have seen it.

[Richard Campbell]

It's fun to be a pernicious monopoly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now I think the appeal process is going to delay any of this from happening. But Microsoft, well, it's strong. It's strong for me to say Microsoft announced. Microsoft did not announce. Xbox president Sarah Bond wrote on threads. What do we call that by the way? It's not a tweet, it's a thread. Wrote a thread, Is that what we're saying?

[Leo Laporte]

Posted a thread, ripped it. I don't know what a threads are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I don't either.

[Leo Laporte]

So anyway, what's a thread?

[Paul Thurrott]

She posted a thread, started a thread, I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Pulled a thread, pulled a thread.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go. That's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, what she wrote was the courts ruling to open up Google's mobile app store.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a stitch. How about if it's a stitch?

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, it could be a stitch. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Sorry.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's okay. We'll allow more choice and flexibility. Our mission is to allow more players to play on more devices. So we are thrilled to share that starting in November 2025 probably players will be able to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox app on Android.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

So a couple things here. Microsoft recently announced that they were going to consolidate on iOS the previously separate apps for the Xbox app itself. And then the Xbox, I think it was just called Xbox Game Pass. Yeah, Xbox Game Pass app or whatever the other app was called. Who cares? On Android, that's already the case. This is already the consolidated app. We see the same app on Windows. Right. It's not clear to me what this means. So Xbox doesn't have Android games. So how are we going to play Xbox games on Android? Now, purchasing games on Xbox is not hard to imagine. Right. Today, through the Xbox app, you have the capability to remotely install a gamer app you already purchased on Xbox to a console. So if you have multiple consoles, you'll get a list, you choose which one, and that thing will start installing. Assuming it's in a power management state where it allows that. But the sentence is so deliberately and delightfully vague. Others, other people, not me, but others ask them for clarification and they said this is all we have to say. So all we have to do is guess. And I don't know. I don't know what this means.

[Richard Campbell]

Are we going to have. Remember when the Blizzard acquisition was all about mobile?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So that's one of the possibilities. Right. That King and Call of Duty, by the way, they have two extremely popular mobile games that run on Android. Maybe those will be among the games that are available to play on Android because they. I guess technically Microsoft now owns companies that have mobile games on Android. They are. Well, but you don't see it today, like you don't see those games as part of Xbox really. But I guess they are. Right. So I guess that's probably what she means.

[Richard Campbell]

Maybe.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, like an alternative to the Google Play Store. You just use the maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, we're, you know, we've had so much Blizzard content since the acquisition, I figured this is what the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Blizzard has a great. What do you call it? Diablo mobile game, by the way. That's for.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah, I play that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Diablo Mortal, actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Great.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I really like it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So that could be. Maybe that's it. And I suppose from Microsoft's perspective, the point of doing that is that any in game purchases will now go through them, not through Google. Now, Google, we haven't figured this out yet, but under the court order, Google will have to. Still has to get something for doing this, but it's hopefully going to be less than 30% or whatever. We'll see. Anyway, interesting. November, she says. Hilarious. What? Maybe. I don't know. I didn't cover this too extensively at the time I was actually outraged by this. Basically a group of buddies decided to start a lawsuit against Microsoft. PlayStation fans essentially worried that Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard was going to trigger the games that they love being worse on the platform they prefer or just not being made available. Something Microsoft repeatedly said they would never do. It doesn't make sense to own Call of Duty unless it's on PlayStation. That's the big platform. Then they actually struck deals with, I don't know, 127 companies to ensure that these games were everywhere. They're going to be on Nintendo at some point. Right. So they're going to be everywhere if Nintendo allows it.

[Richard Campbell]

I can't imagine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Okay. Yeah. I mean call of duty 3 was on whatever the Wii, I guess at the time, long time ago. We'll see. They tried in, I think it was early 2023 to block the acquisition that was blocked by the courts and the judge. I don't, I don't have their name here, but the judge said the day after the acquisition, these people, these fans can play these games exactly the same way they played them, but with their friends before the merger.

[Leo Laporte]

There is no.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft has a legally binding agreement to not do this thing you're so worried about. So the thing that's odd about this though is that the case actually kind of sat there continuing. It's a multi state case because some of these guys live in a different state than the guys. I guess maybe they got some other people involved. But it's literally a set of individuals. It's not a class action suit. It's a bizarre. In the court or the legal filings, they're referred to as a group of recreational video game players. Amazingly, Microsoft settled with these people, I'm.

[Richard Campbell]

Betting for one year of ultimate.

[Paul Thurrott]

We have no idea what the terms are. We probably will never. Well, it's possible. We'll never find. I shouldn't say probably. I don't actually know that. The court documents are sealed right now. No one is saying what's happening or whatever. But the, the terms. I'm sorry, the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning these people cannot sue again. Right. And whatever. So that's that. I know that was hanging over everyone's head. So that's.

[Richard Campbell]

Thank God. I know I was having the vapors.

[Leo Laporte]

I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers.

[Paul Thurrott]

This isn't new news, but we are finally getting some Activision Blizzard games on Game Pass this month. But we already knew this. Right? So it's October. The new Call of Duty is coming out. We're going to get Call of duty Black Ops 6 on cloud, meaning cloud, streaming cloud, Xbox cloud gaming. Xbox cloud gaming, Yeah, I think that's the term console, obviously. And PC on October 25th. That same day we're also going to get Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 to Cloud. That's already on game pass today. So you're going to be able to stream that one through the cloud. I am 100% positive no one will ever successfully play these games on the cloud, but. Okay. And then also Warzone coming to the cloud. That also is available across platforms today and a bunch of other stuff. Actually, it's been kind of a light few months, but MechWarrior 5 is in there. Dead Island 2, Starcraft Remastered. That's actually kind of cool. And then Starcraft 2 Campaign Collection. So a lot of good stuff in the second half.

[Leo Laporte]

StarCraft is still a thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Ask the Koreans. That's it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think huge. But it's going to be huge over the next few years. Right. With all the upscaling and I think it's big.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, so that's happening. What else we got? So Microsoft announced kind of disappointing console refreshes. Right. So where disappointing? Well, yeah. So we're four years into the Xbox S era, such as it is. This is. We typically buy this point would have seen refreshes. The thing is, with the previous generation of consoles, each of these refreshes brought advances of some kind, culminating with the Xbox One X, which more storage space, 4K, et cetera, et cetera. So when they announced these, it was like, well, we get some new colors. You can get the X in white. That was only in black before. You can get the X in a special edition black. You could get Ox, also white and disc list. I want to be careful with that one, you know. Okay. And it was like, you know, we were kind of. Sony is introducing a pro.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

With all this capabilities. Yes. But that's the type of like you would expect there to be an Xbox.

[Richard Campbell]

Kind of thing that won't fit your stereo cabinet.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But a more advanced Xbox series, whatever. Whatever they call it. And then maybe some cost reduced versions of the current consoles.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And that's not what they're doing.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So. And plus we had gotten the leaks of these ideas for console refreshes that looked amazing. Right. The cylindrical X version, I think it was. And so just disappointing on those levels. But some people have already opened these things up and actually they've moved from a. I don't remember what was it 10, 7 nanometers, whatever it was, but down to a 6 nanometer new version of the chip which is more power efficient and generates less heat. They've redesigned the motherboard, the cooling system. This is the type of thing you would actually expect of a console refresh. And it was nothing.

[Richard Campbell]

What refresh usually means.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And they never really discussed that before. So these things are more efficient. Someone, it was a tech YouTuber, I guess, said that they observed that this console consumes 10 watts less power than the original version that it's replacing and 16 less watts while games are running. Right. So that's actually good stuff. I mean given all these kind of.

[Richard Campbell]

10% difference, like it's still the type of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Why not, why wouldn't you just promote that? We love sustainability and you know. Yeah. We love the, you know, we love the ecology. We're not killing trees.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're birding them for, you know, for warmth.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, yeah. So anyway, these things are available now, so various price points, various configurations, etc. So I like, I've always liked the white Xbox series S. So, you know, a white X would be kind of cool actually. But I'm not buying one. Just, just to be clear, this one's just a rumor, but I think this is pretty much certain. It's not a big deal, but there. The current Xbox headset, the most recent one is Wired. They're going to come out with a wireless version soon, which is exactly the same headset basically, but with our wireless BLE in it. Yeah, yeah, no big deal. But, but good. Right. So it's been three years probably since they've revved this thing. It's kind of overdue. So. Good.

[Richard Campbell]

Particularly innovative.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but you know, the type of thing just kind of has to happen and you know. Okay, so it's happening like the controller. Every once in a while you get a controller update or whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft. I will see. Microsoft has had a lot of layoffs this year. They've had some studio closures. It's been a lot of bad news. Haven't been a lot in the gaming industry. Yep, a lot of. Yep. But we're also. This week is the one year anniversary, by the way, of the Xbox, the Microsoft acquisition of Activision. Not a lot to show for it. No price hikes over at Game Pass. They got rid of the most popular tier, et cetera, et cetera. But I will say if we could look past that and yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Now can we talk about just not hearing from Bobby Kotick for a year?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. I have A Bobby Kotick story I will share privately later, by the way. But one thing that this has been very interesting this year is there have been a lot of game announcements in like events where they just announce a bunch of games. I feel like this year there's been more of that than usual. They're doing another one tomorrow. So there's an Xbox partner preview broadcast tomorrow, Thursday. As for this recording, October 17th, you know, it's gonna be on YouTube, Twitch, et cetera. It's gonna be everywhere. LinkedIn, because that's where all the Xbox fans are. And this is an opportunity for third parties to talk about the games that are coming out on Xbox over the next whatever, holidays, obviously. But I bet some of them will be post holiday as well. So that's good. Good. You know, whatever Steam, the most popular online store and PC is, I think I believe they were forced through some legal process to do this. But they actually, and I just saw this because they just installed Steam on a PC now tell you that when you buy products, digital products from Steam, I don't know what else you would buy from Steam. You're buying a license, you're not buying the.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

You don't own the game. Because that's always.

[Richard Campbell]

It was always true. It just, you know, now it comes up.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's important for our oppressors to remind us occasionally how horrible our lives are and that we are worth nothing.

[Leo Laporte]

It's true though, for like if you buy music on all software, everything, it's.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, it's everything. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

We always been a license.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. This is always any digital content that you buy, you're buying a license. And you know, sometimes these things run out. We've seen examples of content licenses running out and games disappear. You know, we're talking about Xbox, but.

[Richard Campbell]

Games disappear, movies disappear.

[Paul Thurrott]

You could lose. Yep, We've seen that happen with Apple, actually. We actually. Books could disappear from Kindle. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So it happens. I mean, to be fair, it's easy to get outraged at this. It doesn't actually happen that much, at least not yet. But of course that's the attitude they want you to have because, you know, they're out to get you, obviously. And it could. No, but it could happen. Right. I mean, that's the point is it could happen.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's good that they. I think it's good to communicate this.

[Paul Thurrott]

I do too. Yeah. Right. Be transparent and fair and honest and, you know, whatever. So that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

And presumably there are people who didn't know that that's Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. Just today, someone on my blog post, or maybe it's yesterday, but someone just recently posted something on my site and said, so I don't have an NPU in my computer. Does that mean I'm not going to get 24H2 now? I'm not saying this to make fun of this person at all. This stuff is confusing. This is the world we live in. Everything's confusing. You know? So it's just Paul.

[Leo Laporte]

That was me. Just want you to know what happened.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't think it's true. He was the one who said, oh.

[Paul Thurrott]

You were the guy. Yes, it was Leo. L. I don't know. I don't. I didn't recognize the username.

[Leo Laporte]

But, yeah, some guy named Leo who's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, how do I get my Microsoft Authenticator app on my new phone? Leo?

[Leo Laporte]

This is really the main reason we do this show, so that I can pester Paul with Windows questions during.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is actually deleting everything.

[Leo Laporte]

I am deleting everything from my OneDrive because there's nothing on there I wanted.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, Okay. I would do that. Well, season. So I would turn.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, it's hard to do, by the way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, no. Well, you could pot if it's all in one folder. Just go to the website and do it from there.

[Leo Laporte]

The folder is too big.

[Paul Thurrott]

Then you empty the Recycle Bin. But I would pause OneDrive on your computer. So stop it from trying to sync because it's going to run into all kinds of problems. Right, Right. You can already see some of my.

[Leo Laporte]

How do I pause it, by the way? It's up to half a million changes, so gear icon.

[Paul Thurrott]

And you'll see a pause at the bottom. Pause syncing.

[Leo Laporte]

Pause syncing forever.

[Paul Thurrott]

It doesn't matter what you choose because the next thing you should do on is. And then quit OneDrive. Go through that again and quit it.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Quit it. And then after you successfully deleted it from the web and removed it from the OneDrive recycle bin. It's funny.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not like, let me quit.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hold on. Click it again. You had a yellow, you know, saying.

[Leo Laporte]

You'Re, you know, you don't want to quit. They're not currently sinking.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we know that. All right, so now I can quit.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, close.

[Richard Campbell]

Sure.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so now on the website, so.

[Paul Thurrott]

But go up a level.

[Leo Laporte]

It wouldn't. You know, I tried, but it wouldn't. It would. You see, it said it won't. It won't let me delete. So let me Try again. But I think it's because it's 548 gigabytes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, that's amazing that it won't let.

[Leo Laporte]

Me delete it all.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, it looks like you might have deleted enough previously that it's going to let you do it this time. But whenever this works, whenever this thing is empty, there's a recycle bin on the left there.

[Leo Laporte]

Empty that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you want to empty that as well. Then reboot your computer and polarity ensues. It'll be good.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a lot of stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're still going to be syncing files because it's going to have to sync them in the. It's still going to have to look for the things it did and get rid of whatever. But it's all right. It's computer science. It's got.

[Richard Campbell]

This is awesome.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, let's take.

[Paul Thurrott]

Glad this wasn't a Kindle unboxing today. That's all I'm saying.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

So you got the color one. See, I have a color Kobo, but. But I'll be curious because it's a very washed. All these E Ink screen. Color is washed out.

[Richard Campbell]

Pretty needed. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's still better.

[Leo Laporte]

I show it on the ad. So if it looks so vibrant. But it's not, I supposedly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yes, it's got to be. It has to be the same that Kobo is using, but the same basic technology.

[Leo Laporte]

Same.

[Paul Thurrott]

They talk about it like it isn't, but I think it is. It does. Look, most of the content I read on Kindle, obviously, is just text. Who cares? But you get the color book covers, you get color highlighting. But I do read a lot of graphic novels, so honestly, I'm kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

And also some graphic novels on there. It's okay. It's better.

[Paul Thurrott]

But also like a travel guide or something. There are lots of books that have color images and I'll be curious what you think. I can't wait. I'm really curious about this myself.

[Leo Laporte]

And you weren't interested in the bigger the note.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I totally am, but I want the color. So that thing in color, that would be of interest to me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So they updated that and I have the first version of that. I really like that. And it's big.

[Paul Thurrott]

90% of what I do on an iPad is just reading.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I would love to do that on a Kindle and get whatever it is. Five weeks of battery life.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Obviously. That'd be amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, ask your friend Panos Panay what.

[Paul Thurrott]

To do if my life goes accordingly. I'll never have to do that. We'll see. I don't want to say never. Say never.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, he's pumped. I'm sure, I'm sure he's Our show today we got a brand new sponsor. Actually this is a really good sponsor for all you Microsoft Enterprise users. If you are in it in Microsoft. You know, the way Microsoft sells, support is part of the whole package, right? And it's kind of unlimited. Right. But that may be that you're spending more money than you need to. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by US Cloud. Have you heard of them? They're the number one Microsoft unified support replacement, the US Cloud. They're the global leader in third party Microsoft enterprise support. 50 out of the Fortune 500 use US Cloud. Why? Because switching to US Cloud can save your business 30 to 50% on a true comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified support. Microsoft is a profit minting entity and I think it's really cool that US Cloud saw an opportunity to provide you with, in my opinion, better support for less. US Cloud goes out and gets the best engineers it can get. Really talented people. You're not getting a notebook reader, you're getting somebody, the kind of person you'd want to have when there's something going wrong. US Cloud supports the entire Microsoft stack. They're there 24, 7, 365 days a year. They respond faster, they resolve tickets quicker for clients all around the world. And you're always going to talk to real humans, real experts. Check out their proven track record. Expert level engineers with an average of 14.9 years experience. And that's for Break Fix or DSE. All their teams are domestic. This is really great too. 100% domestic teams. That means your data never leaves the US and this is something Microsoft has consistently refused to do. Financially backed SLAs on response time. Financially backed SLAs on response time. Initial ticket response averages under 4 minutes. In 2023, 94% of US Cloud's clients reported saving 1/3 or more when switching from Microsoft unified support to US Cloud. From Fortune 500 companies to large health systems, major financial institutions, and yes, even federal agencies, US Cloud ensures that vital Microsoft systems are working for over 6 million users globally every day. I mean, big brands that trust us Cloud include Caterpillar, HP, Aflac, Dun and Bradstreet, Under Armour, KeyBank. Even the IT folks at Gartner have chosen us Cloud for their Microsoft support needs. It really makes sense. I won't say the name, but a director of information and technology has this quote, I love this quote. And within an hour, US Cloud responded with, I want to say, four engineers within an hour. So not only did they bring the right guys to the call, they brought the cavalry. I just felt like, wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I had experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier. We made the right choice. You make the right choice. This is the way to do it. When it comes to compliance, no one gets it more than US Cloud. They're ISO, gdpr, ESG compliance, strategic imperatives that drive operational efficiency, legal compliance, risk management and corporate reputation. I mean, it's good for everyone. These standards foster trust and loyalty among customers, among stakeholders. They attract investment, they ensure long term sustainability and success in a global competitive market. I hope I've intrigued you. You deserve faster Microsoft support for less. You deserve it. And that's what US Cloud offers. I just encourage you to visit uscloud.com, book a call today to find out how much your team can save. Uscloud.com call them right now. Book today, get faster Microsoft support for less. And it really solves a pain point for a lot of people. I think it's a really exciting solution. I want you to check it out US Cloud. Let them know you heard it on Windows Weekly. All right, back of the book time. Let's start off with Paul Thrott and a tip of the week.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I had an actual tip earlier in the show about redownloading that Windows 1124H2 ISO. Now I have a fake tip, which.

[Leo Laporte]

Is, by the way, if I did that on this Snapdragon, would that work?

[Paul Thurrott]

Nope. Because you can't download an ARM ISO yet.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't have an ARM yet.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're going to offer that in the coming weeks. If you look at that page, there's a note.

[Leo Laporte]

So once that, and maybe that is, I should just start over.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you can just reset the PC. Oh yeah, that's right.

[Leo Laporte]

And then do a local account. Yeah, okay. But did you have a get rich skill?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So yeah. So my wife and I have discovered in a way to make an additional tens of dollars. Now we got a couple. Every once in a while people bug me about this. So we're gonna. We've started. Well, we're going to start a swag store of sorts. Oh, good. Right now I just have a couple of sample items. What I'm really looking for is not for anyone to buy any of this crap, but rather for people to look at.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a real way to sell it. Paul. Congratulations.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no. Eventually I want this to be nice, but for now I just want people to look at the underlying store and see what's available and then tell me what I. Because honestly it's a really tedious process to get the stuff online.

[Leo Laporte]

For example, we'll go through this too if you want to talk to somebody at our end because.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So for just as an example, there's a T shirt that has, I don't know, let's say 12 available colors. I have to do this thing 12 times. Every time you position the logo exactly to the size and you know, it is horrible. So it is a lot of work on my part. This will be a thankless task. We're never going to make any money from this but I think it's kind.

[Leo Laporte]

Of a fun thing and it makes the fans happy. So.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And just for myself I could have a little T logo on my phone or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

So.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So you've never done I have a teacup. No.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well we. That was the. Yeah. Back when we started the rot.com, which by the way, January will be 10 years.

[Leo Laporte]

Congratulations.

[Paul Thurrott]

What?

[Leo Laporte]

I can't believe it. Really? Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

You were at Wynn. Super site when we first started doing this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I was at Penton and Well, super site since NPET. Actually since 99, so 98. Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

So for 15.

[Leo Laporte]

So you'd have your therap logo and you could have it and you're. What you're wanting people to do is tell you what kinds of things you want.

[Paul Thurrott]

I might have funny statements I may or may not have made on the back of some.

[Leo Laporte]

That would be good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, we have a collection of those, Paul.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So you know, I'm literally looking for feedback on this. If you have ideas and you know we can. Look, this is not. This is not the next big thing for me or anything but I think.

[Leo Laporte]

It'S something Keith says make a screwdriver with a THOT logo on it. Yeah. Or a little tool kit would be cool.

[Paul Thurrott]

The little. Used to get that screwdriver with the Windows Resource Kit back in the day. Remember that middle sided. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuff like that.

[Leo Laporte]

That's cool stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

Thrott does what Microsoft don't. Anyway.

[Richard Campbell]

Whatever.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm just. I want to be clear. This is whimsical. It's not meant to be serious. And then this past week the browser company announced that ARC browser is now available natively and stable on arc. So they have a native Windows.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I could. Oh I'm going to go out and get it right now.

[Paul Thurrott]

You should get it right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Because I use ARC on Mac and I really like it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they're still not quite in the same place, but they are going to be. So I have hopes here.

[Leo Laporte]

I am a fan.

[Paul Thurrott]

I am too.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm a little worried because they are Chromium based. And with Google abandoning manifest v2 and forcing us all to use v3 and breaking UBlock origin, we'll see.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So those guys, it's gonna be a bigger problem. Those smaller guys they say they're gonna.

[Leo Laporte]

Rely on, like Brave does, build in their own ad blocking.

[Paul Thurrott]

I would look at what. What's their kind. Look up adguard in their blog and see what they wrote about this. Because the guys behind. What's the big one, the big blocker?

[Leo Laporte]

You block Origin.

[Paul Thurrott]

You block Origin. Those guys have been kind of bitching them on the whole.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a guy. It's Raymond. Raymond Gorehill.

[Paul Thurrott]

Compare what he says to what adguard says. Because adguard's like, we did it. It's fine. You know, like, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

That's because adguard doesn't do as much if, in my opinion, that's the reason. Adguard's the ones that have the acceptable ads policy.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, okay, I don't use adguard, so I'll let that qualifier. But look, there are. I don't know, just.

[Leo Laporte]

There is a UBlock Lite that does work with V4, V3, and he's telling people to use that. But there are features in UBlock that.

[Paul Thurrott]

I. I use Privacy Badger. I use AdBlock Plus.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can stack these things just like coupons. It's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Honestly, to some degree, I'm sure at some point they just start fighting each other.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. If you block Origin doesn't work on a browser, I'm not going to use it. And I think that's what happened with all Chromium browsers, to be honest. And that's why Firefox.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is random, but I will say I wish Apple had never taken Safari off Windows. There is a world in which a minimalist, safe and private browser is necessary. And I would say today Brave plays that role in Windows. But we'll see what happens.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, actually, I use NextDNS and probably don't really need, come to think of it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but don't you kind of like screwing with these guys a little bit?

[Leo Laporte]

I do.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, I mean it like.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I do.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're so abused.

[Leo Laporte]

You're an ad supported network. I should not be doing this. No, I know, but I think that what we do is responsible ads from products we know and so forth.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's why I'm selling crap on my website. It's responsible. So it's. There's probably some sexy underwear I could be selling. I will, you know, we'll see where it takes us.

[Richard Campbell]

Is the point the rod logo underwear?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I can see your throttle showing. Is that a threat in your pocket? Are you happy? I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

I will get the Arc browser as soon as I'm deleted. Finished deleting everything from OneDrive. I'll let you know. Richard Campbell run his radio.

[Paul Thurrott]

What's going on?

[Richard Campbell]

This week's show happens to be with Pollyanna Shewitz who's out of Warsaw. So I'm going to see her this weekend actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

And this is a brilliant woman who I've known for many, many years. Never let her anywhere near your computer. She is one of the best security vulnerability testers ever. We ended up in a conversation about getting ready for a professional pen test. There's so much low hanging fruit that if you just put a little time in and use some of the open source tools that are available, you're going to pick those things off and make your system more secure and then you're ready for the pros to come in and really take you to another level.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a great title. Pen test yourself.

[Richard Campbell]

Pen test yourself.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Just get in there and just pick up those obvious ones. There are scripts that are designed to look for simple exploits and you should run them against your network and show that you have those vulnerabilities both internally and externally. So what's open on the outside? And also when someone's clicked on the wrong thing, are they able to do a lateral? Have you locked down ad properly? Are you limiting access that way? And these are all. There's good tooling for all of that. So it's a good smart conversation just to like you have some power here. And these days when we have somewhat limited budgets but we still have some time. This is a time thing, this free tooling. You can do it yourself.

[Leo Laporte]

Pen test yourself and test yourself run as radio.com and now the moment you've all been waiting for. Those of you who are new to the show because we have 775 people watching all over the Internet on TikTok now. Perhaps you don't know, but one of the great features of this show is this guy right here does whiskey a whiskey pick every week what is your pick this week?

[Richard Campbell]

This week is Jameson's Irish Whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, everybody knows Jameson.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. The number one selling Irish whiskey, number three of all whiskey. And a whiskey that has been made for 244 years.

[Leo Laporte]

It's good.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm sorry to interrupt. You gotta tell us what 1 and 2 are. Maker's Mark and.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, Jack.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course, of course. Yeah. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So what we've already done the Irish whiskey story. I've talked about Irish before like that. Arguably this is the first and the. It was the Irish monks that were the first to bring distilling equipment in the Mediterranean. From the Mediterranean back as far as the 12th century. We have documentation of whiskey being made in Ireland going back to 1608, which was the old Bushmills distillery. Had the very first license pretty much anywhere. And then, you know, things progress until you get to the 17 in 1779 is sort of a pivotal moment where they're starting to put regulation around making the product. And at that time, the records show 1200-00 distilleries in Ireland.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

But as the rules come on, that gets a little more difficult. And that's when the story picks up for Jameson, because John Jameson starts making whiskey on Bow street in Dublin. He was born in 1740 in Alois, Scotland. So yeah, he's actually a Scot, but yeah, 1780 to 244 years ago. And he got in just in time because as the whiskey started taking off, new taxes came into play. So there was a tax on malt barley, which I get, I talked about in the history part, because they only taxed malted barley. They said, well, what if we use unmalted barley and other grains? And so one of the things that makes Irish whiskey distinct is that it is a mixture of grains, including both malted and unmalted barley. By 1804, John Jameson II has taken over and. And one of the parts in researching this was seeing pictures of the man's notes from 200 plus years ago.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So they've got the. They've got his original mash bills written out in this terrible Gaelic scroll. It's impossible to read. By 1821, they're only down. They're down to 28 distilleries. So everything had sort of cut back and was narrowed down. And I should mention also this is when the Aeneas coffee comes up with the continuous coffee still or the column still as we generally know it now. And at the time, the Irish were strictly against it. They were using pot stills. But it's the Scots that initially adopted to make high spirits, to make the 90% plus. And a bunch of things happened when the coffee still got introduced. One was that a lot of distilleries wanted to get rid of their pot stills to use the column stills because they were so much faster and they're continuous operating. And so a lot of new distilleries were open on the back of these pot stills, essentially being all but free. That's where Dalmore came from. For example, they were buying former gin stills because those guys were switching over to the column stills. And then one of the. And this is where that schism between whiskey with the E and whiskey without the e came from, because that's how the Irish distinguished what they felt was their superior whiskey from the Scottish whiskey. They used the E, which the Scots weren't doing. John Jameson, the three takes over in 1851. And at this point he is a college educated man. He's also a Justice of Peace and a high sheriff. He is part of the serious society of Ireland. So that there's already been, you know, 80 years of Jameson in Ireland. And the distillery on Bow street is six acres. It's. They called it a city within a city. It employed a huge number of places, completely vertically integrated. They acquired their own barley, they did their own maltings, did all of their own production. And so by 1875, we now onto the fourth John Jameson. So literally the same name, four in a row. He was known as Jack, also called educated justice of the Peace, High Sheriff, but he had no kids, married twice, but never had any children. So within a few years, by 1891, they incorporated the company, so finally became a limited entity. And in 1905, King Edward VII granted them a Royal warrant, which is funny because like the next couple of years was the War of Independence against the English, which rapidly ended all of that. It's also World War I, so shortages of everything meant that the distillery actually shut down for a couple of years. In 1905, they. A grandson of the previous Jameson III took over. His name was Andrew Jameson and he also became a senator in the very first Senate of the Republic after independence. Prohibition, of course, devastating to Jameson, and they largely shut down. That's when the Scots were doing a lot of the exporting and pretty much took control of the American market and kept it. George Lionel Jameson takes charge in 1941. He's the great grandson of Jan Jameson, the very first and the last director relative of the company, a guy named Alexander Crichton took charge in 1961. So that's six in a row, direct family lineage. And that's pretty much in a lot of ways when Jamieson was fundamentally transformed because coming out of World War II and the Prohibition, the Irish whiskey masking struggled mightily. And so by 1966, there was only two distilleries left, just Bush Mills and Jameson. And they formed up with Cork Distillers to create a group called the Irish Distillers Group. And they realized that they couldn't afford to run all the different distilleries, that it made sense to build one distillery that was versatile, it was modern. This is in the 1960s, with multiple stills that could run multiple mash bills and switch between making different productions very quickly. And so the Bush Mills distillery up in, in Belfast shut down. The old Jameson distillery on Beaumont on Bow street shuts down. And they have the one distilling system with three 75,000 liter pot stills and they're able to switch quickly between the recipes to make whatever they want. And this is also when the other they buy up a lot of the brands and bring them all under this umbrella of the Irish Hostilities group. So they kind of save things like Green Spot and Red Breasts, they're all companies that were essentially defunct. And the Beaumore Distillery, that massive facility in 1972, they sell to the Irish government, they pretty much just give it away. It's an obligation they can't afford. They can't afford the taxes. They've now moved to the new Middleton Distillery, which is down in Cork. So they don't need it. Which sad, it's, you know, an old facility, been around for, for almost 200 years at that point, but it didn't make sense to continue. But things turned around by the 1980s. Irish whiskey is getting more popular. New distilleries are opening with the Coulee distillery. And in 1988, Pernod Ricard buys Irish distilleries. So this is one of the big conglomerates like Diageo, made out of France, make a lot of their own products. And so by acquiring Irish Distillers, they acquire Jam Jameson as well. And that's when largely the Jameson family exits the company entirely. The government never did anything with the Bow street facility. In fact, it was a huge fire in 1990 that ravaged a bunch of the buildings, but not much was done by it. But with Renault Bernard's money, they actually buy back a part of the facility in 1995 and they turn it into a visitor center, which opened in 97. And so by 23 by 2013 13, we are up to the new middle distilleries, the biggest still making Jameson. All of the spots, Telemore Dew, Red Breast and a bunch of others. Bushmills reopened their original distillery back in Belfast and continued with that. And a few others existed. The standardization for Irish Whiskey came in 2016, which is that has to be made in Ireland, both Republic and north being considered Ireland. A mash of malted cereals and whole grains. It doesn't have to only be malted. You can use the natural enzymes. So that's the amylase that's in barley, which you can also use what's called diastase, which is other sacrifications, ways to do malting. Fermented by yeast, distilled up to as high as 94.8%, which is crazy high. That's vodka numbers. Most other whiskeys are not allowed to be distilled that high. You can add water and you can add caramel color. Those are all considered legal. You gotta do at least three years in barrels. The barrels can't be bigger than 700 liters and finished at 40%, which is nothing unusual. They identify three varieties of Irish whiskey. So the single pot still, the single malt, there's single grain and then there's also blended. And that's actually where we come to what Jameson actually is, which is a blended Irish whiskey. So they make some in column stills and part of it in column stills and part of it in pot stills. The part, the half that is in pot stills is all malted barley. So very much like a traditional Scottish whiskey. But then the other half is done in a column still. And it's 40% malted barley and 60% unmalted barley, which is unusual for other whiskey makers, not unusual for the Irish because of those malting laws. Back in the day, they got into using unmalted barley. And it's part of the normal practices that it's part of what makes Irish whiskey Irish. They then a Jameson is aged in bourbon cap, specifically Wild Turkey bourbon casks. And then they also do a finishing in sherry casks. And they buy from Bias, Croft and Harvey's. So for the most part, the new make goes. They. They put it in different barrels and they sort of sample it along the way. The minimum they typically leave it is four, but it'll go up as much as seven before they pull together an addition. That being said, I read a great study about the various forms of Jameson Irish whiskey has been made over the past 244 years. And the current version is what they call a lot lighter. It's a very easy drinking Irish whiskey. And because they think that's the style that, you know, if you went back to the 1960s, they are. The Jameson of that time was a much rougher product. So this is very refined, straightforward and we drank a ton of it in Ibiza because that's about all they had. And it's like given the choice drink the Jameson and so we happily sipped away, it's 40, which is just a classic spirit number. Nothing exciting because it is chill filtered and colored. And it's a 20 bucks a bottle. Keep this on your shelf. This is a reliable whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

I really like Jameson.

[Richard Campbell]

It drinks me, it drinks with ice, it drinks in cocktails. It's incredibly versatile. It is unpretentious and it is good.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's not peaty.

[Richard Campbell]

Not a bit of peat. And the Scots strict. The Irish are strictly against Pete. That's not a thing. Not a thing. That's a Scottish thing. We don't. They don't do that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

I quite. My brother in law is an Irish whiskey fan and kind of turned me onto it.

[Richard Campbell]

And, and I didn't say this, but all Irish whiskey is triple distilled. So they only, you know, they, they go through multiple passes with the pot stills more than the Scots are like a double distillation. The Irish lactopal distillation on their pot still makes it smoother.

[Leo Laporte]

Does that make it. What does it do?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, depending on who you ask, it's either smoother or stripped of any substantial character.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Or both. Yeah, yeah. It's an unassuming.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's not a scotch unless you have internal bleeding or peanut butter. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

If you're not vaguely traumatized you had the wrong drink. Right. Yeah. You know, I sat around with a group of really fun people at an amazing weekend for our friends and we drank a lot of Jameson and told stories and had a lovely time and I thought I would share that story with you.

[Leo Laporte]

That's wonderful. Richard Campbell, for those of us, you who are new to the show has.

[Paul Thurrott]

We've put together whiskey verse, as we call it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. To the whiskey verse. We've put together an entire playlist of his scotch because there's quite a few now.

[Richard Campbell]

His scotch story coming up on 200, I think.

[Leo Laporte]

Really? Wow. So Kevin, or how many have you done or over 100 now on your playlist? How many? How many? We call it Windows Whiskey and Windows Whiskey has a. Has quite a few. Yeah, they're up to 4545 he's done. Thank you so much. Kevin King, our producer and editor, he has put together quite a few of these. So there is a whole, the whole beginning of it is how whiskey's made. So it's great.

[Richard Campbell]

Specifically Scottish whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's an introduction to the process of whiskey making. And then he's got quite a few picks in there, including our favorite Abalora.

[Richard Campbell]

Bodna and the great story of how that went down that day.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, there's some really good, really good stuff in here. If you, if our fan of brown liquors. This is a great. And we're almost up to date. That's really good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

It's about half.

[Leo Laporte]

About half, yeah. Really great playlist. Windows whiskey. The next one is Glengarry.

[Richard Campbell]

Ah, nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Glengarry Glen Ross. So that will be something to look forward to on our YouTube channel. Of course, you can watch this show on our YouTube channel as well. Paul Thorata and Richard Campbell gather together every Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC to do this show. Which means you can watch us live on those eight different channels from YouTube and Twitch to brand new. We're on TikTok x.com, linkedIn, Facebook and more. Watch live. But if you do watch live, do me a favor, download a copy too because that's the only thing we monetize is the download. So you can go to TWiT TV, WW, download it there. Paul puts a copy of it at his website. That works too. Thorot.com There is a YouTube channel which doesn't really count as a download but is very handy. It's the, it's the video version of this show for sharing. So if you just, you know, wanted to, you know, if you had a brother in law named Joe who really liked Jameson, you might want to share that little clip. The YouTube channel makes it very easy to do that. It's Joe's birthday tomorrow, so I think I'm going to have to go get some red breast or something. I got to get, I got to get to work. What do you, what's your, what's your favorite Irish whiskey?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you know the one in front of me most of the time.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the red breast was good. We got him that red breast.

[Richard Campbell]

Price 12. Go get him a green spot or a yellow spot if you really like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Spot.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, if you can find the yellow spot, it's a bit more spot.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Pretty special stuff. Yeah. There is actually a blue spot but I've never seen it outside of Ireland and it's quite pricey.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we just saw a yellow spot in a bar in Pennsylvania, but there, that's unusual, too.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. If you find it, you'll. You'll really like it. There's nothing wrong with the Green Spot. Green Spot is the basic and not. Certainly not bad by any respect, but that's like a $40 bottle. And the yellow is more like 100.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is just nice because it's everywhere. Like, you're always going to be able to find it. It's kind of like Jack Daniels. Like, it will be there. So if you like this kind of thing, it's that, you know, it's a good choice.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I'm sure Joe knows all about it, but.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, Bevmo's got yellow spot for 150.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll go get him. There's a Bevmo down the road. I'll get him one. So, because we're going to the barbecue tomorrow, you could. The best way to get the show really is subscribe. You know, it's a podcast, so you can go to any podcast client. Search for Windows Weekly. If you go to Twit TV ww, there's some links there to some of the more popular ones, like Pocket Casts. If you subscribe, you'll get it automatically. Then you don't even have to think about it. You just know. I have a Windows Weekly this weekend, every week. Paul Thurrott is at therotte.com T H U double R O double good. That's become a premium member. There's great content there. Some of that premium content gets into the books, like Windows Everywhere. His most recent book, which is kind of a story, the Story of Windows through its development frameworks. I don't know, it seems so simplistic to say it that way, but I.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, it's a tough sell, but I think it's actually. I think. I think people would like it even if they weren't.

[Leo Laporte]

It's great.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not really.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's great.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wonderful. I think it is history, which is, you know, it's been there the whole way. So, you know, this is a. This is a guy who can tell a story. He also has the Field guide to Windows 11, which if I would just gosh darn read it, I wouldn't have to keep asking him all these questions.

[Paul Thurrott]

That one's being updated almost daily right now.

[Leo Laporte]

And there's Snapdragon stuff in there, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, starting to. Yeah, I'm starting to incorporate that copilot.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. I guess. Better get that Field guide to Windows 10 is inside as well. All of that. Lean publisher Richard Campbell's podcasts run as radio and dot net rocks are both [e-mail] including that new one on pen test yourself. Pen test yourself. We thank you so much, Paul and Richard. Paul is in Mexico City. You'll be still there tomorrow, next week, Ryan, I'm sure Richard is in Porto.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought you might do a port today.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you know, I've got a couple floating around, but I might do them next week, too.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Because I'll be in Warsaw.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, boy. And is it the vin there? What is it that you drink in Warsaw?

[Richard Campbell]

Usually I'm able to get Romanian and Moldovan divin. That's about as far west as it gets. So I do have a couple specialty shops I visit in Warsaw to stock up a bit. Little given.

[Leo Laporte]

Stock up on the vint.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

But you know, it's a vodka town and they got a vodka for every occasion. You know, they have a lot of.

[Leo Laporte]

Potatoes, so it's natural that vodka would result.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it's like got a stomach upset. I got a vodka for that. You know, you name it, they got a vodka. Oh, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Hysterical.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, well, we'll see what we do next week, but it'll be sure to be alcoholic, let's put it that way. Thank you.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it's not like I would do this sober. Goodness.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Richard. Thanks to our club members, especially who make this show possible. The club is so important to us. I don't know if you've heard podcasts are having a little trouble these days. It isn't as easy to make a living as a podcast and especially difficult for us as a podcast network. We have many shows, but we want to keep doing it because I think especially now with the advent of AI the fall of intel, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's worthy of coverage. We have a job to do. And while we have advertisers and we are very grateful to them, it also takes our listeners to keep this show on the road. So all you have to do is go to TWiT TV ClubTWiT. It's as little as $7 a month, although if you want to pay more, you can. There are lots of benefits ad free versions of all the shows, special programming we put together. Tomorrow I'm going to do a coffee, another coffee episode in our kind of continuing series with the coffee geek, Mark Prince. He's going to bring along a connoisseur of coffee beans we'll, we'll start at the beginning and talk about the beans, which are a very important way, very important part of coffee. I think they're the whole part actually. No, there's water, there's the machine. There's a lot of technical skills involved but, but you got to have good beans. And we will talk about that tomorrow. That's a special event for club members. Stacy's book club is a week from tomorrow with the creative corner with Micah. I'm going to start doing, I think a call in radio show, overnight show. I just want to play around with it. It was kind of always my goal in life to be a late night, non stop truck driving show guy and well, I have my own Internet studio. I guess I could do that. So all of that's in the club though, and that's the key. And so your $7. Oh, you also get access, access to the Discord where there's a great community of people talking all the time, not just during the shows. But the real reason that you spend $7 a month is to keep the shows like this continuing. We're doing everything we can to keep our, you know, tighten our belt and keep our costs low. But we still need your help. So Twit TV Club twit. If you haven't yet joined the club, I invite you to do so. And you see this, you can scan the QR code in the upper left or go to TWiT TV ClubTWiT. One more thing, we've just added a referral program. So if you're already a Club Twit member, I'm looking at you. If you're a Club Twit member, you can refer another member, a new member and get a free month when they join. So if you are not yet a club member, join at TWiT TV ClubTWiT. Or if you are a club member, refer people to it. And there's a whole referral page at TWIT TV clubtwit and get a free month. It's that important to us. We really, really appreciate it. Have a wonderful week everybody, all you winners and dozers and we'll see you next time on Windows Weekly.

[Paul Thurrott]

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[Leo Laporte]

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[Paul Thurrott]

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[Leo Laporte]

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[Paul Thurrott]

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[Leo Laporte]

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[Richard Campbell]

So yes, Happy Friday.

[Leo Laporte]

Random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with GEICO feels just like that. Get more with Geico. Hi, I'm Chris Gethard and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone. I tweet out a phone number. Thousands of people try to call. Talk to one of them. They stay anonymous. I can't hang up. That's all the rules. I never know what's gonna happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison. I've talked to people who survived mass shootings. Crazy funny one. I talked to a guy with a goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends. I never know what's gonna happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today. Beautiful Anonymous.