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WW 906: Turnip Boy Robs a Bank - Recall delayed again, Prism update, ChatGPT search
02:30:55
Recall delayed again, Prism update, ChatGPT search
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- [00:01]
Leo Laporte
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Therot is here. I am here. Richard Campbell has the week off. We'll talk about Microsoft's earnings. It came out late last week during the show, but we have a kind of a more granular look at what's happening. Paul's favorite gaming laptop. A quick Review and then ChatGPT Search. It's all coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.
- [00:29]
Paul Thurrott
This is tw.
- [00:36]
Leo Laporte
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thorata and Richard Campbell. Episode 906, recorded Wednesday, November 6, 2024. Turnip Boy robs a bank. It's time for Windows Weekly. Yay. The show. We cover the latest news from Microsoft. Hello, you winners. Hello you dozers. We bring them both together for this fabulous program. But we will not bring Richard Campbell together with us this week because he' where is he? Paul thuratz here from thurat.com. thank goodness. I was thinking, if Paul didn't show up, could I do Windows Weekly? And then I thought, no, I couldn't.
- [01:15]
Paul Thurrott
Right. I'd send you the notes.
- [01:17]
Leo Laporte
I could read them. Thank goodness. Paul Therot is here. Rich is going to take the week off. We will not have a brown liquor pick, but we will have something for you. How are you, Paul?
- [01:33]
Paul Thurrott
You know, pretty good. Just an average Wednesday like any other. Can't think of anything.
- [01:40]
Leo Laporte
Although I am sad I'm going to have to retire this mug in a couple. Yeah, okay.
- [01:45]
Paul Thurrott
Well, yeah, yeah, I'll miss sleeping soundly. I also miss reading the news. You know, I kind of enjoy doing that my whole life except for that four year period there.
- [01:53]
Leo Laporte
So I'm not watching the news. I might read it just to kind of keep up with what's going on. But I thought Lisa and I both said, yeah, that's it on the, on the, on the 24 hour news cycle.
- [02:04]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [02:04]
Leo Laporte
I'm done with that. So anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful election day. I'm glad you all voted. Right? You all voted and America's spoken and that's what happens in a democracy, unfortunately.
- [02:16]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, they've spoken, but they have a stroke and you can barely understand them. So, you know, that's what happened.
- [02:22]
Leo Laporte
But hey, you're the one from Pennsylvania, dude. I blame you.
- [02:26]
Paul Thurrott
I might have been the first person who' voted this entire country. I voted back in September.
- [02:30]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, I voted right away too. Nevertheless, you know, we're gracious in loss as we are in victory and just.
- [02:37]
Paul Thurrott
Like they were, you know.
- [02:38]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, just like they were. And geez, so enough of that. Let's get on with Windows. What's going on in the Windows world?
- [02:48]
Paul Thurrott
So actually, if you don't mind, I'm going to take a step back and look at earnings just a little bit more because we lost orbit last week. It had just happened during the show. We didn't really have time to go through it.
- [02:58]
Leo Laporte
No, we didn't get to go through it that much. Yeah, yeah.
- [03:00]
Paul Thurrott
So this didn't make it through to the notes that everyone has them to discord. Sorry. But if you rewind the clock to a better day last Wednesday, I don't know what I'm doing. So Microsoft announced their earnings. I was really looking forward to this one because back in, I think it was July, August, they announced that they were reshuffling the way that the report business segments, certain parts of the businesses. And the big one for me was that the commercial revenues from Windows were going into the Microsoft 365 group, which makes sense. It's part of that group which is under productivity and business processes, whereas the rest of Windows is under more personal computing. And if you think back, and I can't even remember the timeframe, several years, many years maybe. I don't know. Back when Mary Jo was doing the show, we would do these quarterly shows about earnings and there was a period there where all three of the core or the upper top level Microsoft business units were roughly even, right? It was 11 billion a quarter. It was 13 billion a quarter. It was pretty steady for a while. And then Microsoft did their cloud thing right, which is where I sort of checked out on the broader part of the company. But that's when the part of the company that has Azure, which is intelligent cloud, started taking off and of course productivity and business processes as well because of Microsoft 365. So those two businesses were growing bigger and faster than more personal computing for quite a while. Then we hit this quarter. This quarter we've shuffled revenue out of more personal computing, so it should be smaller. The kind of thing that's standing in the way of that a little bit is Activision Blizzard year over year. Microsoft now has Activision Blizzard. They did not one year ago this quarter. That helps even it out a little bit. I guess. I'll have to look next quarter. We'll see what that looks like.
- [04:54]
Leo Laporte
There is one more political note have to throw in.
- [04:57]
Paul Thurrott
Good.
- [04:57]
Leo Laporte
That with the new administration coming in in January, you could say goodbye to Lena Khan and probably say goodbye to antitrust regulations so that any, you know, the Blizzard Activision acquisition Which was such a fight.
- [05:11]
Paul Thurrott
He's probably fine. Yeah. Isn't it.
- [05:13]
Leo Laporte
It's still kind of alive. Didn't the DOJ appeal?
- [05:17]
Paul Thurrott
They appealed it internally, which is a really strong. I know. I. Look, I. Wherever anyone thinks I may fall politically, I have big problems at Lisa Khan and the current. Actually she's the FTC rights.
- [05:31]
Leo Laporte
FTC is ftc. Yeah. And the doj.
- [05:34]
Paul Thurrott
But I don't like her.
- [05:35]
Leo Laporte
But is the FTC makes a decision. The DOJ is tasked with prosecuting.
- [05:40]
Paul Thurrott
Oh, okay. It could be. Yeah. So they decide between. I think.
- [05:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [05:43]
Paul Thurrott
Sometimes one or the other will do it. Yeah. So there are multiple antitrust cases in the United States against multiple big tech companies. Things that have already occurred. Like the Google breakup order. That's going to progress. Like that will still doesn't mean they're going to be. Well, actually wasn't a breakup order. I'm sorry.
- [05:58]
Leo Laporte
Trump was.
- [05:59]
Paul Thurrott
Guilty verdict.
- [05:59]
Leo Laporte
Trump was very much anti Google. So I think that's going to be.
- [06:02]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, that one's going to stick around.
- [06:03]
Leo Laporte
It'll be interesting how much Elon Musk has in this because I mean he got a shout out at Mar.
- [06:10]
Paul Thurrott
Maybe there could be an executive order that makes Twitter look like it's a good business again. I don't know. Oh, it is.
- [06:15]
Leo Laporte
Are you kidding? It is a good business again. Are you kidding? It's the best business right now. But I do think that Elon will have something to say in terms of tech anti tech regulation and anti tech prosecution. We'll see.
- [06:30]
Paul Thurrott
I. I think some of it's going to stick and some of it's going to just disappear. That's my. That's my uneducated take on that.
- [06:37]
Leo Laporte
But it's a little late because Activision Blizzard is done. But they won't.
- [06:42]
Paul Thurrott
It's done. I think that one. We can just not worry about that. It's fine.
- [06:45]
Leo Laporte
Do you think that Microsoft, given a free hand, would look at other acquisitions, especially in gaming?
- [06:51]
Paul Thurrott
No, no. It's going to take them such a long time to recover from this. That's part of the earnings recap. Every quarter since they acquired Activision Blizzard. There's an enormous overhead to Activision Blizzard. Right. So they contribute revenues, but it's effectively an operating loss. And so short term it has not been paying off. Right. But at least if you're a game pass customer, it's really paid off. It's been great. Let me just pause for a moment to recover that. So we'll see. Anyway, there's a lot going on there but next quarter will be interesting again because it's a clearer year over year take. But for now what we have is a lot of revenues from Windows went into more. Sorry into Microsoft 365 which is part of productivity and business processes. And that is now the biggest business unit at Microsoft. Right. That was number two forever. So 28.3 billion in revenues. Intelligent Cloud, which is Azure is 24.1 second place. And then More Personal Computing is 13.2. I'm just going to rough this one out a little bit but I'm going to say if it wasn't for Activision Blizzard, probably 10 to 11 billion. So that really. Yeah.
- [08:10]
Leo Laporte
So this is such a turnaround for a company that Windows drove for so many years.
- [08:16]
Paul Thurrott
Yep.
- [08:17]
Leo Laporte
Windows is now in the third most profitable division.
- [08:22]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. To be fair, I mean if you. I don't know the exact dates but if you think back Microsoft in the 90s was the Windows company to the outside world. But really it was Windows and Office, wasn't it? I mean even in the 90s. And office was always interesting because it ran on the Mac too. Not that that was, you know, 50% of the revenues, but it wasn't become.
- [08:41]
Leo Laporte
A big part of their.
- [08:42]
Paul Thurrott
Office was the number one business at Microsoft for a long time. And then they added.
- [08:47]
Leo Laporte
I mean it must have been in the 80s because I remember they had a mouse for Word before the Macintosh came out.
- [08:53]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Well, Windows didn't take off till the 90s and so I don't know timeframe.
- [08:58]
Leo Laporte
But kind of in parallel with Windows.
- [09:00]
Paul Thurrott
Well, I mean in an Office as an actual product, as a bundle didn't really exist until again I'm discussing here but probably early mid-90s somewhere in there.
- [09:10]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's about right.
- [09:11]
Paul Thurrott
Something like that.
- [09:12]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [09:13]
Paul Thurrott
So I would say by the turn of the century as old timers say Office was bigger than Windows. And then we had the three core businesses at the time at that time were server Windows and Office. Right.
- [09:26]
Leo Laporte
So this isn't so different really.
- [09:29]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. But it's weird how most of the things that are in more personal computing. It's almost like the end other stuff bucket. We don't really know what to call this stuff. Most of the Windows revenues that are left come from PC makers. So it's almost like a business thing in a way. Microsoft is trying to transition Xbox obviously to cloud services and to subscription services. So you know, there's some possibilities there. And then there's Surface, you know Surfaces. You can hear the flushing sound every quarter when we talk about Surface. Unfortunately. So, yeah, kind of an interesting quarter. I did not spend a lot of time looking at the cloud stuff. I actually kind of don't really care, frankly. But I did look at AI and of course I looked at the, you know, the consumer oriented stuff.
- [10:21]
Leo Laporte
AIs in the Intelligent cloud division.
- [10:24]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, mostly, yeah.
- [10:25]
Leo Laporte
Oh, intelligent. I see the word intelligent.
- [10:28]
Paul Thurrott
It's intelligent. Yeah, it's Apple. Intelligent is what I'm not, so.
- [10:32]
Leo Laporte
But they are.
- [10:34]
Paul Thurrott
Microsoft loves to use vague accounting terms, right. And things that I don't know aren't really verifiable. So, for example, their big announcement this quarter was that their AI business, which is not a business, is on track to surpass an annual revenue rate. Sorry, revenue run rate. Run. Run rate is a term I've not heard in a while from Microsoft of $10 billion, which means that the revenues it generated in this most recent quarter were approaching 1/4 of $10 billion or 2.5 billion. So their revenues were approximately 2 to 2.5 billion is what they're sort of saying. And they spent 19 billion on it. So not an.
- [11:24]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [11:25]
Paul Thurrott
If my math is correct, it's a little upside down. And the thing is the revenues are going up, but so is the cost of AI. They have spent more and more every quarter. Every quarter they've said, we're going to keep doing this, it's going to keep going up. In addition to old kind of familiar terms like run rate, Microsoft also introduces new terms, right? So like agenic, you'll recognize as a term. All of a sudden you see everywhere people are talking about agenic things.
- [11:54]
Leo Laporte
Agentic.
- [11:55]
Paul Thurrott
Agentic, yes.
- [11:57]
Leo Laporte
Oh, okay. Because it's. Otherwise it's a little bit like. It sounds like eugenic, which we.
- [12:01]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, sorry, angelic.
- [12:04]
Leo Laporte
Angelic, okay.
- [12:05]
Paul Thurrott
But is okay eugenic, not so agentic.
- [12:07]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [12:07]
Paul Thurrott
Although, you know, it's a new era, so we'll see there. One of the terms they talk about is signals, right? And they're basing their investments in AI on signals. Signals being a group of signals that they get from customers from the market where they think people might spend money on or where they need to have certain assets like CPUs and GPUs and things like that in the data center and so forth. So somehow 2.5 or 2 to 2.5 billion in revenues justifies approximately 20 billion in spending. And if we do this long enough, we'll be profitable or something. We have no way to know how fast the revenues are growing. We can. I haven't. But we could go back and do the math on how fast the spending is going up, but you can expect them to spend roughly 20 billion a quarter for the next year building out this infrastructure unless something changes dramatically. Right. So that's where that's at. This was considered a huge success, by the way. Well, if you go back, this is.
- [13:15]
Leo Laporte
How it works these days, which is. I know you're kind of counting on the future. Do you? How long, how long are they going to have to lose?
- [13:23]
Paul Thurrott
Yep. So this is the space question. What you're asking is when will then be now? And my answer is soon. No, I don't know. We don't know. There's no way to know. Right. I mean, Microsoft is getting signals from space or something. I guess they have some idea, but. But we'll see.
- [13:40]
Leo Laporte
Isn't it more dependent on the technology improving than it is on whether customers want it?
- [13:48]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, and on multiple levels, because it's not just the technology that end users or customers will use to do whatever they do with AI, generative AI, whatever it is, it's also the technology behind the chips that are in data centers and whether they can be efficient and cost effective enough for this to start to make sense, whether there's going to be any real, what they call edge computing, npu, AI happening of any substance. There's no evidence of this, by the way. I mean, there's been a lot of talk, we're going to talk a lot about intel today. And one of the big things they talked about was they didn't use the word signals, but it was basically the same message, which was they got the message from the industry, that is Microsoft, that they needed to move more quickly to get up to speed on this NPU stuff. And. And they didn't say it, but the message here was pretty clear. We spent way too much money on this and got nothing out of it. So this is the fear for AI. This is the thing Richard talks about, the trough of despair, that we're in this kind of a bubble and everyone's excited, we're throwing money at it. And look, I have no doubt that broadly speaking, or generally speaking, the software that we use can and probably will be made better because of AI. If you look at things like tools that help you write in Word or tools that help you create a presentation in PowerPoint or whatever it might be like, that stuff is. It's nice. Does it justify the level of investment? You never heard about the Microsoft 365 team spending 19 billion in a quarter so they can make spell checking faster? I don't you know, I just, I don't know. I'm not, I'm maybe not the right person to even discuss this intelligently. I don't see it.
- [15:24]
Leo Laporte
But it's the way the market's going though. The whole market's going upside down on AI and the presumption is that AI is going to be such a big hit sometime in the future that it's going to compensate for. I mean, I, I did the math wrong. They made two and a half billion this quarter, but spent 19 billion. There's, they're, they're losing 16 and a half billion dollars a quarter.
- [15:47]
Paul Thurrott
See. No, no, they're investing six card mills. I don't know, I.
- [15:52]
Leo Laporte
Look, that's a lot to burn.
- [15:55]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So here's the good news. Microsoft can afford it. They. Although, by the way, so I would say until this quarter they had more of a cash, a free cash flow to afford the amount they were spending. So they were basically spending cash this quarter. They didn't make it. They were actually behind. It was the first time the cat, the first time they've revealed, talked about it that the cash flow was, the free cash flow was actually less than the amount they invested in AI to keep using that term.
- [16:25]
Leo Laporte
So what do they do? Do they borrow against stock? What do they do to make up the difference?
- [16:29]
Paul Thurrott
There's a supermarket in the corner that has a guy in the back and he gives them a no interest loan.
- [16:35]
Leo Laporte
Will be $12 a day.
- [16:37]
Paul Thurrott
It would be a shame if anything happened in Dalla, if you know what I mean. No, I mean Microsoft is the second richest company on earth.
- [16:44]
Leo Laporte
They're doing vast.
- [16:45]
Paul Thurrott
And they have cash reserves as well. Right. So they have tens of billions of dollars. They can spend their own money. It's fine. The truth is they could afford to do this for the foreseeable future. It's that Microsoft is a publicly held company and at some point shareholders and investors and the board and the press are going to start asking questions. So if you go back and listen to their earnings call, I can tell you no one asked about Windows. Nobody asked about Office, nobody asked about anything. Every single question was like, so if I could ask you again about how you're affording this. You know, it seems like you're spending a lot of money on AI. How's that going? You know, and everyone's super polite. Everyone was, seemed very happy with the answers they got. I, this is disquieting to me. I mean they're throwing a lot of money at this.
- [17:31]
Leo Laporte
Can we, Is it safe to say it's a bet.
- [17:34]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [17:35]
Leo Laporte
And it's unknown how risky the bet is, but it's a bet. They're betting that AI will become the next big thing. So Google does this with its search dollars they invest in, they call them moonshots, very rarely pay off.
- [17:50]
Paul Thurrott
But do they ever bet the company on a moonshot? See, the thing is there's a story here that may eventually.
- [17:57]
Leo Laporte
Are they betting the company?
- [17:59]
Paul Thurrott
Well, this is as close as they've. Microsoft's often used that term. They've never invested this level of money in anything. I mean this is, this is a great, you know, use the term moonshot, which I know is a Google thing, you know, for Microsoft is a moonshot. It's like, you know, we're, you know, we do these things not because they're easy, we do them because they're expensive. I guess we do that because there's only two or three companies on earth that can do it, you know, and.
- [18:24]
Leo Laporte
Maybe Apple's another one. But Apple and Meta both have tossed money down a black hole and projects that haven't delivered.
- [18:32]
Paul Thurrott
The difference between those companies, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and OpenAI, Anthropic, whoever you choose to name is those two companies have said this is probably not going to be worth it. This doesn't look like it's going to make any sense. I respect that opinion. I bet the company is a strong term, but man, are they really throwing money at this. The thing that's interesting about this to me is Sachin Adela. Right. This is a Guy who became CEO 2014ish engineer, came up through Bing. We'll overlook that Windows Server is a super, super, super smart guy. Seems kind of slow moving, robotic.
- [19:16]
Leo Laporte
McKinsey esque.
- [19:18]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Except for one thing. I don't think that's the true Nadella. I think we're seeing the true Nadella here. He was kind of pragmatically and aggressively had called all the product groups into his office when he became CEO. Make your company make sense in this new Microsoft. And most did. Some didn't, some mixed results, et cetera, et cetera. So we all kind of know that story. But one of the things he got really excited about when he first became CEO was HoloLens. And there was no justification for this. It was just we made something cool, no one else has it. And he greenlit this thing and we're going to go to town, we're going to make this thing happen. Something will happen, it will make sense. That never worked. Right? So HoloLens is this little thing that's off in the corner. It was a research project, essentially. It became tied into the more personal computing group. Now it's part of what they call devices. So it's basically Surface plus this thing, which means it's basically Surface, but it never paid off. But he just did the same thing with AI. It was exactly the same thing from my outsider perspective, that someone came to him and said, oh my God, you got to see this. This is incredible. And he's like, we're doing it. And the amount you have to throw at AI is orders of magnitude greater than what they did with HoloLens. That's what's kind of scary. It's weird that this guy from the outside again, you know, talks. He's really robotic. He. He's like a. It's like he has a gambling addiction.
- [20:48]
Leo Laporte
He's a riverboat gambler.
- [20:49]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Like, he's just throwing. Yeah. He's like, honey, get the mortgage. I'm gonna. I feel good about this hand. Like, what are you doing? So they have the money, they can afford it. But I. I wonder, you know, if this was Gates or Palmer or whatever, maybe would that person have made this same. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the story is unfolding. We'll get there. So AI to me right now is, yikes. It's a lot of money being thrown at this. And I don't know. Well, AI is going to come up a couple times today. I don't know.
- [21:30]
Leo Laporte
Microsoft's well positioned because they provide the computing credits to open AI, which is the leader at this point in Mindshare. I have to say though, I think Copilot is not necessarily considered by normals as a big hit.
- [21:47]
Paul Thurrott
Right, I agree. So this is one of those Microsoft might win by losing type things. So Microsoft kind of can make revenues on AI in multiple ways. They've got the developer story, they've got the Azure platform. That's a lot of which is based on OpenAI. They've got OpenAI doing their thing on Azure for third parties too. So there's all these sources of revenues. It may work out that the Microsoft first party one is the least interesting, literally or financially.
- [22:14]
Leo Laporte
All those things, on the other hand, has been quite a success. So copilot on a PC? Maybe not. I think GitHub copilot is widely considered to be successful.
- [22:23]
Paul Thurrott
It is, but we're talking about a very constrained market here.
- [22:26]
Leo Laporte
Small and not a very lucrative market either.
- [22:29]
Paul Thurrott
That's what I mean. It's. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, yes, like that's a great example of where AI can be super successful, but as a business, you know, for a smaller company, that would be gangbusters. For Microsoft it's like a. They make more in mice, you know, I mean they probably do, right?
- [22:43]
Leo Laporte
They probably do.
- [22:44]
Paul Thurrott
Even today.
- [22:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I know my GitHub, it's cheap, I don't even know what I pay, but it's nothing. It's so little that I don't think about it does. Oh, now I forgot what I was going to talk about another way that Microsoft could make money, but I can't remember what it is.
- [23:00]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, well, I think they're going to make well, whatever revenue. Like they just said 2.5 billion. Oh, well, they didn't say it. They kind of talked around it. Using their number. I came up with this math. So if it's 2.5 somewhere in there. Yeah. It's not hard math. So what is that made of? We have no idea. But I think 30 bucks a month going to be. Yeah. Microsoft 365 copilot. Of course, GitHub. Copilot. I don't think Copilot Pro, which is for consumers, makes anything. I don't know. I mean most of the stuff they're doing is suspending. They have all these AI features and Windows.
- [23:38]
Leo Laporte
I know what I wanted to ask Business Intelligence. There's a use of AI that I think is widely considered already proven.
- [23:48]
Paul Thurrott
Yep. Which is why when they move to what I think of AS Copilot Phase 2 or Microsoft AI Phase 2 and the Agentic stuff, the first thing they talked about was dynamics. Right.
- [23:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [23:59]
Paul Thurrott
This notion of these things that will operate in the background on your behalf and then come back when they have something. Yeah, there you go. So here's a human level version of what. This is the place we're in now here we bought two and a half years ago. @ the time we were built, we were buying it and my wife had notifications. She would get on the peso to dollar exchange rate. Right. And at that time it was roughly 20%. And if it went in a certain direction to a certain degree, she would bring more money over in pesos because it made sense. And she ended up making or saving us about $5,000 by doing an arbitrage. Smart. Yeah. So in the. So then that year. So two and a half years. So two half years ago we completed the purchase, the peso came on strong. And so for the past two years, ish. The peso has been high. So instead of 20 to 1. It got all the way down to like 17 to 1. Which is, you know, for us might have meant we couldn't afford to buy this place. Like we couldn't have done it, right? So she just came out this morning, she goes, you're never going to believe what my phone just did. And I'm like. When she goes, I just got a notification because I was, I had set it up for those. If it hits a certain number and she says it just went 20.5 or whatever. It's the first time in like two and a half, almost three years it's been that high and it has never been anywhere close in the past two years. So there's what today we would call an agency AI service working in the background on your behalf, letting you know so those things can be useful. I mean, and AI, you know, you hope it's making. This is just a simple thing. If this, then that, right? We've all heard of this service but, but the AI agentic services, if they're to work, you have to trust that this thing is making. It's not just if this happens, do this, it's think about stuff. And if all this stuff makes sense, you know, maybe buy the stock or.
- [25:49]
Leo Laporte
If I'm a CEO of a company, I want the AI to analyze all the inputs, all the data. You know, companies have all of this telemetry and tell me what's going on, tell me some trends in a way that a human analyst may not be able to do or may be very expensive. If you can get somebody to do that, we'll see.
- [26:07]
Paul Thurrott
Look, I worked in a big company where someone was looking at a spreadsheet and they started firing people, right? And when you do that kind of one dimensional thinking, you don't know the human element. One time they got rid of the guy who was our conduit between us and Microsoft for the tech at the time, best of show thing that we did. And that just disappeared because he got rid of this guy. It's like, oh, sorry, he made five bucks too much a week. We got rid of him and it's like, yeah, thanks. You just killed our relationship with Microsoft, our most important relationship with Microsoft. And you know, I don't know if AI is going to fix that problem, right? I mean it's going to be a lot of one dimensional thinking. We'll see. It will prove me wrong, I guess. We'll see.
- [26:50]
Leo Laporte
But it might, you know, it might be more dimensional but on the other hand, AIs don't really care about Humans. So it might be less kind.
- [27:00]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. 3D chess, like in Star Trek or whatever. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
- [27:06]
Leo Laporte
Obviously, Microsoft thinks this is the next big thing and they're putting their money where they're very honestly.
- [27:11]
Paul Thurrott
But now you have to answer the questions. That's what's interesting. So you can go find the transcript you could listen to if you didn't value your time. But you can look and see the types of questions that people starting to ask. It's getting a little more. So you said this was gonna happen. You know, like, it seems like you're just spending a lot of money. So we're gonna see. Yeah. At some point, I think there might be shareholders who say, hey, how about throwing us that money instead of throwing it away? Yeah. You know, maybe.
- [27:43]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [27:44]
Paul Thurrott
It publicly held right now, they give money back every quarter to shareholders. Like, so they can. For now. They can afford it at some point, maybe not.
- [27:52]
Leo Laporte
And right now there's a lot of buzz over AI. And the big market movers are all AI companies.
- [27:57]
Paul Thurrott
Isn't there also a lot of. But, yeah, but is it doing anything? Like, what do we. I mean, has this changed anyone's life?
- [28:02]
Leo Laporte
Well, at some point it could be a bubble. At some point, somebody might. It might pull the plug.
- [28:06]
Paul Thurrott
Aside from Scarlett Johansson, has anyone been materially impacted by this? Like, I don't know.
- [28:13]
Leo Laporte
She's getting the big bucks for her voice, right?
- [28:15]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, she better be.
- [28:18]
Leo Laporte
You want to talk about recall before we take a break?
- [28:20]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. I feel like this also happened last Wednesday, but Microsoft announced recall in May. It was going to come out in preview in June. They delayed it in June to July or late in the summer. July or late in the summer. They delayed it till October. On the last day of October, they were like, just kidding, it's coming out in December. And so we'll see. But this is one of those things, like, people feel really strongly about recall, and it kind of freaks me out how strong the opinions are, because it's always people who are never going to use it don't own one of the PCs that can even run it, could uninstall it. If they hated it that much and happened to have it on a computer. And they feel really strongly they should never have to deal with this thing. And I guess this is just a basic human thing. I would call on people to sort of try to think outside yourself a little bit. I realize you have privacy concerns and security concerns, all of which I think are fricking nonsense, by the way. But that's fine, you can have those opinions. Wow, this is all nonsense. But the important thing is, and this is the big thing that happened in the wake of all the feedback to recall they did a 180 on the most important part, which was not fixing the security by the way. They didn't almost fix anything. It was letting you uninstall it. That is huge. One of the things we'll talk about toward the end of the show is my ongoing effort to actually use OneDrive and have it not badger me continually to do things it wants me to do. Right. And this has been a year long quest of mine. I started talking about this in the first week of October last year and this got enough feedback that Microsoft was like, all right, we're going to let you, we're going to let you get rid of it. And it still freaks people out. So you know, this thing comes, they delay it again and, and look, I'm sorry but there is some vast majority of people that use Windows that don't think about technology or by the way, security or privacy, but they don't really think about the stuff like we do. Who would just benefit from this and would love it and just let them have it. Why does it bother you that other people want it? It doesn't matter if it doesn't impact you. Don't worry about it. I wish they were this good about OneDrive and folder backup and all that stuff. I wish they applied this thinking to everything they do in Windows because that would be a happier place. But that's not what Windows is. So anyway, I feel like they got recall right. It's just that we don't have it, so we'll see.
- [30:47]
Leo Laporte
I saw an ad on TV for Microsoft AI.
- [30:51]
Paul Thurrott
Really?
- [30:52]
Leo Laporte
I think it was for the Copilot Plus PCs and there was an interesting line in there. They said it might not be for everyone.
- [30:58]
Paul Thurrott
Wow.
- [30:59]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I was, I thought, wow, that's an interesting. That's almost insightful.
- [31:03]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I mean I guess if your knuckles are dragging on the ground or something. And maybe it's not for you, I.
- [31:08]
Leo Laporte
Don'T know, for everyone. I mean partly that's because they are selling non copilot plus PCs still lots of them.
- [31:15]
Paul Thurrott
Right. That's the majority of pieces.
- [31:16]
Leo Laporte
So maybe that's why they're saying it. But I thought it was very. It was a weird kind of concession to make like AI. It might not be for everyone.
- [31:25]
Paul Thurrott
That's a weird way to market something. It's like I'm going on a dating site. Look I'm not for everybody. You know, I'm violent, I yell a lot. I'm angry all the time.
- [31:34]
Leo Laporte
Just want to let you know there's.
- [31:35]
Paul Thurrott
Going to be someone out there where we're just like on the same page, you know, I feel like you're there. I don't know.
- [31:40]
Leo Laporte
That's weird for everybody. Oh, good. You know, I thought I saw that and I thought, hmm, I wonder, well, yeah, you're in Mexico. Maybe you're not seeing the same ads. Probably aren't. This was on the NFL, I think.
- [31:53]
Paul Thurrott
Oh, yeah. Well, so when we do watch sports here, it usually is like the American feed. So oftentimes they'll have Mexican announcers over the top of it, but when there's.
- [32:04]
Leo Laporte
A touchdown that you go.
- [32:08]
Paul Thurrott
It is a little bit like that, actually.
- [32:09]
Leo Laporte
I love it.
- [32:11]
Paul Thurrott
It's a hard way to call a game because in soccer you can kind of build that excitement over whatever three hours it probably feels like. But in a game like American football, like they actually score a lot, you know, so it's kind of, it's kind of hard.
- [32:23]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's exciting all the way through. And that's why we. Paul therat.com Richard Campbell is taking the week off because he's in Tunisia and you would do the same, trust me.
- [32:37]
Paul Thurrott
No, he's like a camel that's bringing the Internet, but it's not working great.
- [32:41]
Leo Laporte
Camel Internet not quite enough for this show, but he will be, I'm sure, back next week. And I will be filling in the whiskey segment, but in a different way because I'm really not a drinker, so. But I have a recommendation nevertheless. And it's, and trust me, it's not non alcoholic whiskey. I wouldn't do that to you.
- [33:01]
Paul Thurrott
Geez. I think maybe this will be the good week for all of you to stop drinking for a little while. Just saying.
- [33:08]
Leo Laporte
I, I posted on my blog the I voted button from Colorado, which is quite beautiful. Had flowers and stuff. And then I said, I think I picked a bad week to stop drinking.
- [33:19]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, right, right. It's like the airplane. I picked the wrong week to quit. Emphatically.
- [33:23]
Leo Laporte
I was going to say Huff Glue, but then I thought, have you ever.
- [33:26]
Paul Thurrott
Been to a Turkish bath? Billy?
- [33:30]
Leo Laporte
Our show today brought folks, just look it up. Our show today brought to you by Melissa. We love Melissa, the trusted data quality expert since 1985. We just, we just love these guys. This is an interesting company because they provide address validation, database validation, augmentation services all over the world in a variety of different ways. So let me. Each time I do an ad for this, I want to kind of talk about different parts of it. Let's talk about personalization for now. It could backfire. I'm talking about when your customer service rep says, hello, Mr. Laporte, and my wife says, It's Mrs. Laporte, or. You get the idea. If you're not careful, Personalization can backfire. No one wants to be misidentified. But that's where Melissa can really help you with your customer interactions. It has a fluid knowledge base of global names and naming conventions. Is it cultural issues? And Melissa's a global company. If you put in a name associated with a specific country, for instance, you'll be able to parse it more accurately. I'll give you an example. Apropos, Paul. For example, if signora is the first word, in some countries, it would be flagged as an honorific instead of a first name. So you, you know as it's a database, it's dumb. It doesn't know. But Melissa knows. No, no, no. That's the honorific. The first name is Magdalena. Like that. Melissa's database also has a large list of cultural names and vulgarities. Some names might be flagged as valid but need extra checking because, for example, it's vulgar. It's a celebrity name. Melissa can do all this with business names. Melissa's really kind of amazing. There's so much more to Melissa than just address validation. Be sure to check out Melissa's marketplace where you can access premium third party data on demand. That's very helpful. Improving campaign performance, enhancing data visualization drive better business decisions like we were talking about earlier. Melissa now offers transparent pricing for all its services, which is great. You can eliminate the guesswork when estimating your business budget. And of course, Melissa takes care of your data. Melissa services use secure encryption for all file transfers. And their information security ecosystem is built on the ISO 27001 framework. They adhere to GDPR policies, they maintain SOC2 compliance. You never need to worry about that. So whether you need the full white glove service or just the nuts and bolts, you can choose. Melissa's the best choice for your enterprise. I want you to check it out. In fact, it's really easy to get started today with 1000 records clean for free. Just to test it out at Melissa M E L I s s a melissa.com twit we thank them so much for supporting Windows Weekly. And we thank you for supporting Windows Weekly by going to that address so they know you saw it here. Melissa.com twit. Thank you, Melissa. Back to Signora Therot.
- [36:45]
Paul Thurrott
So it's funny. It's funny you say that because at lunch, my wife and I were just discussing. Discussing. We went to this place that we go a lot here. Couldn't sit at the bar, sat in the back. There was a new guy, and he kept referring to my wife as lady.
- [37:01]
Leo Laporte
Lady?
- [37:02]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. And it was. It got weird.
- [37:04]
Leo Laporte
You know, it's different in.
- [37:05]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, well, technically, the word he was looking for was senora, or maybe senorita, if he wanted to be super played or something. But, yeah, he kept saying lady. So the first. I can't remember how you referred to me. And I was like, I don't know. And then he called her lady. And I'm like, oh, how do you feel about that? She's like, I don't like it. And then he said it five times in 10 minutes.
- [37:29]
Leo Laporte
And we were like, oh, he's trying to be nice.
- [37:31]
Paul Thurrott
He's trying to be nice. He's trying to be polite. And it just came out to us wrong. I know what. He's in my own broken Spanish. I would. I probably do this all the time.
- [37:41]
Leo Laporte
Did you do the same thing?
- [37:42]
Paul Thurrott
I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure I do. But it's just. It was the first time that happened. It was like. It's kind of weird.
- [37:46]
Leo Laporte
I've had that happen. Exact.
- [37:48]
Paul Thurrott
Exactly.
- [37:48]
Leo Laporte
That. They call me lady all the time, Frank.
- [37:50]
Paul Thurrott
They call you lady? Yeah, it's the shirt.
- [37:53]
Leo Laporte
Hey, this is a nice shirt. I got a cowboy on it. I got a horse on it.
- [37:59]
Paul Thurrott
It looks like a. A Marl Baller ad from. Ad from the 70s.
- [38:03]
Leo Laporte
It's. Lisa bought me these retro shirts, and this is one of them. And I really. I really. All right, so.
- [38:10]
Paul Thurrott
Yes.
- [38:10]
Leo Laporte
Bug in 24H2.
- [38:12]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So a couple weeks ago, I talked about how buggy 24H2 was, and it's kind of astonishing given that they actually had extra time with this one and extra testing. I took a screenshot of it. I put it on everywhere, actually, but I linked to the one on X or Twitter or whatever. Lots of people seeing this. So if your File Explorer window is up toward the top of the screen and you hit that little. Which is probably. Probably see more. See whatever it says. The menu is supposed to pop down. It pops up. So it goes off the edge of the screen. You can't read. It's the level of quality we get from Windows these days. So just a lot of fun. I noticed this taking screenshots of the book the other day and I was like, oh, Microsoft, just chef's kiss. Good stuff. So not a big deal. But there have been three developments, two of them today in the Insider preview channel, which are actually interesting for a change. Two big updates today. One of them ties to an earlier announcement I think they made by mistake in Asia ahead of time. But I'll get to that in a moment. The first one is that you may or may not know that the emulator that's in Windows 11 on ARM is called Prism. Internally, Microsoft makes it and it was updated extensively for the Snapdragon X chips. And obviously the chips themselves are super powerful and that's very important. But also the emulator was updated really dramatically. So they are now testing in the. Let me make sure I get this one right. In the what, Paul? In the Canary Channel, a new version of Prism again that is adding additional x64 and x86 instruction sets to the emulator, allowing it to run more apps, not natively, obviously, but emulation. And the one that they cite is Adobe Premiere Pro 25.
- [40:05]
Leo Laporte
Ooh.
- [40:06]
Paul Thurrott
So instead of. Which will probably be ported to arm, you know, I think they might have even asked.
- [40:11]
Leo Laporte
I mean, they make a version for Apple, which presumably.
- [40:14]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [40:15]
Leo Laporte
Although Premiere is not as good on Mac as it is on Windows, it's.
- [40:18]
Paul Thurrott
Also kind of modular, so you might have add ins and whatever. That won't work and that kind of thing. So this is going to try to take care of that. When you were doing the ad, I tried to. Microsoft uses this. There's a sysinternals tool called Core Info, that's a command line tool. And I tried to. I'm using a Snapdragon on ARM device here and I was trying to see if I could compare it to what they were seeing, but I couldn't get it to give this exact output. So the point here is that there are 32 bit, 64 bit apps that use certain x80, you know, x86 instruction sets that do not or are not currently emulated by arm. And that's part of the compatibility story. And they're working on that. So this is kind of cool to me, not just because it's arm, but because this is like almost architectural stuff. You don't really get a lot of this from Microsoft these days and the Windows team. So it's kind of fun.
- [41:07]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's encouraging that they're. I think they're very excited about Windows arm.
- [41:11]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So it's.
- [41:12]
Leo Laporte
Prism is an emulation layer. Is that what it is?
- [41:14]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, it's the emulator. It's their Rosetta, I guess the way to think of it, sort of.
- [41:20]
Leo Laporte
And I wonder because I'm using Windows on my Mac in Parallels.
- [41:25]
Paul Thurrott
Yep.
- [41:26]
Leo Laporte
It would benefit from that.
- [41:27]
Paul Thurrott
It does. That's right.
- [41:28]
Leo Laporte
Yep. Yeah.
- [41:29]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. I mean, actually, even if you had a previous gen Windows and ARM PC, as lowly as they may be, you would see some improvement because of the improvements to the Prism emulator. Yeah. If you upgraded to 24, that's cool.
- [41:42]
Leo Laporte
Okay.
- [41:43]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. And they. I'd have to go back and really try to figure out when they talked about this, but they specifically called out Parallels on the Mac and said, yeah, actually you will see improvements there too. And anyone who uses that will tell you it's, you know, it's pretty damn good.
- [41:57]
Leo Laporte
Wow. Yeah, it is. It's. Frankly, it seemed comparable to the.
- [42:02]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [42:03]
Leo Laporte
Snapdragon dev kit that I got. By the way, I want to send that to you. So send me your mailing address in.
- [42:11]
Paul Thurrott
Thank you.
- [42:11]
Leo Laporte
Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I will. I learned that last.
- [42:16]
Paul Thurrott
I moved from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If I'm not mistaken, there is only one other commonwealth and I think it's.
- [42:23]
Leo Laporte
Mexico or where is the other?
- [42:25]
Paul Thurrott
I think it's Virginia, but I could.
- [42:26]
Leo Laporte
Virginia. Yeah.
- [42:27]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Maybe someone else. Someone could tell me if there's others, but I think those are.
- [42:30]
Leo Laporte
I bet you Bing could tell us.
- [42:35]
Paul Thurrott
I mean, I wouldn't use Bing with your computer, but you could if you wanted to, if you want to look it up. I don't know.
- [42:42]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I changed my action button to start a book instead of ChatGPT. I was going to ask ChatGPT, see if it knew. It knows all of it. ChatGPT is. AI's gotten pretty good. You try Copilot. I'll try ChatGPT.
- [42:59]
Paul Thurrott
So does Virginia. Actually, Kentucky is one, so I guess there are four Kentucky today.
- [43:03]
Leo Laporte
How many commonwealths are there in the United States of America?
- [43:09]
Paul Thurrott
In the United States, there are four states that officially designate themselves as Commonwealth.
- [43:15]
Leo Laporte
Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia. You just said that, didn't you?
- [43:22]
Paul Thurrott
Sorry, I just looked it up.
- [43:23]
Leo Laporte
I like her voice, though. It makes.
- [43:26]
Paul Thurrott
I expect her to say, blimey, blimey, there are four.
- [43:33]
Leo Laporte
That's a good use for AI, as long as it doesn't hallucinate a new state.
- [43:38]
Paul Thurrott
This is why I think Google could. And we'll see what happens. Could come out ahead because they have this vast thing search you can see. When you want an answer, just throw them the answer. And if it's Some more like make a story thing. Use a. I don't know. I feel like that's what search is for anyway.
- [43:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but that's. So ChatGPT is now doing search as part of. If you have a pro version.
- [44:01]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [44:02]
Leo Laporte
So I haven't been. It's not easy to get to. That's the problem.
- [44:06]
Paul Thurrott
Oh, okay. I haven't. I don't pay for it, so I don't get to see it.
- [44:10]
Leo Laporte
I should have done it in ChatGPT. Well, so never too late.
- [44:15]
Paul Thurrott
Where did I put this? Later in the show we're going to talk about these changes coming to Microsoft 365, but only in some places in the world. And I saw this story and I threw it by Laurent, the guy who writes our news. And I said, you know, I don't quite understand what's going on here. I feel like we already have this stuff. And he's like, yeah, I don't get it either. And then I saw this line that said something about using credits to apply to apps that are built into Windows like Paint, Photos and Notepad Copilot Credits. And I was like, you know, there's no such thing. There are no AI features in Notepad and there are no AI features in Paint or Photos that are free and would benefit from, you know, tokens or whatever. I don't understand what this is for. So he's like, yeah, I have no idea. And then later in the day, Microsoft announced a new build to the beta. Let me make sure. I think it's the beta channel where they're testing new AI features in. Wait for it. Paint, Photos and Notepad. So I think the. Actually I guess these are Canary and devs. Sorry, not Beta. But I think this announcement that I'm referencing, which we'll talk about later, might have gone out inadvertently. I don't think they were ready to announce the thing they just announced, but.
- [45:31]
Leo Laporte
They pre announced it.
- [45:33]
Paul Thurrott
I think they screwed up. I think they had Enter and oops, Oops. So we'll get to that. That's another story. But this is kind of interesting. So if you're familiar with how AI features work in Windows today, if you don't have a Copilot plus PC, everything runs against the cloud, right? So there are a couple of features in Paint like background removal, image generation. There's a couple of actually several now features in Photos. The Copilot app, which is a web app, all these things run against the cloud. If you have a Copilot plus PC, you get several other features that run against the NPU and the machine. Right. And, you know, kind of a mixed bag in both cases, frankly. But that's how that kind of breaks down. If you have Copilot Pro or if you're a business customer and you have Microsoft 365 copilot, you can use the Copilot app in Windows to work against that system. You know, you can get additional features. And if you have that, you have Microsoft Word, Excel, or whatever it is on your computer, you'll get those features in those apps. Okay, that's all about to change. We're going to get to that soon. But as far as Windows goes, it looks like they're going to add generative AI. Well, no, I'm sorry. They literally are going to add generative AI features across those three apps, Paint, Photos and Notepad, that will. They don't say this in the blog post. They just know it's coming because they screwed up with an announcement that will require tokens or credits. We'll call them against Copilot, meaning that if you do enough of this, it's going to say, nope, you're going to have to start paying for this thing. And I think some of these features might actually require that subscription. So a Microsoft 365 personal or family or that Copilot Pro subscription. Right. So it's kind of a jumble right now. Right now they just announced this. It's about to go out into the Insider program. Depending on where you live in the world, you should be able to test it without having to pay for anything. But at some point, I think they're going to start charging for this stuff. So Generative fill, that's where you have a picture of whatever aspect ratio and you want to add to it on the sides, top, bottom, left, right, whatever. Kind of a neat feature. Actually, I use this sometimes with photos. It's pretty good. Generative erase, same thing. You've got this image with like an object in it. You want to erase that thing. Neat. That will be in paint. That's cool. But the controversial one, the Mary Jo one, I guess, if you will, is they're adding generative, I guess we'll call it text creation capabilities and editing and summarizing, etc. To Notepad, which I think is kind of predictable, but also like, oh, you had this really simple thing and you're turning it into what? Like, what is this thing?
- [48:16]
Leo Laporte
So I can only imagine what Mary Jo would have to say.
- [48:20]
Paul Thurrott
I don't think she's going to be happy about this. Mary Jo is Going to turn into one of those people that like keeps an obsolete version of an app on a USB key and then uses the old one all the time. You know, like Gibson.
- [48:30]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that type.
- [48:32]
Paul Thurrott
Right. She's going to turn into that person. Because look, they've updated Notepad a lot over the past couple of years in Windows 11 and I like it. What they've done so far has been great. And then I look at this and I'm like, ooh, I don't know. Hopefully you'll be able to turn it off, but I guess we'll see. So anyway, that's kind of interesting. Again, this is only the first half of a story. We'll talk about the rest of it.
- [48:52]
Leo Laporte
You know what I find interesting is how Paint has gone from being kind of a throwaway.
- [48:57]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [48:58]
Leo Laporte
Like a program no one really used. Although you always used it.
- [49:01]
Paul Thurrott
Used it extensively. Yeah.
- [49:02]
Leo Laporte
Which is hysterical to me. But you were kind of the exception. But Microsoft's giving it a lot of love.
- [49:08]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So I always give Benito the option when it comes to naming episodes of Hands on Windows. But I did an episode about Paint recently and I wanted to call it the Microsoft Paint Masterclass and he thought maybe that was a little too much or something. So I've used Paint decades. I used Paint from the early 2000s, I still do, to make our Christmas card every year. For example, there was a two year period there where they screwed it up really bad, where they modernized the ui, but they only gave it the light mode. And it wasn't even light mode, it was like bright white mode. So if you were in dark mode, it was like this beacon of light in the dark. And then they fixed it. And there were also a lot of keyboard shortcut screw ups. They didn't fix all of them. They fixed the most important ones, the two I use all the time, Control E, Control W, which is basically for cropping and resizing, you know, to put it simply. So I use those all the time. So big that's part of the Masterclass. You could sign up for that on my special website for paid Thorat products. But anyway, it is like Notepad, they actually, now that they've gotten over the humps, have done a nice job with it. And even I have to say so like the background removal capability, ability and Paint works great. So generative erase, Generative creation, I guess we're calling it, or whatever it's called.
- [50:37]
Leo Laporte
Generative generation generation.
- [50:39]
Paul Thurrott
Generative generation G squared, as we say in lingo. No, that's good stuff. I think that's fine. It's okay. And one of the big things that they did in paint that I think is super important was they added layer capabilities. Right. So, as in Photoshop, you can create new objects in layers of their own, and you can arbitrarily turn them on and off. And that's neat for my. I use that in the Christmas card thing because it's like a grid of images, and sometimes I want to see what different layouts look like so I can hide and show different parts of it. It's nice.
- [51:09]
Leo Laporte
This is a layout that we want to use from now on on the show, where we just take you, put you in a little corner. I didn't even need paint to do that involves a little tiny paw, a little teeny weeny paw, silenced.
- [51:24]
Paul Thurrott
Okay.
- [51:24]
Leo Laporte
But are there family fights over how big a pain each picture gets?
- [51:33]
Paul Thurrott
No, I try to be really fair about that. I emphasize the kids. One of my big pet peeves with almost every single human being I know on Earth is I know the person or the couple. It's 30 years in, and they send me pictures of their kids, and I'm like, I don't know who these people are.
- [51:46]
Leo Laporte
Who are these people?
- [51:47]
Paul Thurrott
You should be in there, too, you know, Like, I don't understand that.
- [51:50]
Leo Laporte
Everybody should be in the picture, please.
- [51:52]
Paul Thurrott
Because. No, I try to highlight the kids a couple places, whatever things we did. And then.
- [51:56]
Leo Laporte
I always love your cards. I save them.
- [51:58]
Paul Thurrott
I do, too.
- [51:59]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I didn't know you used paint. That's why.
- [52:02]
Paul Thurrott
Did I use paint?
- [52:03]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Well, now that makes sense because there's so much more you could do. It really kind of makes sense that that might be the interface for generative AI. Like, that's how you might want generate pictures.
- [52:15]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, right. I mean, AI is a lot like anything else Microsoft does. They kind of look at where you are and does it make sense to have it here? So Photos app makes sense for sure. Paint. You know, paint versus photos. Photos literally is about photos. I think of paint is just like other images. Although in this case, I'm editing. I mean, I'm editing a layout, so there's photos in it, but it's really images.
- [52:37]
Leo Laporte
But is paint.net still a thing or is that.
- [52:39]
Paul Thurrott
Yep, it is. Yeah.
- [52:41]
Leo Laporte
Because that was kind of the notepad of paint.
- [52:44]
Paul Thurrott
That's right. Yeah. I don't like it. I keep trying to use it. I go back to it. They've had layers from the beginning, and they have a lot of other advanced kind of Photoshop type features, but that's why I'm worried about Notepad. I feel like it hit a good. It's at a good place. It does enough. It's nice. It's not bulked out with stuff I don't need. And I feel like. I hope they don't do that to Notepad or Paint, but we'll see. We're running out of toolbar space, I can tell you that. It's kind of a problem, you know.
- [53:14]
Leo Laporte
It'S a get just for people who want to know. And by the way, this looks like it's been a Windows app since Windows 95.
- [53:23]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Yeah.
- [53:24]
Leo Laporte
You know, it hasn't.
- [53:25]
Paul Thurrott
No, that's what I was wondering.
- [53:27]
Leo Laporte
But it is obviously.
- [53:28]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, it almost has a. Well, obviously supposed to look a little bit like Photoshop, but to me, it looks a little bit like Visual Studio. You know, it's just almost like a little too much. Like lots of little windows in the corners and things. Like.
- [53:41]
Leo Laporte
And can it do anything? I mean.
- [53:43]
Paul Thurrott
Oh, I'm sure it can. Absolutely. It does all kinds of things. It's way more sophisticated than Paint. I'm not trying to say they're the same thing. I just use. And I know there are people who just love it and they know it inside and out, and that's great, but it's just too much for me.
- [53:57]
Leo Laporte
It's too much. Who needs it? And don't go to paint.net because then you get this spurious whatever.
- [54:04]
Paul Thurrott
Well, so you can get it from the Microsoft Store as well. That's probably the right way to do it for it. If you go that direction. Yeah. There's a couple of different ways to get it.
- [54:15]
Leo Laporte
It's getpaint.net but what do you need it for now? You got real paint.
- [54:22]
Paul Thurrott
There's a market for tools that are Photoshop but aren't a monthly subscription. That is more than your mortgage. Right.
- [54:30]
Leo Laporte
The big pixel, the big photo app. Yeah.
- [54:33]
Paul Thurrott
I mean, Aperture was their idea for that. I'm surprised.
- [54:36]
Leo Laporte
Their $500 idea for that.
- [54:38]
Paul Thurrott
That might be why. Yeah. So maybe what we're going to get is a Photos Pro or something. I don't know.
- [54:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think we're thinking it'll be.
- [54:44]
Paul Thurrott
Like Series Pro, whatever they call it.
- [54:46]
Leo Laporte
Stupidly photolicious.
- [54:49]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Okay.
- [54:51]
Leo Laporte
Okay.
- [54:52]
Paul Thurrott
The other big one in the Insider program is related to something that Microsoft vaguely announced a month or two ago, which was that they're going to overhaul the Windows, hello, user experience, if you will, the user interface in Windows and also the way. And improve the way that it handles passkeys. Which I think I said at the time is a low bar because the way it does passkeys now is ridiculous and useless. So those two things are tied together. When I was updating the book Last year for 23H2, I went down this amazing rabbit hole hole that stretched into three months where I figured out passkeys inside and out and figured out all this stuff. But I wrote this article probably about a year ago called the Secret Lives of Passkeys because what I discovered, I don't know when this started, I guess I could go back and try to figure it out. But in Windows 11, 23H2 and newer at least, and possibly 22H2, I guess when you sign in with a Microsoft account or a work or school account, you get a passkey is created on the system and it's that passkey that the authentication that occurs through Windows hello. Is operating against. It's actually using. It's implemented with a passkey. Now Microsoft created the basis for Windows hello and this kind of biometric authentication in long run timeframe. Right. It was, that was part of the whole thing.
- [56:13]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. They had a single sign on. What was that called? I remember. Yeah, I had high hopes for that. Passport. It was Passport.
- [56:19]
Paul Thurrott
It was one of the names. Yep. Its names were legion, as we say. But as far as, you know, shifting to the point where you could sign into Windows with an online account, I think it was Windows 8. I want to say where that happened in Windows 7. Windows 7 was like the Mac is today. You have a local account, you can tie it to an online account. Microsoft's, Apple's, Casey Apple id. Right. Apple account. And then they do a pass through for authentication. Right. In windows. In Windows 7 you could do the same thing. It was Passport. You're right, it was Passport, msn, Passport, Microsoft, whatever the name, I loved it.
- [56:56]
Leo Laporte
I thought this is the future, no more passwords.
- [56:59]
Paul Thurrott
But then they did full blown Windows low where you had at the time pin. Remember they did the, the pattern and picture. You do a pattern on a picture. It was pattern pack, picture, pattern. It was the same one. And then facial and fingerprint recognition. Right. And so I don't, like I said I don't remember exactly which version of Windows this changed. But at some point when you sign into a Microsoft account under the covers, it's probably, you know, there's a local account occurring. Obviously it's really, it's doing the same pass through but in reverse. But the way that they handle that credential is through a pesky. Right and so they were using earlier versions of FIDO standards to create all this stuff over time. They've been working with FIDO on this the whole time. And so it didn't really benefit anyone in 23h2. But just so you know, like you sign in with an online account, there's a passkey on that computer, it doesn't do much if you sign in with or not sign in. If you use Microsoft Edge, obviously there's that pass through authentication that occurs, but that occurred before it was a passkey. I mean they're just doing it to the standard. Right. So they're using the passkey. So.
- [58:08]
Leo Laporte
So they're using the name, but it was always passkeys.
- [58:11]
Paul Thurrott
That's right. Well, it was like a proto passkey. Maybe it's the way to say it. Right. Like, you know, because we didn't have that term yet and it wasn't a standard.
- [58:18]
Leo Laporte
If I think of it, that's how passkeys behaves is just like Passport did.
- [58:22]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, yeah. It's a formal industry wide standard for that sort of thing, for credential management and authentication.
- [58:29]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yep.
- [58:32]
Paul Thurrott
So like I said, vaguely, Microsoft about a month ago, whenever it was said, hey, we're going to change it. And so now they're being more explicit about the fact that when you're doing this, you're signing with a passkey, you're using Windows hello for the authentication part of it. That could be facial, finger or pen, just like it is today, but just kind of a cleaner ui. So it's kind of interesting just to see the ui. It's nothing surprising, it looks pretty normal. But I think we also talked about the fido. Org and yeah, the password managers, Microsoft, the platform makers, Apple, et cetera, have all agreed to adopt this broadly. And so they're going to allow import export of passkeys, passkeeper, portability, et cetera, et cetera. So someday soon, hopefully Windows will become like a full fledged password manager implementation.
- [59:23]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, and hello makes it very easy. I use my fingerprint on Macs and it's great. Or my face on an iPhone and it's great.
- [59:31]
Paul Thurrott
It's the same thing, basically. I mean, you have to reach a certain level of it has to be a trusted security method or whatever. But they have it on Android, they have it on Chrome, OS, Mac, iPhone.
- [59:44]
Leo Laporte
Most Windows PCs support hello cameras or is that still kind of a preamp?
- [59:48]
Paul Thurrott
So I don't know that I could say that I'm not 100% sure. But all Windows PCs that support Windows 11 technically support Windows load because a pin qualifies. It's not the greatest way obviously, but it qualifies. It's an extra level of something. I don't know what it's. It is, you know, you're not using.
- [60:05]
Leo Laporte
A passport when you're buying a PC is look for Windows Tello support in the camera.
- [60:08]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I think, yeah. The best configuration is you get both fingerprint and finger.
- [60:12]
Leo Laporte
And I agree.
- [60:13]
Paul Thurrott
You can choose the one that makes sense for you.
- [60:14]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I agree. That HP laptop we like does both of those.
- [60:18]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that usually works pretty great. And then they have presence sensing capabilities that will see you coming and the screen lights up, you send, you know, it's nice.
- [60:25]
Leo Laporte
And if you've had rhinoplasty and you doesn't recognize you always have.
- [60:28]
Paul Thurrott
Well, less dramatically if you wear glasses like, you know, you do it like your authentic. You enroll once with each face. I guess for lack of a better.
- [60:36]
Leo Laporte
Term, with each face.
- [60:37]
Paul Thurrott
It's like, I don't, I'm not saying you like gained a lot of weight or anything, but we don't know who you are. You're going to have to do another, like another enrollment thing.
- [60:43]
Leo Laporte
Like, oh, you don't want to recognize you.
- [60:45]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. You don't want the computer telling you.
- [60:47]
Leo Laporte
That you're just a little chubby, aren't you chubby? I'll be wabby. All right, let's take a little break and we will come back. Lots more to talk about. Paul Thorada's alone, but not lacking in so alone stuff to talk about. I'm here for you, Paul. I'm trying to fill in Richard's role a little bit on the show today. That's why I'm so chatty. Normally I'd just be sitting back playing, playing, you know, playing Farmville or whatever.
- [61:16]
Paul Thurrott
Call of Duty, I hope.
- [61:17]
Leo Laporte
Call of Duty. I, you know, I tried the Age of Empires on the iPad. It's at least initially it's kind of a different game. It looks the same. Maybe it's just because there's so many cutscenes. Maybe they're trying to help people learn how to do it. But it's a great idea of it on an iPad is a great idea. So I have to get more into it. Yeah. Our show today, Mr. Thorat, brought to you by 1Password speaking of passkeys. But I'm not talking about the 1Password password manager, which does of course support passkeys. I'm talking about an enterprise product from 1Password that incorporates 1Password Password Manager into something they call 1Password Extended Access Management. Here's a question, and it's purely rhetorical because I think we know the answer. Do your end users always, always, always work on company owned devices with IT approved apps? They never stray, do they? They never bring their phone in or the laptop? Well, of course they do. So how do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on those unmanaged devices on those unmanaged apps? Well, 1Password has a really good answer to this question. Brand new Extended Access Management 1Password Extended Access Management helps you secure every sign in for every app on every device because it solves the problems traditional iambic password managers and MDM cannot touch. Imagine your company's security as if it were the quad of a college campus. You got your nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, the IT approved apps, the managed employee identities. And then there are the paths people actually use as shortcuts worn through the grass that are the shortest points from building A to building B. Those are the unmanaged devices, the shadow IT apps, the non employee identities. Like contractors, most security tools just assume, hey, it's happy brick paths everywhere. But a lot of the security problems take place on the shortcuts. That's why you need 1Password Extended Access Management. It's the first security solution that brings all those unmanaged devices, all those apps, all those identities under your control. It ensures 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. And it's generally available to companies that use Okta or Microsoft Entra. It's also in beta now for Google Workspace customers. Check it out. 1Password.com Windows Weekly that's the number. 1Password.com Windows Weekly this is a great idea. 1Password.com Windows Weekly we thank him so much for supporting Windows Weekly and the work Paul and Richard do every week on this fine program. You support them by going to that address. 1Password.com Windows Weekly you're turning it. This is turned into a security show here. You're talking.
- [64:28]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, and I'm the wrong person to be talking about that stuff, but. No, you're not, you know.
- [64:33]
Leo Laporte
No you're not.
- [64:34]
Paul Thurrott
The Everyman's approach Security.
- [64:36]
Leo Laporte
Steve Gibson. Good.
- [64:37]
Paul Thurrott
There's going to be more. I've got my. The thing I moved into the tip today is all about security really fundamentally. So.
- [64:43]
Leo Laporte
Well, it's kind of an issue.
- [64:46]
Paul Thurrott
I never wanted to go down this path Leo, this is the rabbit hole. You know, there's no way out.
- [64:51]
Leo Laporte
Hey, was that our enterprise computing?
- [64:53]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, we're going to talk about that too.
- [64:58]
Leo Laporte
Oh, my God.
- [64:59]
Paul Thurrott
This is the weirdest episode of all time. I don't know what's happening. So I try to highlight every time a major app comes to Windows on arm. One of the neat things about the Copilot plus PC launch, maybe one of the only neat things. No, that's not fair. The hardware is awesome. Is just the sheer amount of apps that Microsoft and Qualcomm were able to convince their makers to make native ports. Most of the major browsers are there now, a lot of the major productivity apps, et cetera, et cetera. If there are areas where ARM lags behind and there are a couple, the big one, of course, is games. I don't have any news there. We talked a little bit up top about something they're testing in the Canary Channel with regards to the Prism emulator and different x86 x64 instruction sets. But the other big one that's missing, or had been missing is VPN. I think there at least a couple. I think ExpressVPN might be native on ARM, but this past week Proton announced that ProtonVPN is now native on ARM. And this has been kind of neat for me. They brought their app to the Apple TV last week. I've been using that in Apple TV.
- [66:08]
Leo Laporte
Oh, interesting.
- [66:09]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. And now I'm using ProtonVPN on this computer I'm using here. I don't have it on now, by the way.
- [66:14]
Leo Laporte
It doesn't seem like porting it from intel to ARM would be that complicated because most of the work done on a VPN is done on the server.
- [66:20]
Paul Thurrott
So. Yeah, the reason it's. The reason it doesn't just work is that there's a driver installed with every vpn.
- [66:26]
Leo Laporte
It has to be underneath. Yeah.
- [66:27]
Paul Thurrott
And drivers, you can't. Can't emulate drivers. So I'm not saying it's difficult or easy. I actually have no idea. But, you know, I've come to think.
- [66:34]
Leo Laporte
Of it that that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
- [66:36]
Paul Thurrott
So that's there. Yeah. If you're a Proton guy, you know, that's a good combination. You know, Proton apps and services and Windows and arm. Yeah.
- [66:45]
Leo Laporte
Are you using their mail yet?
- [66:47]
Paul Thurrott
No. So I've just. I'm baby stepping my way into the Proton world. I use Proton Pass for my password and passkey management. They do.
- [66:57]
Leo Laporte
Good for you.
- [66:58]
Paul Thurrott
Portable passkeys. Awesome. Works on all my devices. I Just started looking at what it means to use Proton Drive. That's the only one that's a little weird. They don't have normal tiers of storage as I think of it, so. So when you sign up for it, you can't say, all right, like to get a gigabyte or whatever or a terabyte. Sorry, yeah, you can't. I think at some point what happens is you basically fill up what you have and then you could go to them, say I'd like to get some more please. And you hold like a little hat.
- [67:27]
Leo Laporte
That's interesting.
- [67:28]
Paul Thurrott
Like tiny timbers. It's a little strange. So I.
- [67:31]
Leo Laporte
Although you only buy as needed, so I guess that's preferable, right?
- [67:35]
Paul Thurrott
I guess so. I guess so instead of having to.
- [67:38]
Leo Laporte
Buy 100 apples because you might use 100 apples, you.
- [67:41]
Paul Thurrott
That's right. Okay. The promise of cloud computing is that we only use the resources or pay for the resources when we use them. Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, like I said, I'm still getting into it, but I've been using ProtonVPN as well, so that's been great. The little slice of enterprise we have here is that over the weekend I wrote about Microsoft generally releasing, if you will, making it generally available Windows Server 2025, which they described as the latest long term servicing channel release of server. But that's the only type of server release they have. So whatever these things are support, each version is supported for five years. I don't write as much about server and enterprise stuff anymore obviously@therock.com but I thought this one was interesting because after being so hyper focused on the cloud for so many years, Microsoft finally got enough pushback from customers. It sort of acknowledged like we need to invest in this server product as well. Not because we're all going back to on prem, like cloud's going away, but rather every major company, and that's their big business, right, has some workload, something that can't be put in the cloud for regulatory, whatever it is. And these hybrid environments are super important. And so Windows Server 2025 is really designed to be the on prem part of a hybrid deployment. And they've, you know, they've done a lot of, a lot of stuff under the COVID So I wrote this thing over the weekend. I was like, it's kind of weird. They haven't announced it, you know, like it's out, like it's available and then they announced it on Monday. So they did get to it.
- [69:18]
Leo Laporte
Anyway, I never thought I'd hear Paul Thurot say The words on prem in my entire life. So what's that on prem? I never thought I'd hear you say on premises.
- [69:27]
Paul Thurrott
If life goes accordingly, you'll never hear me say it again. I don't know.
- [69:32]
Leo Laporte
That's your server story for the day?
- [69:35]
Paul Thurrott
Yep. Yeah, it's just not my thing anymore. And then this is like, tangentially related. I'm fascinated by this one. So last year, not this past year, but last year, Google did the thing they do every year. February comes around. Here's the first developer preview of Android. They usually hit beta before or right before their annual show. Google I O. And then they ship it or they finalize it in August, and then they put the ASOP version out in September, and then they announce their own devices and their own devices are the first ones they get it right. Last year they said, we're going to try to ship this thing a little early to kind of meet the schedules of different companies, use Android. And they missed it. So, okay, no big deal. And then this year they were like, no, seriously, we're going to make this one. We're going to deliver this thing early. They were going to try to wrap this whole thing up by August. And at the time, what we didn't know was that they were going to release all their new Pixel phones in August. And, man, they missed it by two months. So they didn't even come close. So for next year, they're going to switch the whole schedule over so that the major Android release, or what will probably be called Android 16, will ship in the second quarter. So by the end of June 2025, and then they'll do kind of a minor, what they call an SDK release, meaning there'll be underlying features that developers can take advantage of, but the UI and the behavior of Android 16, what did I call it? Android 16 is not going to change. And then that will be the schedule going forward. And the reason that they gave was to more closely align with the needs of their hardware partners. To me, that means Samsung, because Samsung usually does. Their big release now is in August or even July. It's the folding phones that's the big one. And Google has also switched this basic schedule. It allows them to get out before Apple because the iPhones always come out in September. And maybe this is what makes sense, but when you look at what they do, it's actually alarmingly similar to what Windows is, not so much the timeframe, but rather that they have one major release every year. They do that kind of minor release SDK. So Microsoft doesn't really do that, but then they ship new features every quarter. And if you're on Pixel, you get additional new features every month for the Pixel drops. Yeah. And then they do monthly security updates and sometimes you'll see small things every. That kind of stuff happens. So we live in a world where whatever platform you're using, man, it's just getting updated all the time.
- [72:08]
Leo Laporte
But they do seem to be coming to a kind of group consensus about how often and when. Things like that, like Microsoft and Google both. Right. Are kind of on the same cadence now.
- [72:19]
Paul Thurrott
I don't know if I'm misreading this, but I feel like I can't remember the versions anymore. But the last two, three, whatever versions of Android, the major releases, so 1415 at least, just haven't seen like a big deal from a user interface. New features before?
- [72:36]
Leo Laporte
No, I can't tell. I don't even know. But iOS know what version you were on and be excited about that.
- [72:40]
Paul Thurrott
IOS seems like it's a big enough, I mean, for an annual release. Like at some point I feel like this is going to have to slow down. But they're on the train. I don't know. So maybe Microsoft was onto something with Windows on a service. He says, just kidding. Because seriously, you screwed everything up. But whatever, you know, mobile platforms at least are, you can't mess them up. Well, they're important, though, in the sense that people use them. People are more engaged, you know, there's more things going on there.
- [73:11]
Leo Laporte
Use it more.
- [73:12]
Paul Thurrott
When I sit down. Yeah, you sit down in front of a computer, you don't want things like, where's, you know, like, why did you change that? Like, you don't want change. Like you just want to get work done, you know?
- [73:21]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [73:21]
Paul Thurrott
So I don't know. That's my little editorial on that.
- [73:26]
Leo Laporte
And you also phones. You got to get it right. And they are, you know, they are the targets. Much more so now.
- [73:31]
Paul Thurrott
Right, that's right. I'm losing track of when I talked about different things, but I think I alluded to this laptop I was going to review.
- [73:41]
Leo Laporte
You loved this.
- [73:42]
Paul Thurrott
So here's, here's the hard numbers on this one. So I put Call of duty Black Ops 6 on here. I've played it in both single and multiplayer. It is running at full native resolution, which is something silly like 2280 by 1400. Something pretty good. So not 4k, but also better than 1920. It's actually set to a custom graphics configuration. But if you go down and look at it, when it's plugged in. Everything's on basically medium. But it looks awesome. This thing is getting between 90 and 120 frames per second consistently.
- [74:19]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [74:20]
Paul Thurrott
Which is nuts. And it looks great. Like it's awesome. So this is just a laptop. It's a gray laptop. It's on sale right now for a thousand bucks. It's not a lot of money for this kind of a thing. It's 32 gigs of RAM terabyte of storage. They're different. Under.
- [74:39]
Leo Laporte
For a thousand bucks.
- [74:40]
Paul Thurrott
Thousand bucks. It's on sale right now.
- [74:42]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [74:42]
Paul Thurrott
And this thing plays the most modern video game there is in a way that I find alarming. Like, it's really great.
- [74:50]
Leo Laporte
This is amd.
- [74:51]
Paul Thurrott
This really is amd. Yeah. So they've done something really right here and I don't think they get enough credit for this. This was something I noticed I first started looking at late last year with Meteor Lake, which is Intel. It was okay. And then this past summer I had that, you know, 7,800$ideapad, which is previous gen, which was very, very good actually. But this is a showing off here.
- [75:14]
Leo Laporte
You're at the top.
- [75:16]
Paul Thurrott
I just needed something that was representative. It so happens I have the highest score. That's a coincidence.
- [75:23]
Leo Laporte
You haven't lost it, have you, Paulie?
- [75:25]
Paul Thurrott
Like riding a bike, Leo.
- [75:28]
Leo Laporte
That's hysterical.
- [75:29]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, good.
- [75:31]
Leo Laporte
Good on you, man.
- [75:32]
Paul Thurrott
Teabagging like a 14 year old.
- [75:34]
Leo Laporte
But tell you, don't mess with the rot. That's all I'm saying.
- [75:38]
Paul Thurrott
I also have my hat handed to me sometimes. But it's.
- [75:41]
Leo Laporte
I'm impressed that you're able to do this on a laptop. That really does.
- [75:43]
Paul Thurrott
No, I am too. That's the thing. And so that's the thing. Look, the PC has always been super versatile. This isn't like a news flash or anything, but as we go off and do different things in different places and you know, most of us use mobile devices, etc. And the PC has become focused on multi or on productivity. You know, this is a thing you can do too. And it's kind of cool. Like it's not, you know, it's not as seamless as a console for sure. But we're getting to the point now where even on like a really kind of pedestrian looking laptop, it's actually better graphics quality. Right. Like it's kind of incredible.
- [76:17]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [76:19]
Paul Thurrott
So it's neat.
- [76:21]
Leo Laporte
But battery life, what's the screen like? Is it good?
- [76:23]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So this, yeah, it's. I, it's ips. That's the thing. So they kind of there's a. I. This is conjecture on my part, I think, or HP in this case wanted to do something where they're going to strike a balance between performance and price, battery life, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that's true too. Yeah. The other places where this thing does well is battery life, efficiency and eight and a half hours I'm averaging normal, not, not game playing. I mean I'm plugging in for games, but it's pretty good. And the instant on performance like I always talk about with Snapdragon is almost perfect. It's amazing. Instant, reliable, very good. Doesn't get super hot, doesn't get super loud. You know, it's, it's pretty great. The screen is. I don't remember the exact residence in the review, but it's something like 2280 by 1400 ish somewhere in there. IPS, it's only 60 frames a second. So you're not getting high refresh rate, you're not getting oled. You know, these are things that would impact or could. Well, certainly OLED would impact battery life, but it's, it's. I mean it's awesome. Honestly, it's just, it's, it's great. And even the speakers are great. There's four speakers. It has upper and lower firing speakers. Like it's amazing. And then I have this other piece of junk. No, no, I have this other computer that's running Lunar Lake and I've had lots of problems with it. Lots of problems. And I've talked to other people who review laptops and they've seen the same thing I have, which is kind of nice because this doesn't always happen. And two of them recommended to me that what I need to do is put this thing in best performance power management mode and not use the default. Okay, so you won't be putting Call.
- [78:02]
Leo Laporte
Of Duty on that.
- [78:03]
Paul Thurrott
Well, that's what. I just tried that today, so takes about eight hours to install. You know, it's like 200,000,000 gigabytes, you know, over wifi. Took a little while, you know, Xbox I think siphons it down a little bit. Finally got this thing running. So it's not the same experience. The good news is it is playable. This is, you gotta remember, as a step up for Meteor Lake. So Meteor Lake was kind of, it was actually a really good graphics boost for Intel Lunar Lake for all its problems. The graphics boost also good. Not as good as amd, there's no doubt about that. So it's also running at native res. Chris you would probably want to know what that is. I could look that up if you want. I don't have it in front of me. I'm sorry. But it's. All the graphic settings are on low and you can see this in the screenshots I've taken. It's like. If there's like a couple of bodies laying on the ground in a doorway, is one of them. They just look like light colored blobs. They're not detailed in any way. And so they really have to tune down the graphics. But it runs at 40, 43 frames a second. So we're talking the AMD version is two to two and a half times faster now. AMD, much better graphics. That's why. Right. It's. It's kind of amazing, frankly. So I guess I. If there weren't other problems with Lunar Lake, which I'm going to get to when I finally review that thing, I would be okay with this. I mean, it's still better than Meteor Lake. And it's, you know, you can still play the game. It's. It runs fast enough, I guess. I don't know. But it's not like the zen. The Zen 5 thing is crazy. Like, it's crazy how good it is.
- [79:39]
Leo Laporte
So I'm looking for the review on here. Did you put.
- [79:42]
Paul Thurrott
I don't have the Lunar Lake one. That's why. I'm sorry, I just, I literally just ran this today. This is one of the. It'll probably be, I assume. Yeah, probably before next week. Probably by then. Yeah. Yeah. But battery life isn't as good. The performance is not even close. I've had lots of reliability issues with it. And then there's this thing where it's like, you know, it runs. It's better. I guess if I hadn't seen the AMD thing, I'd be like, okay, this is a nice step up from Meteor Lake. I mean, for graphics, but it just.
- [80:11]
Leo Laporte
Feels so bad for Intel. It's just, it's really just not.
- [80:14]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So, yeah. Tied to this. Intel announced their quarterly earnings. I don't know if you saw this. It was not great. We were talking earlier about Microsoft and their earnings and how much they're spending on AI and how much they're making on AI. And you don't see this kind of number of. This set of numbers a lot. Where they reported a net loss that was greater than all of their revenues. It's kind of hard to explain why that's so horrible, I guess, unless you know exactly what I'm talking about. But generally speaking, net income or profits are some fraction of revenues. Revenue is the big number. It's the same net sales. It's the actual money you brought in. They lost more money than they made. Like this is. That's not good. It's the worst loss in the company's history. This isn't part of my story, but since this happened, they're going to be delisted from the NASDAQ as part of.
- [81:12]
Leo Laporte
No, no, the Dow, they're the Dow. I'm sorry, it's placed by Nvidia and.
- [81:15]
Paul Thurrott
The Dow replaced by Nvidia, which I don't know if you're following the news, they're going gangbusters. So that's kind of sad for Intel. So this was another one where, okay, now I want to be fair to this company because I really do think Pat Gelsinger has done a good job on a number of levels. But one of them is just being kind of transparent and honest about what's happening and being like pragmatically kind of saying, look, a big chunk of this loss was tied to impairment charges that are related to assets that they have that are less worth less. Now that's something you could actually just put in your earnings over two years or whatever. You could do it over time. They're like, you know what, we're going to take this loss all at once. We're going to post the loss anyway. Why don't we just bite the bullet, so to speak, and get it out of the way? So I guess I sort of respect that. But as is the case with Microsoft, I kind of look at this business and I'm like, okay, so things aren't going great where all of their, no, that's not fair. A lot of some of their business is down year over year. The data center stuff is actually up a bit. That's pretty good. But so what's going on here? Right? And so again, as is the case with Microsoft, you can go and listen to the post earnings conference call they have with analysts. They didn't provide a transcript, so I actually had to listen to it, which was thrilling. But there was some interesting conversation in there and somebody asked about whether Lunar Lake, which was a big part of the financial problems that they had this year because they brought essentially this architecture, the full architecture they brought to market was three years out, cost them a lot of money. I've been told by multiple sources they lose money every time they sell. One of these things is a one off. And Pat Gelsinger repeated that word phrase Whatever term back to that guy twice, at least three times, and referred to Lunar Lake as a one off. And what does that mean? Lunar Lake is the only modern CPU that they've made where the RAM is packaged on the die with the CPU and the other processors. Right? That's the way like Apple does. Apple, Apple, Silicon. Right. It's the way Qualcomm does Snapdragon phone chips. Right. The PC chips that Qualcomm makes, they're technically not packaged on the die, but for all intents and purposes, they really are. They come together. You can't add RAM to one of those computers later. They're not technically the same package, but they are packaged together, if you will, small P, whatever. So, yeah, they did Meteor Lake because of the demands for AI PCs, as they call it, Right. They don't want to say Copilot plus VC because Microsoft went to them and said, you need to make this spec because if you don't, AMD and Qualcomm are going to do it. They stopped doing the Meteor Lake gen. They're not going to rev that anymore. That was a one off architecturally. And then they brought this thing to market more quickly and they cobbled it together from other parts of the different things they're working on separately. So Lunar Lake is this weird thing that kind of came up out of nowhere really quickly and they're never going to do it again. Like, this is the only time they're ever going to use this design. This is another one off. Like it's crazy. So I don't know what to say. Like you can't. There's not infinite money. You can't keep doing this. Now, from Intel's perspective, part of the margins issues, part of the reason they lose money on these chips is that, well, they're manufacturing it through a third party, tsmc. Right. So they pay for that. They want to bring that in house when they can. And then there's the whole memory thing, you know, ram. They want to get the best deal on that. And if it's all tied together and you're getting it from that same third party, you're not going to get a deal on it. And they're not exactly the biggest customer right now, especially since this is only one of their many chip lines. So, yeah, they're never doing it again. So yikes. Anyway, I feel bad for Intel. I think it's the short version of the story.
- [85:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, we're all a little sad.
- [85:24]
Paul Thurrott
It's too bad.
- [85:25]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, what are you going to do?
- [85:27]
Paul Thurrott
But at Least the lunar lake stuff is awesome. Oh, wait.
- [85:29]
Leo Laporte
Oh, no.
- [85:31]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I would say, you know, go back in time. I guess it was two months ago now. It feels like a million years ago. But at IFA in Berlin, they came out really confident presentation. A lot of we're the best here, here, here, here, and here. We had that story a couple weeks ago where Qualcomm was like, a lot of that was lies. And my whole thing with them was like, it looks like they kind of hit it out of the park. They need this. And then you use one of these things, you're like, oh, I'm seeing some of the same reliability problems. You know, it's not good. So I want. I'd like them to get it together. It'd be better for everybody if they did, but not yet. Okay, then we don't have to go into this too much detail, but Amazon and Apple both released their earnings since last week. They're both doing pretty good. 95 billion in revenues for Apple, biggest company in the world. The thing we're looking at there is iPhone sales, because there were worries that that would be flat. Again, they had a problem there for a while. I think iPhone revenues are up 5%, 6%. There's no indication that there's any shift in which models people are buying, et cetera. So it's probably up a little bit. That's good. Today. I don't have this in the notes, but there was a story, the Financial Times tipped me off of this. I actually ignored it for a couple days because I wasn't sure it was that big of a deal. But Apple, like all publicly held companies, files a 10K format forum with the SEC every quarter. And they have, among the many things that have to be in this forum, which, by the way, I don't think the SEC does much of a job of oversight, but whatever is, you have to declare what you see as the risks associated with your business. And in Apple's case, those risks were always exchange rates, competitors, customers, not interested in the products, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And they added some stuff to this one that they'd never used before. And it's kind of interesting, and it does basically amount to. We have this really one popular, successful thing that we're never gonna beat, and we've introduced a bunch of products and none of them have done as good. And now we're working on things that are really expensive to come to market, and it's unclear if anyone's gonna want to buy them. And our new risk is that we're Never gonna be as successful as we were. So it's kind of a weird thing to say, but I think the rationale for it is there. I mean, I'm not predicting doom and gloom for Apple. I think Apple is an amazing business.
- [88:02]
Leo Laporte
A malaise in the zeitgeist these days.
- [88:05]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. But if you have some number of quarters where things go south financially relative to your position, I mean, this is going to be huge. Investors could sue you for this. You didn't disclose material risk to your business that you're legally obligated or disclose.
- [88:21]
Leo Laporte
You don't have something, make up something.
- [88:23]
Paul Thurrott
Well, look, they had a car thing they worked on that went nowhere. They have a vision Pro thing that's expensive, no one's buying. They have ideas for glasses and who cares what else? But these are things that none of which are going to be iPhones, you know, and at some point you have to be like, look, the whole world has an iPhone. So we've done everything we can. The businesses, the services business we have Apple is based on would not exist without iPhone. Right. You could argue that those two businesses plus a bunch of wearables, a bunch of the other device sales are all tied to you owning an iPhone. That business is bigger than Microsoft every quarter, just. Just iPhone by itself.
- [89:00]
Leo Laporte
Amazing.
- [89:01]
Paul Thurrott
IPhone and its ecosystem. So is Apple or any other company going to ever beat that? I mean, it's hard to imagine, but not in my lifetime. Right. I mean, I don't know.
- [89:12]
Leo Laporte
Maybe. AI.
- [89:14]
Paul Thurrott
Maybe. Yeah.
- [89:15]
Leo Laporte
It's funny because one of the analysts on the analyst call asked Tim Cook. Yeah, well, what if Google loses this court case and has to stop paying you 20 billion or so a year? That's going to hurt your services. And Tim basically said, yeah, we're not going to talk about that right now.
- [89:34]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, why would we talk about it? We've never talked about it. Which by the way, publicly held company, that's a little iffy.
- [89:41]
Leo Laporte
Well, I think both Google and Apple think this is going to be many years off and maybe now after the election, maybe never. Right?
- [89:48]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [89:50]
Leo Laporte
I wonder if they can order the DOJ to dis. I don't think they can continue existing. I mean, you know, you put in your own.
- [89:59]
Paul Thurrott
Well, you've already had rulings against the company. You can't like just, you know. Just kidding.
- [90:04]
Leo Laporte
I mean, yeah, you can't really, the.
- [90:06]
Paul Thurrott
Way it works that there's a legal process, but yeah, we'll see. I mean, Apple has bigger problems, I would say, in Europe than they have here for sure.
- [90:13]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [90:14]
Paul Thurrott
That's not going away.
- [90:15]
Leo Laporte
Right. We're going to talk about Microsoft's second biggest business pretty darn soon. But first.
- [90:23]
Paul Thurrott
First biggest. First biggest.
- [90:24]
Leo Laporte
Is it their first biggest?
- [90:25]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, that's the big change.
- [90:27]
Leo Laporte
That's the big change. It's number one business. What do you think it is, kids? It's not what you think it is. I can hear that.
- [90:32]
Paul Thurrott
Keyboards.
- [90:33]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, keyboards and mice with Copilot. Do they still make keyboards and mice? I used to love my Microsoft Master.
- [90:41]
Paul Thurrott
They got rid of. They moved everything under Surface, which I thought was stupid.
- [90:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [90:46]
Paul Thurrott
They signed up with a company I can't think of.
- [90:49]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, there's another company, hardware maker.
- [90:50]
Paul Thurrott
That'S gonna start selling the old Microsoft Logitech.
- [90:53]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's right.
- [90:54]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. I don't think it was Logitech. I can't remember. But they, they. That's been delayed. So it's not happening happened yet, but hopefully will because I, I would. I want to stockpile these things.
- [91:03]
Leo Laporte
I did. I had like eight or nine of them down to last the last few.
- [91:06]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I'm down. I have one here and one at home. I'm. I don't know what I'm going to do if this thing dies.
- [91:10]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. All right, well, we'll talk about that business, the big business.
- [91:15]
Paul Thurrott
Keyboard and mice business.
- [91:16]
Leo Laporte
Keyboard and mouse business in just a second. Paul Thurat is here from the Rot.com his books@leanpub.com Richard Campbell has the week off. He's in Tunisia. Couldn't get a good connection. We're hoping he'll be back next week. But first, a word from Lookout, our sponsor for this segment. I've talked to you about Lookout before today. Every company is in the business of managing data, right? That's, you know, whatever your business is. Data is kind of the heart of it. But that means every company is at risk of data exposure and worst data loss. Whether it's cyber breaches, cyber threats, it's leaks. You know, the bad guys are growing more sophisticated every day. And modern breaches now happen like that, not over a period of time, like months, days, Months, years. At a time when the majority of sensitive corporate data is no longer, I'll say it on prem. But in the cloud, traditional boundaries no longer exist. And the strategies for securing that data have changed fundamentally, which is why it's great we've got Lookout. From the first phishing text to the final data grab, Lookout stops modern breaches as swiftly as they unfold. Oh, isn't that great? Whether on a device or in the cloud, across networks. Heck, working remotely at the local coffee shop, Lookout gives you clear visibility into all your data at rest and in motion. Wherever it is. You'll monitor, assess and protect without sacrificing productivity for security. With this. You'll like this too. With a single unified cloud platform, Lookout simplifies and strengthens, makes it easy and straightforward, reimagining security for the world that will be today. Visit Lookout.com right now to learn how to safeguard data secure hybrid work, reduce IT complexity. That's Lookout.com Lookout L O O K O U T Lookout.com we thank him so much for supporting Windows Weekly, the number one business division at Microsoft AI.
- [93:30]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, so it's business and productivity online services, which is Microsoft 365 and some other things, but Microsoft 365, and the reason they're number one is because the Windows commercial revenues moved from more personal computing into that business. So they got a nice bump. So I referenced this earlier. I'm sure I confused everybody. It was probably the wrong way to tell this story, but this morning I got up and I came across a thing in my feed about a Microsoft 365 change for consumers. I forwarded it to Laurent, who does our news. And I said, if I'm reading this correct correctly, it says that Microsoft 365 paying customers get some kind of credits or tokens that they can use against Copilot services. And they're getting Designer and that these things will be working in Windows 11 apps like Paint, Photos and Notepad. And I'm like, here's the thing. We already have most of that. So I stopped paying for Microsoft Copilot Pro because I can get Designer to do for free. I mean, I'm paying for a Microsoft 365 subscription to make those images, right? And it even supports widescreen formats and so forth. So I'm like, why would I pay another 20 bucks a month? I just use the series. It's the same thing. It makes the same images, right? And he was. And he was confused by it as well. And then he kind of came back and he said, well, first of all, this isn't in the United States or Western Europe. It's Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. And I'm like, okay, okay. So maybe this was something we got first and they're moving there. Great, that's fine. But what's this thing about Paint Photos and Notepad that doesn't make sense? And that's what they announced for the Insider program that was at the top of the show that they're bringing new generative AI capabilities to those apps that are going to work against the cloud. And you can use your Copilot credit so you get every month as part of your subscription. I'm like, okay, so obviously this announcement went out too early because the other part of this that I didn't mention is they're also raising the prices on these subscriptions, and they're going to have a classic version that doesn't have any AI. Actually, I also didn't mention another part of it. So if you have copilot Pro or Microsoft 365 copilot, you get copilot features in Word, Excel, OneNote, I don't know, whatever. Some set of the desktop apps, right? So starting with this change, the prices are going up. Consumers in those countries will gain access to those capabilities, too, but again, with credits. So every month, you'll be able to use so much of your credits and use these features, and if you run out, I guess you're done. You can't use those features anymore until the next month. Or you could optionally pay for Copilot Pro. So it's kind of a nice way to advertise this other paid offering, I guess. I have been wondering about when Microsoft 365 Family and Personal, which today are the two consumer subscriptions, we're going to go up in price. They have been 69, $99 forever. In fact, I don't remember the timing, but at some point they added a user to the family one, so it stayed the $99 price, but now you can have six people on it, each with a terabyte of storage instead of five. So if anything, it's just kind of gotten better. So I think that this is a preview of a coming price hike that consumers are going to get for Microsoft 365, just like the one we got on Xbox Game Pass, right? I mean, it's kind of inevitable. So, yeah, there you go. And a look at how they're going to kind of position these AI features between, like, free stuff that's just in Windows and. And paid stuff that you get through your subscriptions, depending on which one or two you have. So, interesting. So it was a little morning of confusion. It's like, I would say to Lauren, I feel like I know a little bit about Windows. I'm not aware of AI features in Notepad. Am I missing something? And he said, nope, you're not. There are none. And then later in the day, they announced it in the Insider program, so. Because it's in the Insider program. And if I remember correctly now Dev and Canary, these aren't coming to Windows 11 until I don't know, the spring. So these people, I don't know what they're getting for now. I think this was a mistake. I don't think they meant to announce this. That's my gut feeling.
- [97:51]
Leo Laporte
But that happens sometimes. You push the button prematurely.
- [97:54]
Paul Thurrott
Yep. So anyway, it's coming and then you know more about this one than I do. But open for months. I remember back in May they had that big event and like here it comes, ChatGPT search. It's like, nope, we're going to do in realistic voices. We're doing, you know, whatever. And then they just announced ChatGPT search. Well, obviously they're doing that and I have not used it. So you're saying it's pretty good. Is that.
- [98:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, I mean the idea, and this is what Google was worried about forever is that someday AI would come for them and their big business. And I guess that's the theory. The problem right now is it's not easy to get to. So here is. I'll go to my screen and pull up. Let's see, where is it? It's in one of my.
- [98:48]
Paul Thurrott
So you have like the. How do you use this like an app?
- [98:50]
Leo Laporte
So you have to go to your Chat GPT interface. So it's not like now I imagine they're plan would somehow to incorporate it into the browser, maybe write a plugin but. So when I do chatgpt I can either. Here, let me, let me refresh the page so I can show you what it, what it looks like. No, that's not. Sorry, I have Mac fingers. Let's go back, let's refresh and you'll see it shows you an empty. It's going back to the previous thing. It shows you normally would show you the chat interf. Well, here it is I guess down at the bottom, bottom you can kind of see it. So it says Message Chat GPT and then there's that. I could type a normal query.
- [99:33]
Paul Thurrott
They need a UX expert. This is stupid. It's a little too minimalistic.
- [99:39]
Leo Laporte
Ask baby made. And then it will give me an answer. And actually that's pretty good. Now I can also. That was the normal chat but I can also press the search button. Okay for that and then it's going to. And the difference really is only that ChatGPT's training data is cut off at some point. I can't remember what it is.
- [100:01]
Paul Thurrott
So this like shows you sources this.
- [100:03]
Leo Laporte
Is actually now hooked up to the web.
- [100:06]
Paul Thurrott
What's it using though, for search? Is it Bing?
- [100:09]
Leo Laporte
No, its own thing. It's hooked up. So basically what they've done is they've hooked chatgpt up to sources that are. I think that. I don't think it's using Bing.
- [100:19]
Paul Thurrott
Okay. I know they're using. Okay. Like. Well, it's more of partnered with them.
- [100:23]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I mean, it's hard for you to read on this because I can't. Let me go back to the Mac and do chat. So now I can make it a little bit bigger. There we go. Now you can see. So that's the search button.
- [100:36]
Paul Thurrott
Okay.
- [100:36]
Leo Laporte
And this is the regular thing. So how many star. Let's see. What's something current. Oh, I know, I know. Who won?
- [100:47]
Paul Thurrott
This is who won the Mexico presidential election. Yeah.
- [100:53]
Leo Laporte
That was recent, wasn't it, by the way?
- [100:58]
Paul Thurrott
A woman, interestingly a woman.
- [101:01]
Leo Laporte
Ah, see. Then this one says, I may not have the latest updates.
- [101:04]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [101:05]
Leo Laporte
So that's interesting. Did I use search for that or did I. Did I maybe mistakenly. Let's see. Let's put that in search.
- [101:12]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [101:12]
Leo Laporte
Make sure we do this search thing. That's. I think I pressed the wrong button. Now let's see if it knows.
- [101:19]
Paul Thurrott
Wait, wait, wait. What? There you go. Select it.
- [101:24]
Leo Laporte
How do I.
- [101:24]
Paul Thurrott
It has to be highlighted like that.
- [101:25]
Leo Laporte
Ah, then we do it. Okay, now searching the web. Same stupid result. Okay. It did give me on the right here, actual results. Let's try. Who is the.
- [101:38]
Paul Thurrott
This is like a list of who they're partnering with, I guess Mexico assume.
- [101:43]
Leo Laporte
Let's see. This is now I'm doing. So.
- [101:46]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [101:46]
Leo Laporte
Okay. Yeah. So this makes it search. Yeah. The UI is terrible.
- [101:52]
Paul Thurrott
Yep. No, it's horrific.
- [101:53]
Leo Laporte
As of November 6, 2024. So they do have up to date information.
- [101:58]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [102:00]
Leo Laporte
So that's the difference, I guess. And then on the right here.
- [102:05]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [102:05]
Leo Laporte
We're seeing the citations, which I like because honestly, you want to. If it's hallucinating, you'd like to see. Where'd you get that?
- [102:13]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [102:14]
Leo Laporte
So President Sheinbaum.
- [102:16]
Paul Thurrott
Yep.
- [102:18]
Leo Laporte
Who you know well because she was head of government of Mexico City for a long time and so you probably hung out with her.
- [102:25]
Paul Thurrott
I was just telling a story about. I believe this person last night. There's a little bit of graft involved unfortunately, but yeah. Anyway, it's. It's nice, I guess it.
- [102:40]
Leo Laporte
With. With her or just in general, her.
- [102:42]
Paul Thurrott
And the previous president. Not great.
- [102:49]
Leo Laporte
Let's. You know what would be a nice moose bouche A little.
- [102:53]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [102:54]
Leo Laporte
A little in between, of course, his little sherbet to lighten the Pallo palette cleanser. Maybe some Xbox news.
- [103:01]
Paul Thurrott
Okay.
- [103:02]
Leo Laporte
Please.
- [103:03]
Paul Thurrott
So it's a new month. November.
- [103:06]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [103:07]
Paul Thurrott
So we have a new round of game pass titles to talk about. Obviously an incredibly long list of Activision Blizzard games to brag about.
- [103:15]
Leo Laporte
Oh, no, you. No, no. If only.
- [103:19]
Paul Thurrott
The good news is, though, we are getting Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
- [103:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [103:26]
Paul Thurrott
I find it weird that the thing they're highlighting the most is that this one lets you get out of the plane. It's like this time it's personal. I think the thing that's impressive about this one is that the graphics are incredible. Right. It's nuts.
- [103:40]
Leo Laporte
Well, and that's why getting. Whoa. Sorry about that. That's why getting out of the plane.
- [103:43]
Paul Thurrott
I thought that happened in my room.
- [103:46]
Leo Laporte
My Xbox turned on. That's why getting out of the plane. It's not so much because it's cool to get out of the plane, but the fact that the. The reality is that granular that you can get right down next to it.
- [103:57]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, it's supposed to look amazing. Oh, it does look. I mean, the videos I've seen of it look amazing. And they're doing a lot of offloading to Azure, curiously.
- [104:04]
Leo Laporte
Oh, interesting.
- [104:05]
Paul Thurrott
So that you don't have like a terabyte install to get all those graphics. Because the way that works today is you get the better graphics for these world updates that they do, and they're just tens, hundreds of gigabytes each, depending on the one, and, you know, it adds up. So.
- [104:19]
Leo Laporte
But are they rendering in the cloud or is it just.
- [104:22]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, supposedly. Yeah, that's what. That's what they said. So we'll see. I'm curious to try this. This is a hybrid model, right. So you're going to have a bunch of the. Obviously the game on your device, Xbox or PC, but a bunch of it's going to come from the cloud, too. Wow. So you can do aerial. If you're in a submarine, you're kind of screwed. You fly your own little paper airplane. That's all you get. But you need the.
- [104:48]
Leo Laporte
So what do we get? Metal Slug Tactics? Go Mecca?
- [104:53]
Paul Thurrott
No, the big one, though, is Goat Simulator Remastered.
- [104:57]
Leo Laporte
That's a fun game.
- [104:58]
Paul Thurrott
Don't knock Goat Simulator, but I love that it's remastered.
- [105:00]
Leo Laporte
Remastered.
- [105:01]
Paul Thurrott
Because I need the goat to be as realistic as possible using the graphics capabilities we have today.
- [105:07]
Leo Laporte
And if you don't want to be a goat, you can be a Halibut with Harold Halibut.
- [105:12]
Paul Thurrott
But I just. Okay. One of the games is called Turnip Boy Robs a Bank.
- [105:19]
Leo Laporte
You really feel like they're at the bottom of the barrel here.
- [105:22]
Paul Thurrott
I just don't know what's happening. Yeah, I mean, it's like there's no bigger spectrum than From Flight Simulator 2024 to Turnip Boy Robs a Bank. I don't think that's the spectrum, but.
- [105:35]
Leo Laporte
This is why I'm weird, because that's the game I would probably die.
- [105:39]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [105:40]
Leo Laporte
I want to know more about Turnip Boy in this bank.
- [105:43]
Paul Thurrott
I don't know. By the way, it's not in the notes. I might have mentioned this a month ago. Something. I've been talking to my son about this. I thought it was once a month, but apparently it might be as much as once a week. But Prime Gaming, if you're a prime customer at Amazon, pay attention to that. They add free games to that thing at least every two weeks. I think it's every week. If you look at it just once a month, it's kind of incredible. And the games that you're getting, some of them are on Amazon, obviously, but some of them are on gog, the Goal games service. Some of them are on Epic Games, some of them are on Steam. And when you get games this way, they're yours. They're free forever. Once they're part of your account, they never go away. So if you play games on PC, you should know about that because everyone kind of knows, like, Epic Games gives away a game or two every month or whatever it is. Just, you know, it's nice. Amazon gives away like dozens of games every month. It's crazy. Hundreds maybe. It's crazy. Go look at that. If you haven't.
- [106:40]
Leo Laporte
Really. Where do I get that?
- [106:42]
Paul Thurrott
Look up just Google or chat. ChatGPT, search Prime Gaming and you'll see it there.
- [106:49]
Leo Laporte
Is it their version of Game Pass?
- [106:51]
Paul Thurrott
No, it's just. It's a perk of Prime. Right. And so, you know, with. With Amazon prime, they're always trying to be like, look, you get all this stuff. It's not just like the physical thing where you get deliveries, next day, second day, whatever.
- [107:01]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [107:02]
Paul Thurrott
You get a bunch of these digital perks.
- [107:04]
Leo Laporte
And this isn't using their streaming service.
- [107:07]
Paul Thurrott
Nope, this is. You, like, go to the Doom one, for example. Like, this is Doom.
- [107:10]
Leo Laporte
Download. You download it?
- [107:12]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. You don't download it here. Here. You're just adding it to your account so you get the game. I don't know which service this is going to be through I don't remember, but I got this last month or something.
- [107:22]
Leo Laporte
It will activate Prime Game.
- [107:25]
Paul Thurrott
It puts it into. Or. So this one is actually from Amazon. I guess so now it's in your Amazon account, if that's where it is.
- [107:31]
Leo Laporte
Oh, no. I get a code.
- [107:33]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, that you can. Okay, so this goes to one of the other services I mentioned.
- [107:36]
Leo Laporte
Okay, so. Oh, wow. And then it's mine forever.
- [107:40]
Paul Thurrott
It's yours forever. Yep. It's just in your account. I know, I know. I don't know why no one is talking about this. There's an incredible collection of games there right now, and they're not there forever. So, like that Doom games. Been there for two, four weeks. Whatever it is, it's going to go away eventually. Just look at this. Every week or two. It's crazy.
- [107:58]
Leo Laporte
Copy code. And then where do I use the code? Oh, what do I do next? From the Microsoft Store to claim the game. Open Windows 11, search for Microsoft Store. So it's the store version?
- [108:10]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Okay.
- [108:11]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's awesome.
- [108:12]
Paul Thurrott
No, it's incredible. But it goes across all those services. I forgot the Microsoft Store. So which is the Xbox app on Windows or whatever? Yeah, it's nuts. Yep.
- [108:24]
Leo Laporte
I never heard of this.
- [108:25]
Paul Thurrott
I know. I. I don't know why no one talks about.
- [108:28]
Leo Laporte
Oh, look, BioShock Remastered.
- [108:30]
Paul Thurrott
I know. It's not.
- [108:31]
Leo Laporte
I want to get that.
- [108:32]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So see where that one is. Does it also get a code or something?
- [108:34]
Leo Laporte
Let's see.
- [108:35]
Paul Thurrott
It's going to go to a site, right? Yeah.
- [108:37]
Leo Laporte
So you're going to go redeem it.
- [108:38]
Paul Thurrott
At gog or Epic, probably. Or Steam.
- [108:41]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, gog. Good old games.
- [108:43]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So you have to have the account and all those people.
- [108:46]
Leo Laporte
See, now, do you click like the top where. This isn't really a stair here. I know, but do you click that?
- [108:53]
Paul Thurrott
My favorite one is where you click a bunch and hit Enter that it adds more and you're like, guys, can we agree that I feel like this.
- [109:01]
Leo Laporte
Is helping Google in their AI ambitions just a little too much? Let's see. Nope. Didn't get it right.
- [109:07]
Paul Thurrott
Didn't get it right.
- [109:07]
Leo Laporte
Didn't get it right. So there's a hydrant. That one's easy. Does this corner.
- [109:12]
Paul Thurrott
I would. Yep. Yay.
- [109:15]
Leo Laporte
I've got BioShock Remastered Free.
- [109:18]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. So you get a site, you'll click through, it'll go to gog, and you sign in, and there it is.
- [109:23]
Leo Laporte
I look. It's. It's kind of sad that the most important thing I learned today on Windows Weekly was how to get free games on.
- [109:30]
Paul Thurrott
Well, they're Windows games.
- [109:32]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, good point.
- [109:33]
Paul Thurrott
That's the point. There are Windows games. They're free. You can't be free. Well, maybe you could be free. I don't know. They could pay you to play it, I guess. I don't know.
- [109:43]
Leo Laporte
So that is. That is.
- [109:46]
Paul Thurrott
I know. It's crazy. I. My son and I text back, I was like, I can't believe this. I know. It's like, just get it. Who cares? Like, it's crazy.
- [109:53]
Leo Laporte
So, of course, the snark in the discord. Harold Finch says Prime game redeems is hardly news unless you are Leo.
- [110:02]
Paul Thurrott
So it was news to me. I don't know.
- [110:05]
Leo Laporte
I'm sorry.
- [110:06]
Paul Thurrott
I'm not as connected to the whole Internet as everyone. I just, like, my point was, if you didn't know about this, you should know about this. It's pretty freaking good. So.
- [110:15]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's great.
- [110:16]
Paul Thurrott
It's crazy. Especially if you haven't looked at it yet. Like, when you go through the collection, you're gonna be like, oh, my God, you're gonna find like 10 of them.
- [110:21]
Leo Laporte
You know, I could play that game again.
- [110:23]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [110:24]
Leo Laporte
I loved BioShock.
- [110:26]
Paul Thurrott
I don't. I don't remember how I came across this. Maybe they finally sent an email, like, to customers or something. I don't remember. But I'm like, okay, I'll look at this. And it was like, yikes. Like, the first day I did it, I think I downloaded 12 or 15 games, you know, across multiple accounts. Whatever.
- [110:41]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [110:42]
Paul Thurrott
It's good. Yes. It's less crazy if you're not paying for Prime. Thank you. Anyway, I feel like I qualified it properly. Anyway. Okay. To bring it back, the only. Well, the other Xbox story is Microsoft announced through the Xbox Insider program, an AI powered support. Like a virtual support agent. I don't know, I just. I have. I. Everyone, PC makers are starting to do this. HP and that laptop I reviewed has, of course, they have their own AI companion, because obviously the future of computing is like chat interfaces. But I do feel like there is an AI function that could be pretty good for solving problems with whatever it is, maybe your console, a PC, whatever. I think that might not be so horrible, but it's not something I'm personally excited to test, so I don't really. Whatever. Anyway, you can test that if you want, or if you're an Xbox Insider. It's not very exciting if you don't have an Xbox. Yes, thank you. Sorry, I don't know. Okay. And then Nintendo also announced their Earnings. I put this back here because it's video game related. But the big thing to me is that they had to scale back their predictions for how many switches they're going to sell through the end of their fiscal year, which ends at the end of March, not too far back, just by 1 million units. And if they hit their target by whatever that is, six months from today, I guess the Switch will become their best selling hardware device of all time. Outselling ds. Yeah. Not surprising. Yeah, I mean this thing has done pretty well since then. I didn't link to it, I guess, but they've also said that whatever the next thing is, they will announce that before the end of the fiscal year. My guess is they don't want to announce it now because the holidays are coming up and that might screw up sales further and they do want to hit that target. Right. But probably in January, January 1st or something, they'll announce the next thing and it will be backwards compatible with Switch. So if you have this library software, it's going to work on the next one.
- [112:51]
Leo Laporte
I will almost certainly.
- [112:53]
Paul Thurrott
So it says Windows Weekly isn't very exciting if you don't have a PC. Fair enough. I mean I. Yes, I, I will now qualify everything I say that way. I think that's fine.
- [113:07]
Leo Laporte
It's true. It's true. Although I'm running. No, I should. You know what, that's not true. Because I'm running Windows. I'm.
- [113:12]
Paul Thurrott
The simplest way to say it is. If this topic is not of interest to you, this story will not be interesting to you. I think it's, you know. Yes, fair enough. It's like anything is intuitive if you already know how to do it.
- [113:25]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [113:26]
Paul Thurrott
You know, Fair enough. So we didn't write this one up either, but Sony has or the reviews have come out for the PlayStation 5 Pro and most of them are pretty meh in the sense that it's not a dramatic improvement in quality.
- [113:40]
Leo Laporte
And it's expensive.
- [113:41]
Paul Thurrott
Right. And it's super expensive. 700 bucks. You pay extra for the drive if you want or.
- [113:46]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's 700 bucks without a drive.
- [113:48]
Paul Thurrott
Without a drive. Although you know what, to be clear, they mean an optical drive. I don't.
- [113:53]
Leo Laporte
Oh yes, you have storage.
- [113:54]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I'm at the point where not having an opt drive is actually designed.
- [113:57]
Leo Laporte
I don't need an Apple drive.
- [113:59]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, no, no, no. But yeah, it's very expensive.
- [114:01]
Leo Laporte
Games stop anymore.
- [114:02]
Paul Thurrott
Instead of the size of like a. A truck, it's the size of a car. You know, it's still pretty big. It's a weird shape, so it's hard to fit it into.
- [114:10]
Leo Laporte
Is it the same design?
- [114:11]
Paul Thurrott
It looks, yeah, same basic design.
- [114:14]
Leo Laporte
What's pro about it?
- [114:15]
Paul Thurrott
Bigger processor, it does more games consistently. 4K60. Basically it just does upscaling.
- [114:26]
Leo Laporte
I know you're reading the discord.
- [114:28]
Paul Thurrott
I'm getting distracted. Anyone for the three minutes I will play Call of Duty today? If you want to get in the game and teabag me, I completely. I'm not saying I live for it, but I would understand it. It's okay. At least these guys are doing the Pro thing. I mean, Microsoft is kind of treading water here. You know, we discussed possibly.
- [114:50]
Leo Laporte
I feel like these Pro releases or these secondary releases are really just trying to stretch out the lifespan of a console.
- [114:57]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, that's, that's 100% true. But for people who are fans of the platform and can afford it, I mean there are probably people who have upgraded straight through. Now this generation has been different. Sony and Microsoft. Microsoft released two different versions from a performance graphics capability perspective immediately at the same time, Sony released two versions, one with optical, one without at the same time. So now Sony has a better graphical version which is probably above everything we see on the Xbox side.
- [115:28]
Leo Laporte
So it has two terabytes. It has plenty of storage.
- [115:31]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, well, you need it because you get for all those graphics textures.
- [115:34]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [115:34]
Paul Thurrott
I mean you're going to be a lot of resources there. But yeah, I think, you know, it's expensive. It is interesting to me that Sony being expensive this generation hasn't hurt it. Back in the PS3 Xbox 360 days, it being expensive was a really big problem.
- [115:49]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [115:50]
Paul Thurrott
That I guess hasn't been the case.
- [115:52]
Leo Laporte
Although it was 100 bucks more.
- [115:54]
Paul Thurrott
I mean, then again, they're on track to have the speed love worst selling PlayStation of all time. So maybe I'm wrong to be. Maybe they're not doing the right thing. I don't know. But yeah, they are.
- [116:06]
Leo Laporte
I'm curious. So my. Our son is. Michael's a PS5 guy.
- [116:11]
Paul Thurrott
Do you make him sleep like in a separate building in the yard?
- [116:14]
Leo Laporte
He's literally sitting in a separate building. But. Okay, good. I'm curious to see if he's going to be spending his own money at this point. If he's going to spend.
- [116:26]
Paul Thurrott
I mean, what happens? Like what could be next? Right. We know Nintendo is overdue for a refresh, a new console, I mean Xbox.
- [116:36]
Leo Laporte
Sony, an OLED screen on the Switch. So I don't know what.
- [116:38]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, but they never did even like, you know, 4K do they even do? Is it 1080p? Yes.
- [116:44]
Leo Laporte
10Ap? Yeah. On an OLED screen, which is fine. On a screen that size, it's this big.
- [116:50]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [116:53]
Leo Laporte
I don't know. You're right. I've asked this question years ago. Is it the end of the line for consoles, console gaming?
- [117:00]
Paul Thurrott
I mean, I mean, 8K, like actual 8K. I mean, my Sony was advertising that for a while.
- [117:06]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but what are you gonna play it on?
- [117:08]
Paul Thurrott
I don't know. Yeah, that's what I mean. I. I know it's not why, but it's one of the reasons why. Maybe Microsoft's approach to go multi screen makes some sense. Where do you go next?
- [117:20]
Leo Laporte
Jeff makes a really good point in our YouTube chat. He says, where are the games? Because if you don't have games that are like, I gotta get this, I gotta play this.
- [117:30]
Paul Thurrott
I mean, I think that the Goat Remastered thing kind of speaks to that.
- [117:36]
Leo Laporte
Or Turnip Boy, you know, turn it.
- [117:38]
Paul Thurrott
Boy, turn it boy robs the bank. It's beautiful. That's really funny.
- [117:44]
Leo Laporte
All right, let's take a break. We have the Back of the Book still to come. Paul Thurat will be doing his tips, his picks, and the usual. We are still going to do a run as Radio and I have a brown liquor movie pick.
- [117:58]
Paul Thurrott
That's crazy.
- [117:59]
Leo Laporte
Coming up.
- [118:00]
Paul Thurrott
It is a documentary or like a movie movie?
- [118:03]
Leo Laporte
No, it's a fictional. It's like one of the great films of all time, but it's pretty old, so I don't know if anybody.
- [118:10]
Paul Thurrott
A new movie about guys who decide that it's a. I think it's like Danish. Maybe that Mads guy that was in.
- [118:17]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, I like Mads.
- [118:18]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, he looked this up. Because I'll look it up. There's a. There's a fairly recent movie where like, this group of friends, like, they're like, we're just gonna be drunk all day long and go about our lives. And like, this is supposed to be like a better approach.
- [118:29]
Leo Laporte
Another round. Another round.
- [118:31]
Paul Thurrott
I've not seen it, but it's.
- [118:32]
Leo Laporte
It sounds awful about a bunch of guys day drinking. I mean, I did see Hangover, but that was more about you.
- [118:40]
Paul Thurrott
Like this kind of movie. You might like this movie. That's all I'm saying.
- [118:44]
Leo Laporte
And I believe Hangover involved roofies, but I might be wrong on that.
- [118:48]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [118:49]
Leo Laporte
Well, it did come out in 2020, so. Yeah, times have changed. Yeah. In those days, because Covid sitting around the house getting drunk all day seemed pretty good.
- [118:59]
Paul Thurrott
Seemed like maybe it was A solution to a problem. Not a problem. Looking in search of a solution. Yeah.
- [119:05]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, this program today, this here program, this Windows Weekly episode brought to you by Threat Locker. Love these guys and I love the concept you've heard us talk about zero Trust. This is a brilliant way of doing security. I think it was first I first heard about it, Google was doing it. Idea being, yeah, you have great perimeter defenses. But you know what keeps me up at night? The idea that somebody might get inside and then they've got full power, full trust. Right. If zero day exploits and supply chain attacks are worrying you, worry no more. You can harden your security with Threat Locker. Worldwide, companies like JetBlue Trust Threat Locker to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high, if you will. So this is what's so cool about it. Imagine taking a proactive and this is the key deny by default, deny by default approach to cybersecurity. That means every action, every process, every end user is blocked unless authorized by your team. Even if you're inside the network, you can't do anything without authorization. But Threat Locker makes it easy to do this and in addition provides a full audit of every action. So you've got risk management and compliance handled. You know exactly. You know you've got a paper trail. Their 247 US based support team will make this all simple. I promise. They fully support onboarding and beyond. If you have any questions. Stop the exploitation of trusted apps within your organization. Keep your business secure and protected from ransomware. I mean the uses of this are infinite. And you'll love Threat Lockers ring fencing. Organizations across any industry can benefit from Threat Lockers ring fencing. It limits attackers lateral movement within the network. They can be inside, but they can't just. They can't do anything. Threat Lockers ring fencing works so well, it was able to foil a number of attacks that were not stopped by traditional EDR. And the best example, the SolarWinds Orion attack stopped cold by ring fencing. Threat Locker works for Max too. So your network is safe. Get and and there are many tiers and it's very affordable. Get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily and cost effectively. Threat lockers 0 trust endpoint protection platform offers a unified approach to protecting users, devices and networks against the exploitation of zero day vulnerabilities. Just check out the reviews. People love Threat Locker and I'm not surprised. Get a free 30 day trial. Find out more how Threat Locker can help mitigate unknown threats before they bite. Threat Locker is truly amazing. I I can't recommend it more highly. For more information about Threat Locker, it's very simple. Go to the website Threat Locker. Learn how Threat Locker can mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance. The paper trail is great. Threat locker.com thank you, threat Locker, for your support for Windows Weekly and Paul Thurat, who is now going to deliver his tip of the week.
- [122:37]
Paul Thurrott
Yes. And it's not. It's not about throwing security to the wind, although it's going to sound like that for a second. Oh. Oh. My wife and I got some feedback on our YouTube channel, which is about Mexico City. And I'm gonna. I'm paraphrasing. I don't remember exactly how he said it, but he said, I appreciate you promoting intestinal problems, but. Or something like that. Like, I. I don't. What. What are we doing?
- [123:08]
Leo Laporte
Is this your Eternal Spring channel?
- [123:10]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Like, in other words, like, we were like, you know, street food is safe to eat. And he's like, oh, yeah, if you want to get sick, it's safety. It's like, have you ever had street food? No.
- [123:17]
Leo Laporte
The street food. Are you kidding?
- [123:19]
Paul Thurrott
Perfectly safe.
- [123:20]
Leo Laporte
Oh, my God, it's so good.
- [123:22]
Paul Thurrott
I know. If you live in the United States, you get sicker eating at McDonald's. Just say, just, you know, I.
- [123:29]
Leo Laporte
The street food in Mexico. Mexico. I don't know what Mexico City is.
- [123:32]
Paul Thurrott
Like, but it's unbelievable.
- [123:34]
Leo Laporte
It's got to be amazing. Yeah.
- [123:36]
Paul Thurrott
And it's so inexpensive. I struggle with the ever, you know, the exchange rate thing a lot and. Because the number is really big and then you do the math, you're like, no, that can't be that small. And it is. It's stupid.
- [123:48]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's why I like the 20 to 1, because then it's a nickel. A peso is a nickel.
- [123:51]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [123:52]
Leo Laporte
It's easy to remember when it goes to 17 cents.
- [123:55]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [123:56]
Leo Laporte
I don't know. I can't do the math.
- [123:59]
Paul Thurrott
So look, I. In my role, you know. Right. The Windows 11 field guide, for example, you know, I'm trying to give advice to people who by and large are normal users. They're not highly technical. And the. One of the things I've been talking about, probably since it's been a thing, which I guess, I don't know, Windows 8, certainly Windows 10 on has been, you know, most people are better off signing into Windows with their Microsoft account and you get some pushback from that. But if you're technical enough to push back on that, then you don't listen to that kind of advice. Don't worry about it. In recent years, of course, they've been making it harder and harder not to do that. Right. They've gotten rid of the UI that lets you sign into a local account. They've made it hard. Right. And there's little strategies and workarounds for that kind of thing. But there was this note with. I started with Windows 1124H2 that I didn't understand because to my knowledge, this was already happening, which was that when you install Windows 24H2 or if you get a new PC with 24H2, the disk is automatically encrypted, right?
- [125:09]
Leo Laporte
As it should be.
- [125:11]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, but it already is. Like, I didn't understand. Where did. Where does that come from? Right. What's the point of that? And the point is that if you get a new PC or you reset a PC and setup comes up and it says sign into your Microsoft account and you do. Once you do that, it encrypts the disk. And it does that because it can store the Recovery key in OneDrive so you can get to it from a different device. That's the thing that's missing when you encrypt. You must acquit. No, when you encrypt the disk, you have to have a way to recover it. Right. If something goes wrong. And I was curious, like, what does that look like? And so I did a couple of. Well, you know, for the book, I updated for 24H2 anyway, so I had to see which workaround still works. So you do a clean install of Windows. So you get a new computer, you want to bypass the block and settings that prevents you from using a local account. Does it encrypt the disk? Like, how could it. It can't back up that recovery key. How does it do it? So it turns out it sort of encrypts the disk, but it doesn't fully encrypt the disk until you let it save a recovery key. So you actually have to go into Settings and say, I'd like to activate the encryption, if you will, is the term. And then it says, okay, but now you have to save this recovery key. And you can't save it to the disk, right? Because it could be. It's on the disk that you might not be able to get into later. So you have to save it to a file and put it off site, email it, you know, whatever, just get it off the disk. And that is a little bit of a change. But that made me wonder. That's kind of interesting. So it means. So does that mean that one of the main reasons to use a Microsoft account doesn't apply anymore. And if you don't care about all the pass through stuff I talked about earlier with passkeys and everything, if you don't care that your Microsoft account will automatically pass through the Microsoft Store app or to the Outlook app or to OneDrive or whatever it might be, is there a way to do this as securely, or at least securely enough, if you will, where you don't have to use a Microsoft account? And if you did that, could you configure Windows in such a way that a lot of that certification stuff I'm so concerned about would not happen? In other words, it wouldn't badge you to enable Folder backup in OneDrive or whatever. And so I did a bunch of different tests to do this and mostly successful local account sign ins perpetual version of Office Instead of Microsoft 365 subscription or the Microsoft 365 subscription sign into just the apps you're going to use. So you still get. It's not passthrough, but you still. Well, it is password. You still associate. The account is still registered in the system, but it's not the sign in account. You apply a strong password, you use a PIN and then you add Windows, hello, facial or fingerprint recognition.
- [127:53]
Leo Laporte
You know, now you're secure.
- [127:55]
Paul Thurrott
Absolutely, you're secure. I mean technically not. You don't have every single security protection that you have with a Microsoft account. For example, you can't.
- [128:03]
Leo Laporte
Your biggest lack is you can't forget your password.
- [128:07]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [128:07]
Leo Laporte
They're not right.
- [128:07]
Paul Thurrott
There's no two fa, there's no account recovery.
- [128:09]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [128:10]
Paul Thurrott
That's what you're saying, that's the biggest loss, that's the big one. But if you're a technical user, and I'm guessing if you're listening to this, unless you somehow really ended up in the wrong place and you were expecting Martha Stewart or something, you probably are.
- [128:22]
Leo Laporte
Martha Stewart on Windows is a hell.
- [128:24]
Paul Thurrott
Of a good, you know, she's a Mac user. You can tell. I think it's. There's something interesting here. So I'm going to keep going down this path. Mostly not because of the security element. That's the thing. I didn't want to highlight too much because you can secure that account, that you can encrypt the disk, you can do all the right things. The thing for me is how far do you go into the Microsoft MSA hole before it starts nagging you? So I've done two physical computer installs slightly Differently. One with Perpetual Office license, one with Microsoft365. So far. Not that this is scientific, but neither one of them has badgered me, even though I'm using OneDrive in both. So I.
- [129:11]
Leo Laporte
Like, that's the concern.
- [129:12]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [129:12]
Leo Laporte
Is that something Microsoft's gonna get you because you didn't use a Microsoft account?
- [129:16]
Paul Thurrott
Well, they're gonna just start being them again. You know, they're gonna start ruining it. You know, just be. You know. And so, so far, it's kind of. This is interesting to me, and this raises the specter of I. I speak to a mainstream audience as well, especially in the book. Can I recommend this to people? If that.
- [129:35]
Leo Laporte
That's the question.
- [129:35]
Paul Thurrott
Certification stuff is a problem. Yeah, I don't know, but maybe.
- [129:41]
Leo Laporte
Maybe that's the question.
- [129:43]
Paul Thurrott
Yep. Anyway, if anyone is doing this.
- [129:47]
Leo Laporte
Are you doing it? Do you do it? I mean, you've done a couple, but.
- [129:50]
Paul Thurrott
Well, I just started doing it, so I don't normally know. I always sign up with a Microsoft account. So honestly, the experience isn't that different. It's just that I don't get passion to use folder backup. So I kind of like that from Office or Windows. Right. There's two parts to the badgering. Right. If you use Microsoft Word that you get through Microsoft 365, you're in Windows 11. You're not using folder backup. Actually, it doesn't matter if you are or not. If your default save is to an outside of OneDrive location, it will badge you every single time you use the app with a yellow bar across the top. It's really irritating. But the version I get with perpetual Office or 2024 or my Microsoft 365 account, but I've signed in with a Microsoft. Sorry, a local account. It doesn't badger me. I'm fascinated by this.
- [130:39]
Leo Laporte
Well, now I have to buy a Windows PC so I can try this.
- [130:43]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, just. Yeah, hold on to that. Copilot plus PC, hack into it. So you don't have a.
- [130:48]
Leo Laporte
No, no. The Snapdragon dev kit. You should have that. Unless you don't want it.
- [130:55]
Paul Thurrott
No, no, I do want. I definitely. I will literally use it every day. But I. You could do this on any computer. I mean, you could do this.
- [131:03]
Leo Laporte
Maybe I'll get the. The hp.
- [131:05]
Paul Thurrott
The. Oh, the. Yeah, it's a. Yeah, it's.
- [131:08]
Leo Laporte
Is it. Is it the Omen?
- [131:10]
Paul Thurrott
No, it's the Omnibook.
- [131:11]
Leo Laporte
Omnibook, yeah. Okay.
- [131:13]
Paul Thurrott
There's a couple of configurations. The upgrade to the best processor, best graphics is possibly $30. I mean, it's not expensive. It's worth getting.
- [131:23]
Leo Laporte
Sounds like it's worth it.
- [131:24]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [131:24]
Leo Laporte
So the Omnibook is kind of their consumer, isn't it?
- [131:27]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. The way they rebranded their product lines this year. So anything was the old Pavilion is consumer. Elite is business Book is laptop. Right. Ultra is the top of the line from the model perspective. So it's like Ultra X and then I think.
- [131:41]
Leo Laporte
And they have gaming with the Omen.
- [131:43]
Paul Thurrott
Well, yeah, that's outside of.
- [131:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [131:44]
Paul Thurrott
Of that. But yeah. Yeah, gaming is outside.
- [131:47]
Leo Laporte
So which one did you like? The.
- [131:48]
Paul Thurrott
It's called Omnibook Ultra.
- [131:51]
Leo Laporte
Ultra. Not X. Because that's Snapdragon. There it is, the Ultra. Okay.
- [131:58]
Paul Thurrott
This is the AMD Ryzen 9AI.
- [132:01]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. 999.
- [132:04]
Paul Thurrott
Yep.
- [132:04]
Leo Laporte
But then I can upgrade.
- [132:06]
Paul Thurrott
Like, you can configure it.
- [132:08]
Leo Laporte
Should I get pro? Oh, we're getting to this. We're getting into Paul tells Leo what buttons to click. Realm. Maybe I'll stop now.
- [132:16]
Paul Thurrott
I wouldn't. My advice is not to get it through hp.
- [132:20]
Leo Laporte
There are cheap ways to get it at Best Buy or.
- [132:22]
Paul Thurrott
No, I mean just online. Like there are places that sell keys, basically.
- [132:25]
Leo Laporte
Okay. Because the price is better.
- [132:30]
Paul Thurrott
Way better. Yeah.
- [132:31]
Leo Laporte
Oh, okay. That's good. I'm not gonna get it. I just. I'm messing with you. I'm not gonna.
- [132:41]
Paul Thurrott
Not to do that. But it's. I. All I can promise you is it's something I'm gonna spend a lot of time on now. And I think it's as I do new PCs over. I'm gonna do this and see if it's not hard.
- [132:52]
Leo Laporte
You used to have to jump through hoops to do this. Is that not the case anymore?
- [132:55]
Paul Thurrott
No, you still have to jump to. You still have to jump through hoops to configure it out of the box with a local account. But it's. You can do it right from setup.
- [133:02]
Leo Laporte
By turning off Internet or whatever.
- [133:04]
Paul Thurrott
I mean. Yeah, it's in my book. Leo, if you would. No, it's. No, but it is in the book. But there used to be several ways to do it. One of the easiest ways is to make the install. Well, you wouldn't do this on a new computer. So on a new computer, there's a. Yeah. There's a keyboard thing and you go back and you know there's no Internet and you just do that. If you are. Have your own computer and you want to reset it and you don't care about getting the stuff that the computer comes with, you can use Rufus. We'll work around that create install media that doesn't.
- [133:36]
Leo Laporte
So there's install media that doesn't require.
- [133:38]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, it turns off the switches and setup so that you can do whatever you want. Yeah. It bypasses all the hardware.
- [133:44]
Leo Laporte
Oh, Rufus does that. Yeah, I remember that. They still do that. Okay, good. Okay. Yeah, I think that's fine. Look, I think that's how people should do it.
- [133:52]
Paul Thurrott
But it's. I know, but it's a hard thing to say to a normal person. Like, all right, so you got to do a little bit of a. It's going to seem hacky. It's a little weird. It's. You know, but you can do it. You know, it works. And Microsoft has cut back on the methods that work. But there's that. People have done the command line thing. It's that, oh, UBI bypass. NRO still works. You know, you just have to make sure you don't connect to the Internet over Ethernet or whatever it might be, and then you can get through.
- [134:24]
Leo Laporte
So this is Hands On Windows for this week, so everybody should watch this week's Hands On Windows.
- [134:28]
Paul Thurrott
I think I did it.
- [134:30]
Leo Laporte
It is.
- [134:31]
Paul Thurrott
I think I did do one. Oh, you're saying it literally came out this week. Oh, that's fascinating. Okay.
- [134:35]
Leo Laporte
Because you do them ahead of time.
- [134:36]
Paul Thurrott
Right? Okay.
- [134:37]
Leo Laporte
So it's this week's Hands on Windows.
- [134:38]
Paul Thurrott
I thought you were saying you should do it for this week. Okay. Right.
- [134:40]
Leo Laporte
It's on the Twit plus feed or you go to Twitter tv. Is it Twitter TV how I think it is. It's also in your book, which you can get from leanpub.com the Field Guide to Windows 11. Is there an article on thorat.com?
- [134:54]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. Yeah. It's a premium article. So if you're a premium member, you get all the content from the book for, you know, as part of the subscription. So it's in there.
- [135:02]
Leo Laporte
Oh, really? I don't even need the book if I have the premium.
- [135:04]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, if you want, there's just the web versions. Every time I update it, I update the web version, too. So they're always together.
- [135:10]
Leo Laporte
I've been a premium member since you started it.
- [135:12]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. I used to have a list, you know, so now it's just like, all right, just do this. There's this one thing that always works. It's fine.
- [135:19]
Leo Laporte
I certainly. I feel comfortable doing that.
- [135:22]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I understand you're worried.
- [135:24]
Leo Laporte
That's the point.
- [135:24]
Paul Thurrott
I'm not going to tell my wife to do this. Here's an idea. Log in with a local account. You know, she doesn't care, you know.
- [135:31]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's the thing. If somebody knows that there is such a thing or yeah, wants to do it, then they're. Then it's appropriate for them.
- [135:37]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [135:38]
Leo Laporte
I would say. And if they don't know and don't care, then don't. Just let them.
- [135:42]
Paul Thurrott
Let things accept the warm embrace of the matrix. You'll be fine.
- [135:47]
Leo Laporte
Let's talk about your app pick of the week. Thur.
- [135:50]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, so I mentioned Proton VPN earlier in the show. There's also been an update to Proton Drive. They have a Docs solution that's like Google Docs. Right. And now they have everything. Now they're expanding. It's nice. Their Docs app now supports a track changes feature that they call suggestions, which is our suggesting, I think. But it's the way they bill it is. We're the only end to end encrypted cloud service that offers track changes. Right. Works inside and outside of your organization or if you're an individual, works with people external to your account. So, you know, it works. You know, it just works the way you would expect. They're just kind of building it out. So this is not something I actually use yet. Like I said, I'm kind of baby stepping into this. But. But I am kind of curious about this because I really. I like Proton a lot. I think that's obvious. I kind of mentioned them a lot. But I like their whole approach to things and it's hard to argue with what they're trying to do. So it's something to know about. I don't think many people know that Docs even exists.
- [136:58]
Leo Laporte
You know, it's so funny because I have a Proton Everything account and I just don't ever use it. I mean I had it, I got it so I could try it. Like you like try it, look at it. And I just never use it. But now I'm thinking I should really take advantage of it. I'm paying for it. Let's. I know Richard's not here, but I think if Richard were here, he would certainly mention that the fact that the next run as radio show features Aiden Finn talking about friends, by the way. Yep. Does he work for Microsoft? He does Microsoft training.
- [137:34]
Paul Thurrott
No, he's outside of Microsoft. But he's supporting Microsoft customers. Yeah.
- [137:38]
Leo Laporte
Software defined networking. How does that work in Azure? That's kind of interesting.
- [137:43]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, that's usually run as radio. They did one about Blazor, which is that Net web tech in NET nine also worth listening to.
- [137:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Richard has two shows runners Radio and net rocks with the Carl Franklin. And they're both well worth listening to as always. And I know Richard be talking about Aiden Finn and this episode.
- [138:09]
Paul Thurrott
Look at that. Because that looks suspiciously like someone I know there.
- [138:13]
Leo Laporte
It's hard to tell.
- [138:14]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, it's kind of a blob. Yeah.
- [138:19]
Leo Laporte
Now Richard's not here to do a whiskey thing. I'm sad to report he's in Tunisia. I'm hoping he'll be back next week and maybe he'll do two whiskey. You know, I. I don't know if there is any such thing as Tunisian whiskey.
- [138:35]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. But I am going more of a hookah thing probably.
- [138:40]
Leo Laporte
I'm going to recommend a movie about whiskey. Is that okay?
- [138:43]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [138:43]
Leo Laporte
When I was a kid, my aunt brought me to a screening of a movie from Ealing Studios, zo British studio called Tight Little Island. And the fun thing about Tight Little island is it's a true story about a U.S. cargo ship filled with whiskey that ran aground off this Scottish island. But what's funny is the island had run out of whiskey and the ship was full. Would it be so terrible if the people here of whiskey.
- [139:23]
Paul Thurrott
Right.
- [139:23]
Leo Laporte
This is a very funny movie. The original title was Tight Little Island. They've renamed it Whiskey Galore. It is available on Apple tv.
- [139:33]
Paul Thurrott
I've never heard of this.
- [139:34]
Leo Laporte
It is a hysterical, fun, great movie. Especially the scramble to get all the whiskey off the rocks. Whiskey galore. Tight little islands. It's a very old movie. I think it comes from 1940. It says 40. No, I'm sorry. Oh, it's not that old. 1949. It looks like it comes from 1930, but I guess it looks.
- [139:58]
Paul Thurrott
This looks like King Kong era.
- [140:00]
Leo Laporte
It does, doesn't it? 1949. I remember my aunt taking me to this because it was one of her favorite movies and it was one of those kind of weird midnight screenings or something. It was not in even a movie theater.
- [140:14]
Paul Thurrott
See, this is more. This is more appropriate for a child. How old were you?
- [140:20]
Leo Laporte
I was maybe 12.
- [140:21]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah. My father took me to see Excalibur and I was scarred for life. It's like my mother didn't want to go to these like scary R rated movies and stuff. Yeah. So he would take me.
- [140:31]
Leo Laporte
This was just fun. This is a movie kids could enjoy, but adults maybe get a little more out of it. Understanding what it would be like to be on a little island with no whiskey. And then. And it's a true story too. A freighter runs up on the ground with 50,000 cases of whiskey.
- [140:49]
Paul Thurrott
Were they Bringing it to the island to save them.
- [140:51]
Leo Laporte
No, I think it was just, it.
- [140:54]
Paul Thurrott
Just happened to be going by.
- [140:55]
Leo Laporte
Just happened to be going by.
- [140:57]
Paul Thurrott
I think there's more to the story. I think someone got underneath it and was like popped a hole in it or whatever.
- [141:03]
Leo Laporte
Could be. It's. Yeah, I think if you look it up on Wikipedia there is quite a bit of lore around it and it is apparently a true story. So. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder what, what really happened. It's on Wikipedia as Whiskey, Whiskey Galore. So maybe that's the original title. But I, I remember seeing it as Tight Little Island.
- [141:27]
Paul Thurrott
I don't even recognize the well, Bruce. No, I don't recognize these companies actors either.
- [141:32]
Leo Laporte
No, you might recognize Ealing Studios. That was a English movie studio that did a lot of Alec Guinness movies and some, some fun movies. The story is based on the running around of the SS politician off, off an island. The, the island has run out of whiskey because of wartime rationing. It. The weather was so poor over production that its 10 week schedule ran over by five weeks. It's a Scottish movie and I'm Scott and maybe that's why my aunt brought me. I don't know but I will. It's a wonderful. Yeah, the man in the white suit from Ealing. Lavender Hill. Mauve. That's right. Kevin Brewer knows all of these movies. The original title was Tight Little Island.
- [142:18]
Paul Thurrott
I think there's a version they could make of, you know, like during the pandemic, Pennsylvania was the only state in the United States that decided to shut all the liquor stores down. Oh, and you know, maybe like a plane with whiskey flying overhead could have crashed in the Lehigh Valley.
- [142:33]
Leo Laporte
Apparently there was a remake of it. Now I'm seeing on IMDb there was a remake. Don't get the 2016 version. 1949, Ealing.
- [142:41]
Paul Thurrott
What's that one rated though? The one you recommended was 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
- [142:46]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's a classic. Yeah, it's a classic and I don't think many people have heard of it. Yes, that got remade as Whiskey Galore, but don't know, I don't. Well, you know what, See the original first, I guess is all I'm saying. The 2016 movie. I don't know that is it actually it doesn't have very good ratings on imtb.
- [143:06]
Paul Thurrott
No one doesn't.
- [143:07]
Leo Laporte
No, get the old one. That's the classic and maybe you'll start getting into Ealing Studios movies which are all amazing, amazing movies. Ladies and gentlemen, despite the lack of a Richard Campbell and whiskey. We've survived the length of this show. The Brett's and the girths with.
- [143:31]
Paul Thurrott
I always think of. Do you remember Douglas Adams, obviously the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy. Like a lot of people that writers or comedians or actors, whatever, really into technology. He had a, at the end of his life, had a blog he would like blog about technology. And I remember after he passed away, the guy who was like his personal assistant blog for a little while on his account. And he talked about at the time it was Mac OS X Tiger. And he said he would have got Tiger. He would have really enjoyed Tiger. I feel bad that he wasn't around to see this. And that's kind of how I feel about Richard not being here. It's like Richard would have added some stuff, you know, like Richard would have enjoyed this conversation, you know, like he. Richard would have got this. You know, it's a shame. It kind of reminds me of.
- [144:24]
Leo Laporte
He's still with us. He's just in Tunisia and he will be back next week. We do the show every Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900 UTC. You can watch us live on eight different streams. Club members get to watch in Discord, which isn't necessarily a benefit.
- [144:42]
Paul Thurrott
Can you do them all at the same time?
- [144:44]
Leo Laporte
You could have them all on. They'd all be at somewhere different on the show. It'd be like being in a clock shop at midnight. It'll be kind of cuckoo, but who knows? I don't know. Has anybody ever done that? So you'd have to tune in Discord, be a club member first. $7 a month ad. Free versions of all the shows. Please join Discord, YouTube.com twitch live, Twitch TV twit. We're also on X.com as long as Elon doesn't kick us off for being Democrats.
- [145:19]
Paul Thurrott
I'm a registered independent, thank you very much. Oh, good.
- [145:21]
Leo Laporte
I'm glad to hear it. See Elon, he could stay. We're also on LinkedIn, Facebook, Kik and TikTok. So we're really everywhere.
- [145:36]
Paul Thurrott
For the kids.
- [145:37]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, for the kids. 880 people watching us right now.
- [145:41]
Paul Thurrott
I think we should be dumping our like water buckets on our heads or something. I can't. I haven't figured out TikTok yet but.
- [145:46]
Leo Laporte
I think it's something challenges a few years ago. Paul. But if you want to do the Harlem shuffle, it's okay. You get up on your desk, dance around. We'll find something for you to do on TikTok. Anyway, if you don't want to watch those streams, you can get the show on the website Twit tv. Ww. Paul also carries the audio version on his side. Or do you put video on your site?
- [146:06]
Paul Thurrott
I don't put. I just link to it. I link to the.
- [146:08]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, okay.
- [146:09]
Paul Thurrott
I don't, I don't like host it or anything.
- [146:11]
Leo Laporte
No, you shouldn't. Because we do. That's our job. Yeah, that's what we do.
- [146:15]
Paul Thurrott
Want people to know it's there.
- [146:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Audio and video available on the website. There's a link on that website to our YouTube channel, which is a great way to share little pieces of it. Like if your aunt doesn't know that Amazon prime has games or that you.
- [146:33]
Paul Thurrott
Could sign into Windows with a local account, this would be the ideal way to tell her about that.
- [146:37]
Leo Laporte
Just clip that and send it off. Or maybe she'll be like, who is this?
- [146:42]
Paul Thurrott
Who sent me this?
- [146:44]
Leo Laporte
Why is this here? There's also a RSS feed so can subscribe in your favorite podcast client, audio or video. Either way, please watch every week because we love having you. If you're not a club member, support the show by joining 7 bucks a month ad free versions of all the, all the shows. You also get access to a Twit plus feed which has special stuff we only do, you know, at special times. For instance, we just did last week Chris Marquardt photo review. We did a coffee thing. I think you'd enjoy this. I know you're a coffee lover, Paul. We have a kind of an occasional coffee show we do with Mark Prince, the coffee geek. We're going to the next one we're going to do and I'll give you, I'll let you know when we do it is a tasting. So we had, last time we had the woman who runs Beans, which is a subscription coffee bean service and she's going to put together with a Z.
- [147:39]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, yeah, I think I've heard of this.
- [147:41]
Leo Laporte
She's going to put together a little like five bean set that everybody can get.
- [147:48]
Paul Thurrott
A five bean tasting.
- [147:49]
Leo Laporte
Five bean tasting, five varietals and we'll do a little tasting. That should be a lot of fun. We'll let you know about that. The Stacy's Book Club. There's all sorts of good events going on inside the club. I'm thinking about bringing back a little call in radio thing because I got this.
- [148:05]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I'm actually surprised you don't do that.
- [148:07]
Leo Laporte
But I've, you know, it's a technology thing.
- [148:10]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
- [148:10]
Leo Laporte
But I Found I think something called Call in Studio and I even have a number and it's just a matter of getting all the details worked out but it would allow us to take phone calls and then I might start doing a little yeah kind of tech guy like show. I really enjoyed doing that. I miss doing that. Anyway, lots of reasons to be in the club. For all of that and more, go to Twit TV Club Twit or scan the QR code in the upper left hand corner of your screen. Paul Therott lives@the rot.com that is become a premium member and then you get the book and all sorts of additional content including how to sign up for an msa, a Microsoft Windows account. Without msa I'm still.
- [148:52]
Paul Thurrott
It's. It's like it feels weird.
- [148:55]
Leo Laporte
I'm still working through this is what people want. They want freedom. Do it. It's your chance to show them the way. You can also get his books@leanpub.com Richard Campbell when he's here is also on.
- [149:13]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, when he bothers to show up.
- [149:16]
Leo Laporte
He bothers to show up. I hope he's having a good time in Tunisia. I don't know what, I don't know what happened to Tunisia.
- [149:24]
Paul Thurrott
Everything I know about Tunisia I wrote in a seventh grade paper.
- [149:29]
Leo Laporte
Well, you know, it's not much.
- [149:30]
Paul Thurrott
And then. And then had to retain. Since then. I know where it is geographically.
- [149:36]
Leo Laporte
It's in Africa. Right. It's in north.
- [149:38]
Paul Thurrott
Right in the northern coast, like mid. Like basic middle of.
- [149:42]
Leo Laporte
I've been to Morocco. Right next door.
- [149:44]
Paul Thurrott
Yeah, that's close.
- [149:47]
Leo Laporte
The greater metropolitan area of Tunis. Tunis is often referred to as Grand Tunis. There you go.
- [149:54]
Paul Thurrott
Okay. That's not going to start referring to.
- [149:57]
Leo Laporte
They don't want you to call it greater. That's all I can say. It's in the Maghreb. Anyway, I hope he's having a good time. I'm sure he is. Yeah. And he will be back. Maybe he's traversing the Grand Avenue Habib Bourguiba which is often referred to as the Tunisian Champs Elysees.
- [150:17]
Paul Thurrott
I wonder if we. I hope they refer to him as the Desert Fox.
- [150:20]
Leo Laporte
Actually I'm very interested because he. Wasn't he going to go to Carthage? Visit Carthage.
- [150:24]
Paul Thurrott
Yep.
- [150:25]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's right. That will be interesting.
- [150:27]
Paul Thurrott
Older than my Desert Fox reference, but yes, yes, that is there.
- [150:32]
Leo Laporte
Hey, we cover all the ages. Thank you, Mr. Paul Thurat. So good to have you. Appreciate your time today and we will see you next week right here, all of you winners and dozers on Windows Weekly. Bye bye.
- [150:57]
Paul Thurrott
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Leo Laporte
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Paul Thurrott
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Leo Laporte
All on America's largest 5G network.
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Paul Thurrott
Visit t mobile.com carrier free freedom to.
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Leo Laporte
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Paul Thurrott
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Leo Laporte
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Paul Thurrott
Monthly bill credits plus tax.
- [151:18]
Leo Laporte
Qualifying port and trade in service on go 5G next and credit required. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and.
- [151:24]
Paul Thurrott
Balance and required finance agreement is due.