Ask Paul: January 11 (Premium)

Welcome to the latest edition of Ask Paul. This week, I look at a problematic forum post and revisit a previous question too.

So before getting to this week’s questions, I will address those other two other topics first.

About that forum post

As you may have seen, a reader announced that he was canceling his Thurrott Premium subscription because the third of the three recent Microsoft giveaways—for Surface Go and Surface Headphones—is only available to those in the US and Canada. The reason you may have seen this is that he created a forum thread so others could pile on and add to his complaint.

That several readers defended me instead was appreciated. But I decided to delete the forum thread for a number of reasons, including an unwarranted personal attack. I did explain why the Microsoft hardware giveways had to be US (and Canada) only on First Ring Daily on yesterday’s episode of First Ring Daily. So I’ll summarize here.

First of all, both Mary Jo and Leo quickly wiped their hands of this kind giveaway when Chris offered it privately, leaving me as the only option. I did this knowing that it would be a lot of work, especially when it came to the hardware. I will have to box up, label, and bring the devices to the Post Office, etc. And then I will be on the front line for support when they don’t arrive, arrive late, or arrive damaged.

But it’s worse than that. Shipping hardware internationally is expensive and unreliable. Having done this multiple times, I have many stories about devices that never show up, and just get lost out in the world. Most recently, the car key that we sent to Sweden in July for our annual home swap never arrived, despite being mailed weeks early (we got it back in October or November). And when Google sent Mehedi review hardware (to London), it got held up in customs and I had to pay a fee of about £150 so Mehedi could even get them.

Also, this was a Windows Weekly giveaway that has nothing to do with Thurrott Premium. And I communicated that it would be US-only (later adding Canada) right up front and repeated this each time I posted an update about the giveaways. My reminder on this past week’s Windows Weekly that the giveaways would be US and Canada only was just that, a reminder. Not a last minute “screw you.”

I receive no personal gain for doing this giveaway. In fact, I signed a document for Microsoft that explains I’m aware of the tax implications of this giveaway. And that can be substantial since the total value of the giveaways is about $6000.

Finally, I never engaged with work to even see if this was OK to do. I will be paying for shipping out of pocket, and will ask work to pay me back via expenses. But paying for international shipping would have been too much to ask.

So I was just trying to be nice, help Microsoft do something nice for viewers. And now it’s just a shit show. Which, granted, was easily predicted. I did it anyway. My reward for this, likewise, was easily predicted: A personal attacker from a paying reader. Good stuff.

Anyway. Sorry this happened. It’s unlikely I’ll do anything like this again anytime soon. This is why.

Follow-up on Skype minutes in Office 365

Last week, Darekmeridian asked whether Microsoft had removed the 60 minutes of Skype calling each month from its Office 365 Home and Personal subscriptions. I also couldn’t find the associated links on the Microsoft account website, so I said I’d ask Microsoft. Which I did.

I was told:

The free 60 Skype minutes offering for Office 365 Home has not changed. If helpful, here’s a support page that outlines how to activate the minutes.

Related, I was able to see that my monthly Skype credit from Office 365 is, in fact, associated with my account from the Skype portal. Here, it says that I have “World 60 mins mobiles and landlines – monthly subscription with Office 365” (and that I’ve used zero minutes this month).

Also, I should point out that AnOldAmigaUser offered this bit in this week’s Ask Paul forum post:

Regarding the issue with Skype minutes, I got the same email, and actually went through the support chat to resolve things. Apparently just another case of Skype not being under the big tent of Microsoft. If you check your Skype account, which I never do, it renews the Office 365 minutes monthly rather than annually as the Office subscription renews. Add a calendar year change and apparently emails get sent. Long story short, if you get that email, click the link and then just check your account in the upper right. Once the details display, you should see that the subscription is listed under your profile picture.

Short version: The Skype credits are still a perk of Office 365.

Learning more about new Office 365 apps and features

harmjr asks:

So Office 365 has so much stuff now baked into it now. Is there any education place (free or cheap) to start getting a feel for these new applications. I am starting to hear words like Dynamics, Power Bi, Flow and Power Apps being thrown around in my office. Well I am clueless how to start looking at them.

To be clear, the apps he mentions are part of the commercial versions of Office 365, not Office 365 Home or Personal.

I’m not really up-to-date on these things myself, sorry, as I cover personal technology, not Microsoft’s business offerings. I know that Tony Redmond’s Office 365 book is excellent and always up-to-date, but I believe it is for IT pros, not end users. Two readers did mention some free/inexpensive ways to evaluate these Office 365 versions (which the author of the original question did see).

Fitbit Charge 3 sync issues

cwfinn asks:

Before the holidays you mentioned that you were having issues with your Fitbit Charge 3. I gave one to my dearest for Christmas and after many fruitless hours with Fitbit “Tech Support”, returned it as it would not sync with a Windows 10 computer. Have you gotten yours to work/ If so how? If not, is the Charge 3 a broken product?

Since then, I’ve had problems on and off, but it seems to be working properly right now, and has for the past week or so. I can’t explain this. But there are times, such as when I mentioned it, where the device simply will not sync.

I have my eyes on a Garmin device that looks a lot like the Fitbit Alta. If this happens again and/or more frequently, I may jump ship. I also installed an app on my phone called FitToFit that lets you sync your Fitbit data to Google Fit to make it more portable. You know, just in case.

Windows 10 19H1

madthinus asks:

To date mostly minor issues and additions coming in 19h1. Is this because Microsoft is gearing Windows down to maintenance mode or is because they are working on some bigger things that is taking time to get to completion? My question is really, do you think they are working towards a vision or just plotting along, I don’t have a feel for what they are doing at the moment.

No one outside of Microsoft does. Windows 10 version 1809 was the last version of Windows 10 to have any Terry Myerson influence in it, but the next version, 19H1, is tracking very similarly based on what we’ve seen so far. I consider that a good thing and I see a lot of fit and finish work happening. But, yeah, they’ve been silent so far on their big plans, if any, for the short- or long term. And I’m wondering when or if that will change.

Secretly, I kind of wish it would just continue like this.

One little tidbit: Someone this week found a reference to Windows 10 version 1903 in an Insider build, suggesting they’re not changing the naming scheme of the shipping product.

Keto

madthinus asks:

How is January Keto going?

Great: What I’ve found, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that going full-on ketogenic—which basically means 20 net grams of carbs per day or less with most calories coming from fat—is actually not too far off from my normal diet, which is really “low-carb,” albeit very low carb compared to most people, I bet; maybe 20-40 net grams of carbs per day. The issue, as always, is variety. Well, that and getting enough fat.

For those who hadn’t heard, I’ve been making some steady changes to my health/fitness regimens recently in order to jump-start weight loss—my weight held steady for virtually all of the second half of 2018—and to become more fit. (I hadn’t worked out since basketball ended in May 2017, so about a year and a half.) The keto bit is temporary, and a test: I plan to stay on keto for the month of January and see what happens. If successful, I may repeat this on some schedule, like one month a quarter. I’m also doing intermittent fasting where I don’t eat between 8 pm and noon the next day, and I’ve continued averaging around 4-5 times per week. Meaning, I eat breakfast 2 or 3 days each week.

With regards to the fitness stuff, I’m partially through a months-long process of stepping it up, and I now “work out” to some capacity for one hour each day at least five days a week. This effort will not result in weight loss, it’s just for basic fitness. I started with the elliptical trainer, and have worked up to 45 minutes at over 5 mph and at accelerating difficulty levels. I’ve started doing short (~7 minute) high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions of exercises and yoga before using the elliptical. And I will add some weight training soon. These are all things I used to do when I went to a gym, but it’s years later, and I’m doing them at home.

It must be working. I’m sore all the time.

CES 2019

RawkFox asks:

It seems like the entire theme of CES this year was “Smart Things/Assistants.” I know this is the Consumer Electronics Show and therefore not really geared towards this audience, but personally I was kind of let down as I didn’t notice much innovation – only new devices with either Google Assistant or Alexa baked in as the headline feature. It looks like we’re also seeing the rise of the “hole punch” camera. I was hoping to see at least one truly unique and exciting device, and sadly enough the one that interested me most was that Lenovo smart clock. What’s your take on this, Paul? Am I just expecting too much from this show, or have we reached the point where the marquee feature of a phone is how the camera looks?

CES is mostly nonsense, and it’s hard to see past the noise. It’s especially hard when bloggers and even real reporters over-cover the nonsense.

But your view is correct: The ambient computing stuff was the most relevant technology on display at the show, and the whole smart home thing is clearly going mainstream. I think your take on how there was nothing truly innovative or exciting is likewise true. But that is explained by the ever-faster ways in which each subsequent personal technology platform wave matured: We went from decades for PCs to one decade for smartphones to just a three, maybe four years for ambient computing. It all happens so fast now.

Ads and ad blockers

BeckoningEagle asks:

I always find interesting how you are always praising ad blockers and such, yet your non -premium web site depends on ad revenue. I have never minded ads per se, but I do hate to see multiple ads for something I already bought. Even a random ad would have a higher percentage of me clicking on it than an ad for something I already bought. So I started using Brave as per your recommendation, but I sometimes feel a little bit ashamed that I am not paying for content (although I do pay for thurrott.com).

What alternatives do you see for sites owners going forward, to counteract the drop in revenues? Do you think that a concerted effort from a giant such as Microsoft, if they follow through with a privacy first initiative you’ve recently covered, could help these content providers make a living while allowing them to compete with the giants?

With regards to ads, that model is pretty much dead on the web. That’s why we provide Thurrott Premium, though there are, of course, other ways to try and actually make money for what you’re doing online. Frankly, I wish ads just worked: As a writer, I obviously want as many people as possible to read what I’ve written. But the world is what it is.

With regards to ad blockers, I’m not sure that I “praise” them per se, but I do use an ad blocker myself, not because I don’t want other writers to get paid but because the terrible intrusiveness of ads escalated so quickly as that market dried up. Some websites are almost unreadable otherwise. But I often pay for services specifically to drop the ads that would otherwise appear. For example, I pay for Duolingo Plus so I don’t have to deal with the ads.

Trying to reconcile my needs as both a content creator and a content consumer can be difficult, I guess. We at least do offer a way for people to pay and not see most ads. This isn’t the case at The New York Times, for example, where I must pay and still get ads, ads that often slow down their own mobile app. I find that infuriating. In fact, sometimes it grinds the app to a halt.

As far as alternatives for other site owners, I wish I could help. Our model here is not perfect, and if there was a magic bullet that just worked, I’d use that too. I don’t see any industry savior here: Google controls our access to the Internet, and since the firm makes 90 percent of its revenues from ads, all we can hope for are “better” (i.e. less intrusive) ads. Not an end to ads.

Windows as a Service, evolved

Lewk asks:

Another Microsoft-centric publication hinted that Microsoft are working on changing how Windows Update works for feature updates. In which they will mirror the OS files onto a separate image partition, update the OS on the mirrored image and then with one quick reboot flip the user onto the new image. Similar to how android works with less downtime for users and far less potential issues along the way.

Do you think the past two feature update failures are related to this work. In which the engineers responsible for the architecture of Windows Update were far too focused on building out this new feature, then triaging and fixing actual issues with the current Windows Update method?

With the understanding that I have no knowledge about the change you’re describing, it’s very clear that Windows as a Service (Waas), most especially the schedule by which we get two feature updates per year, is broken. And that it needs to be fixed. Many, myself included, feel that one feature update per year would be perfect adequate. But what you’re describing is a deep technical change that might solve the reliability problems. It seems reasonable.

I’m not sure where to place the blame for the two most recent feature update issues, even if this work is indeed happening. I don’t even know that it’s happening, let alone that those doing the work would have otherwise been triaging WaaS issues otherwise. Generally speaking, the system is broken: The process for ensuring reliability is not working, and I suspect it’s because it’s just too complex. Perhaps the change you cite will fix this.

Lewk also asks:

I ask as there’s been an issue with English Language packs for non-US and non-UK users that arises with every feature update, that is continually ignored by Microsoft. Despite the 100’s of feedback submissions and upvotes over the past two years. I asked you about this issue a few months ago on another Ask Paul and you said you would ask Microsoft and get back to me, but I guess they never got back to you.

Sorry about that, I’m not sure how that got lost in the shuffle. Do you mind emailing me so I can forward it to Microsoft?

PC sales

matsan asks:

The Gartner statistics for 2018 PC hardware market shares are out. I was amazed to see Lenovo soaring to #1, pushing HP down to #2! Two questions for you: Why is Lenovo all of a sudden so big in shipping computers? The market declines to 259,4M units. Will there even be a turn around and do we need that?

As you may have seen, I wrote about this topic earlier today because the IDC numbers came in as well.

To address your questions, Lenovo overtook HP in mid-2018, as I recall, and like you, I’m a bit surprised by that as well. Not because Lenovo doesn’t make great PCs—it does, and its ThinkPad X1 series computers are routinely among my very favorites—but because HP hasn’t exactly dropped the ball. Lenovo was the only PC maker in the top five to actually grow sales last year. Interesting.

I have to assume that Lenovo has finally caught up to HP when it comes to retailer coverage. You still don’t see ThinkPad all that often in places like Best Buy, but you do see Yoga, IdeaPad, and other Lenovo brands. Maybe that explains it.

I don’t see the PC market turning around: I think the next several years will be plus or minus a few percentage points of what we see now. Which is just fine: Roughly 260 million units of anything is nothing to sneeze at, and these are devices that work reliably for years. Also, the PC installed base is 1.5 billion units, and that’s not including Macs or Chromebooks. So this is still a very important market. And for me, more personally, the personal computing platform I care about the most.