Ask Paul: June 21 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and Happy First Day of Summer (at least here in the Northern hemisphere). Here’s another Ask Paul to get the weekend started.

More early Microsoft content

SRRLX1986 asks:

So the Prehistory: Programming windows articles made me want to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley again. Do you recommend any other technology related movies, documentary or fictional?

There isn’t too much from the early days, unfortunately. Triumph of the Nerds is worth seeking out. I would look up old Computer Chronicles episodes on YouTube; like old issues of Byte, it’s kind of fun to pick through favorite topics. I used to have a big collection of Microsoft history books, mostly from the pre-2000 time periods, but I got rid of all that years ago. I’ve been re-researching that stuff for the series and will hopefully get a good list together at some point.

Containers

Vladimir asks:

I was following the discussion on containers in windows. Do you think in the future it will be possible to run containers in the cloud and stream them to your device? The dream would be a very light machine, always connected with long battery life.

Yes. But any such solution will mostly be for backward compatibility. For new apps, native or web makes a lot more sense and I think that will always be the case. Always-Connected PCs running on ARM are, in some ways, our first glimpse at that future.

PCs for college

jwpear asks:

Have family getting ready to start college this fall. What moderately priced laptops do you recommend for something durable enough to get them through 4-5 years?

“Moderately priced” and “will last 4-5 years” are a tough combination, given that this PC will be heavily used for that entire period of time. With a typical 4-year public school education costing over $100,000, maybe a better approach would be to think of this as an investment in your child’s future, and spend more to get more. I think the sweet spot is about $1000 to $1200 for something that will really be high quality and will last.

I’m not sure I have specific models to recommend per se—I do review several PCs every year, but that’s still a far cry from the 100s of models available—but I have some thoughts on companies and specifications. I’d stick to the major players—Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple—and to Microsoft, too. I would look for 8th-generation Intel Core i5 or better, 8 GB of RAM for most students (16 GB for engineers, developers, graphic artists, or the like), and 256 GB of SSD storage. A Full HD (1080p) display should be fine, but if a Quad HD (essentially 1440p) or 4K/UHD display can be had in the price range you’re looking for, consider the battery life implications before upgrading.

Tech enthusiasts naturally dump on Microsoft for not moving quickly to new tech like Thunderbolt 3. But the Surface Laptop 2 and Surface Book 2 are among the best PCs I’ve ever used. If you can live with the single USB port on the former, it would last four-to-five years, I bet, for normal usage. That’s kind of the baseline.

Tablets

Daishi asks:

With Google abandoning the tablet market do you think that it could/would/should motivate Microsoft to take the tablet experience in Windows more seriously to make it the go to non-iPad option?

Windows tablets will never be viable alternatives to the iPad. They’re just completely different platforms.

Consider the Surface Pro vs. iPad conversation. The Surface Pro is a great PC in a tablet form factor. The iPad is a great tablet, the only great tablet. But it’s just a consumption device, at least today. It’s best used for general reading, video viewing, and similar tasks. The Surface Pro is better if you need to get work done. You can read on it and watch videos, etc. But it’s optimized for work.

I don’t see this changing. And I subscribe to the “best tool for the job” philosophy. Today, that means an Android handset for the phone, an iPad for the tablet, and Windows for the laptop.

Next HP Folio

WP7Mango asks:

Any news as to whether HP is likely to release a new version of the Folio with a 3:2 screen this year? I’m currently holding off upgrading my Surface Pro 3 because I’m waiting to see what Microsoft release this year. However, I’m also really interested in the HP Folio, but only if HP do decide to make it with a 3:2 screen.

So, I’m generally privy to what HP is doing, but the Folio is a fall product, so we probably won’t hear about the next one until this September/October at the earliest. I’ve not heard anything.

But HP has been very resistant to my call for 3:2 displays. The argument isn’t about usability or whatever, it’s about supply: Every PC maker ships 16:9 displays for the most part (some are 16:10), so that’s what the industry provides. 3:2 displays are still uncommon and still very expensive comparatively. (HP has only used 3:2 displays on its tablet-first products to date.) I would love to see this change, of course.

Simplified ribbon

Lewk asks:

Would you happen to know if the new simplified ribbon is still coming to classic office?

I assume and hope so, but I’ve not heard. Right now, you can see this only in Office Online, and I really prefer it to the normal (big) ribbon.

What is 19H2?

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Considering the disaster that was 1809, the exceedingly careful roll-out of 19H1, and the disappearance of 19H2, do you think that Microsoft is just quietly ending the madness of two updates a year, and just not mentioning it in the hope that no one will notice or comment?

As I coincidentally wrote today in 19H2gate this morning, given the timing, it seems that 19H2 can only be one of two things at this point. One, that it is essentially an R2 or Service Pack type update to 1903 that basically only includes whatever cumulative updates and app updates that have happened since 1903 first shipped. Or two, that it will be some small subset of 20H1 that includes only those 20H1 features that don’t have dependencies on features that will only be in 20H1.

I would love to see Microsoft give up on the two feature update per year release schedule. But the big issue here is servicing schedule for businesses. The H1 releases are only serviced for 18 months, but the H2 releases are serviced for 30 months. This tells me that businesses will want 19H2 and that the first of my two theories above is probably the correct one.

Have they resolved the issue with upgrading to 19H1 with an SD card or external drive attached?

Yes, this has been fixed.

“Addresses an issue that may cause an external USB device or SD memory card to be reassigned to an incorrect drive during installation.”

Recommending Windows

yoshi asks:

Do you find it’s getting harder and harder to recommend Windows with their lack of communication? If someone was seriously debating going MacOS, Chrome OS, or Windows in their next purchase, which do you think you’d direct them to? Assuming they are an average consumer with no need for legacy applications. Kind of a loaded question, I know. I was just curious your thoughts.

I have a hard time with this.

But if I can take a step back and try not to take Microsoft’s terrible treatment of Windows personally, I can at least see that neither Apple nor Google does a particularly good job of communicating what they’re doing either, and they both are lousy at responding to customer requests. To me, Windows isn’t just familiar, it’s still much, much better than the alternatives. I used to make the point that I loved Apple hardware but was pretty meh on the software, but these days even the hardware is problematic. And Chrome OS is something I’ll keep looking at for sure. But yeah, it’s there for average consumers right now, I’d say.

The issue for Windows is that its biggest strength—decades of backward compatibility—is also its biggest weakness. This is a big, crufty, complex OS with tons of legacy code. It’s not particularly well suited for the mobile-first world of today. And I’m not sure if Microsoft’s third try at fixing that—Lite OS or whatever they call it—will fly. Still a wait and see thing, I guess.

With regards to the advice I’d give to anyone looking at alternatives, it would depend on a case-by-case basis. For example, for someone like my wife, a non-technical user who writes for a living and just needs email and web browsing otherwise, a Chromebook would probably meet the need. (A Mac would too, but the price is too high, and my wife can’t stand Apple for some reason.) My son likes to play games, so the PC is the only real option. (And he needs a PC for school, as well.) My daughter actually wants a Mac but I think that’s mostly a peer/fashion thing. She would be fine with any of these platforms. (She uses a PC laptop today.)

If it makes you feel any better, Chromebooks and Macs both have single digit market share. There are 1.5 billion Windows PCs in the world, and only 100 million Macs. As tech enthusiasts, we worry about things normal people do not. But maybe the real question here is, how on earth will Chromebooks or Macs every be competitive with Windows?

No, I don’t see it that way either. Just playing Devil’s Advocate here.

New Edge extensions

vernonlvincent asks:

Do you have issues with extensions in the Edgium (Microsoft Edge) Dev build being frequently corrupted? It seems like daily I’m having to reinstall LastPass (which I got from the Micorosoft Store for Edgium) because the extension has become corrupted.

No, but I exclusively use Chrome-based extensions in the new Edge, from the Chrome Web Store. I do this because I had issues with the Microsoft Store version of Grammarly when the first preview versions of Edge appeared, and I noticed that the Chrome version worked fine.

So maybe try that and see if it fixes the problem.

Tablet success

Simard57 asks:

Tablets were supposed to take over for laptops and desktops but seem to have plateaued to a much smaller numbers – largely due to phablets. have they failed – are tablets only now the iPad and will not replace PCs?

Tablets were originally supposed to replace PCs, but that hasn’t happened for a variety of reasons.

On the low-end, as you note, phablets provided that magical “single device that replaces two devices” experience that happens so infrequently. And on the high-end, tablets have simply not been able to supplant PCs as productivity devices, despite annual pronouncements to the contrary from Apple. (It doesn’t help that Android developers haven’t adapted their apps for tablet form factors like iOS devs have, too.)

But tablets are only called unsuccessful because of unreasonable expectations. After Apple hit it big with the iPod and then was even more successful with iPhone, the natural assumption was that the iPad would be the first big thing, and that Android-based tablets would likewise explode and take over the market. When that didn’t happen, tablets were labeled as failures.

But I like tablets, well, iPads, and hundreds of millions of other people do too. They’re tweener devices, to be sure, but they’re better than phones for reading to my middle-aged eyes, and I like the bigger screen for movies too. I don’t use one all day every day like the phone (or like the PC, I guess). But that’s fine.

Global PC shipments this year should be in the 230 million range. Global tablet sales should be about 137 million. That’s not too shabby. (Plus, Apple has sold over 400 million iPads since 2010.)

2FA over mobile

Simard57 asks:

Your Phone now works over Cell Services. Doesn’t this present a risk to two factor authentication with the PC receiving the challenge? is there a way to configure to permit photos to sync over cell (which I like) but limit SMS to WiFi or better Bluetooth?

No, not at the moment. But the fact that you’re authenticating on Windows too should alleviate most concerns. Regardless, the better and more secure approach is to use an authenticator app on mobile, and not SMS, for 2FA.