Ask Paul: December 31 (Premium)

Happy, um, Thursday. No, Happy New Year! In this special lightning-round of Ask Paul, I tackle some of the questions we didn’t get to in this week’s AMA. I can’t get to all of them, of course, and some weren’t directed at me anyway. But I’ll do my best…

If not COD, then what?

krisarthur asks:

If COD Cold War isn’t working for Paul – Which game will it be? What are the contenders? Which do you think might come out on top?

There are a few options. One thing I did do was prestige-up in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, as I still enjoy that game and I had simply left it stuck on whatever prestige, with all the weapons, perks, scorestreaks, etc. in place. Doing this makes the game a little bit harder, but it won’t relieve the boredom of playing all the same levels over and over again.

In another minor step sideways, I deleted Cold War and installed COD: WWII and Modern Warfare Remastered for a bit more similar/familiar and enjoyable COD gaming. But I also want to branch out. So I’ll be playing some DOOM Eternal and will finish Tell Me Why, which is a story-based title. After that, I’ll try to find some games in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate/EA Play. Plus, I’m testing various cloud gaming services, so I’ll be playing games elsewhere too.

Streaming purchased games

Jryoung86 asks:

Have you heard anything about the ability to stream games from my collection that I purchased but are not currently on game pass being added to Xbox Ultimate Game Pass Cloud Streaming?

This is an interesting question, and it would be amazing if Microsoft could somehow let us stream digitally purchased games from the cloud to whatever compatible devices. That’s not available now, so the closest we have is the ability to stream games that are installed on an Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S console to compatible devices running the Xbox app. With one caveat: While Xbox One currently supports streaming to Windows (like a Surface Pro or whatever), Xbox Series X|S can currently only stream to Android. That will change in 2021.

Windows 10X

RobotRaccoon asks:

Any word on Microsoft getting Win32 apps to run on Windows 10X like Apple is doing with their Rosetta layer?

The current rumor is that Microsoft’s hardware partners will ship the first single-screen Windows 10X devices in early 2021, but only to the commercial market (businesses, education, and government), and without Win32 compatibility. And that a second release, presumably in late 2021, will be aimed at consumers and will include the Win32 container. Obviously, Cloud PC could fill the gap in the meantime, especially for commercial customers.

Will 10X be the version of choice to run on future ARM machines, or will we be dependent upon virtualization software like Parallels to do the heavy lifting?

One of the many odd things about Windows 10X is that when Microsoft was discussing it publicly, it said that it was Intel-specific. I feel like Windows 10X might even make more sense on ARM-based devices, and with non-traditional form factors, and I have to assume the thinking has evolved in Redmond along those lines. But Microsoft hasn’t said a thing about 10X since it was delayed and the plans to target dual-screens were scrapped for the first release. I hope to learn more about the new plans in the first half of 2021.

The productivity Android

everno asks:

Do you think there is any connection with the Surface Duo arrival and the departure of the Galaxy Note?

No. In fact, Samsung has recently indicated that the Note lineup may, in fact, not be done, and that we could see a new Note in 2021. Which is … confusing.

I scrapped plans to write an article about Android devices and Microsoft productivity apps and services, but I feel like a high-end Samsung of whatever kind—S series, Note, Fold—is a better choice for productivity on-the-go (or anything else, really) than Surface Duo.

Seems as though Samsung and Microsoft have been getting very cozy… Just seemed very conveniently timed.

I think that partnership will continue and continue expanding. The Duo is no threat to Samsung.

Sets

bschnatt

Any word on the multi-tabbed version of File Explorer we were promised a loooooong time ago? (Please don’t mention the UWP version – that’s a joke…) I’ve tried various tabbed file managers on Windows, and while they’re very powerful, they’re also annoying in many ways, and I end up just abandoning them. REALLY tired of waiting for Microsoft to get this done!

No, and since Microsoft killed Sets, it has never mentioned this functionality again.

Tied to the new rumors about Windows 10X is a new File Explorer, but I think it may just be the UWP version, which has weird limitations related to which parts of the file system it will even display. I think the only mainstream option for this functionality remains Stardock Groupy.

Xbox Series X

mmcpher asks:

When will Xbox Series X be widely available and when will it matter to have one, in terms of real upgrade of the gaming experience? And what was the thinking about the deliberate scarcity over the Holiday shopping season?

If you haven’t done so, be sure to watch our annual discussion with Microsoft CMO Chris Capossela on Windows Weekly episode 703 from two weeks ago. Leo (I think) asked him pointedly whether the scarcity was deliberate, and he said that it was not. I believe him, but the sad reality is that Microsoft simply doesn’t have the control or confidence in its supply chain as does, say, Apple, and this remains a weird weakness: One should be able to order this console from Microsoft directly and just wait for it. I don’t understand why this isn’t possible.

Anyway, I expect console availability, both for Xbox and PlayStation, to clear up nicely very early in 2021. I don’t expect any major changes to the UX on Xbox, however, and any changes that do happen will almost certainly occur on Xbox One as well, at least for the next year or so. At some point, of course, there will need to be Dashboard changes that only target Xbox Series X|S.

Windows Hello webcam

sandorheese asks:

Any word on a Windows Hello capable Microsoft Webcam?

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the new personal tech that’s come through our house over the holidays, and among that was a new (to me) webcam, the Logitech BRIO. Among its capabilities is Windows Hello compatibility.

Bouillabaisse

brothernod asks:

What is your favorite piece of tech you’ve ever owned and why is it a Brown Zune?

Ha! I did really like the original Zune, but I’m not sure I’d call it my favorite tech of all time. In fact, I’m not sure I could pick just one.

Paul, do you still bother with DSLR’s for travel photography?

No, I’ve used smartphone cameras exclusively since 2013 when the Nokia Lumia 1020 arrived.

For such a tight focused site, what was it like hiring another writer?

I’ve always wanted to work with a team of people, and I’ve been lucky in my six years (seriously, how is it six years already?) at BWW Media Group to work with such great people, both generally in the broader company and more specifically with the small group of writers who have contributed to Thurrott.com. Unfortunately, Mehedi has been very busy this year between school and his work at Qualcomm over the summer, leaving me to write the news for most of 2020. I wish I had more help in that area.

How many hours a week would you say you work?

Work is a tough term because I’m probably engaged in work-related tasks for 40 to 80 hours every week, and I do technically work seven days every week in some capacity, but I can’t really call most of that time “work.” For example, writing is clearly work. But I spend a lot of time researching things online, watching relevant videos, and so on. These learning activities, as I think of them, are … sort of work. I guess. This is hard to measure. But I feel like the most important metric, which is output, in my case writing (or, I guess podcasting too, which is work) has been consistent. The amount of time it takes me to generate that output varies.

Career choices

jnentwich  asks:

How did you move from being programmer to being a columnist in the magazine Windows IT Pro? Was be journalist a career goal of your when in college?

I’ve been telling stories about these events in the Thurrott Premium newsletter on Mondays, but the short version is that I never intended to be a journalist. There were two major and related events that set me down my current path after I went back to school to become a programmer starting in 1993.

The first is that I met a professor in Scottsdale, Arizona who asked me if I’d help him tech edit a book he was writing about Visual Basic. (I took a C++ class that he was teaching.) That turned into me more broadly editing the book, contributing to the book, helping write the book, and then finally me doing the primary writing of that book. And we went on to write several other books together, most of them technical, and some about programming topics.

The second is that I got a job at the school managing a computing lab, and I started sending out informal newsletters to the teachers and professors in the CS and CIS departments about industry news that I thought they would find relevant; these newsletters were sort of like a blog in that I would quote some line from a PC Week or InfoWorld article (at a time when these were large format print publications) and then explain why it mattered. Several of the teachers found this useful and asked if they could offer it to their students. And then students started approaching me to see if their friends could subscribe to.

Eventually, someone from our book publisher left the company to start his own Internet-based publishing company. He hired me and we put the main newsletter, WinInfo, on the web along with my site at the time, which was Internet Nexus. And so my career in programming never really happened, but my career writing about technology did.

Office versioning

lfredin asks:

How can I tell which version of Microsoft office I’m using on my Windows PC?

In the old days, you could simply look at any one of the apps instantly tell which version it was, assuming you were up on the nuances. Internally, Microsoft called this behavior “putting lipstick on a pig,” since it would arbitrarily change the UX with each version for this very reason.

These days, it’s getting harder because Microsoft is updating Office every month for Microsoft 365 subscribers. So you have to actually open an application and look. In the core Office apps, you can find this information via a convoluted path: File > Account > About.

USB 4.0

Sharpcut asks:

What’s the status of USB 4.0?

You’re going to see a lot of USB 4 come out of CES next week, I bet.

NAS

naveen asks:

What’s your NAS story these days?

I’m still using the WD NAS that I bought over five years ago.

Windows Media Center

Jpjedynak asks:

With regards to Windows Media Center (RIP), what would you have done differently? Just want your thoughts on a program that I really enjoyed. Sorry if you have touched upon this in a previous post.

Windows Media Center was a bit part of my family’s lives over several years, but we gave up with the shift to HD, which required special devices and/or cards for cable systems and just got very complicated. I recall discussing this project with Media Center’s creators and being told that they had to choose between two major directions: It could be a PC application, which would require a lot of complexity in the living room, or it could be an Xbox-like device, which would be a lot simpler, but not as powerful. For the timeframe—2000 to 2001—choosing the PC made sense. But looking back on this, I think a standalone device would have been the better choice, even if they had to wait for a few years.

Few remember this, but Apple ripped off the Media Center user interface in a Mac media app called Front Row that later evolved into iPod and then Apple TV interfaces. Being first rarely results in winning a market, and this is just one example.

Microsoft conferences

BTRProducer asks:

If you could only do one Microsoft-related conference trip in 2021, which one would you choose, and why?

My favorite Microsoft show is Build, because it’s developer-focused.

But if we had a year in which there was a Build in Seattle and an Ignite in some other city, and I could only go to one, I’d choose based on the location. For example, Ignite was supposed to be in New Orleans this past year, and I’m dying to go back to New Orleans.

Next Surface

BlatchCA asks:

I want to replace my Surface Pro 4, what would you recommend. Need hi-res screen, pen, 11th gen i7, 16Gb Ram, 256 NVME.

At this point, you should wait a month or two and see how the Surface Pro 8 pans out. But that’s assuming you’re a “tablet-first” user. If you only use the tablet functionality sometimes, I’d look into a convertible PC like the HP Spectre x360 14 that I’m still so happy with.