Ask Paul: January 29 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and happy end of January! Let’s get the weekend started early with another round of great reader questions.

Suggestions

crunchyfrog suggests:

Hey, Paul. I enjoy watching you and Brad on your daily videos however, I wanted to suggest a few things.

You know, this is called “Ask Paul,” not “Tell Paul.”  🙂

FINE.

For one, your webcam quality looks like it’s running 640×480 but Brad’s is crystal clear. Now, I realize that you are remoting in so that may contribute but it would be great if the video quality was consistent between both of you.

I purchased a $200 Logitech Brio webcam recently to try and fix that problem, but it didn’t make a difference. So I returned it. The issue isn’t me or my webcam, it’s something on Brad’s end.

Secondly, I was wondering if it would be possible to see what either one of you is looking at when you’re talking about what is on one of your screens. It’s not a huge deal but it would add a lot to the viewing experience.

This is another Brad issue, since he does the recording. I asked him about it, but it doesn’t seem all that doable because of the set up we’re using, unfortunately. Brad is unable to share his screen at all, and I could technically share mine, but he’s the one would have to display it. It’s just kind of awkward.

Vinyl

eeisner asks:

Paul – I’ve noticed recently on Twitter/Instagram that you and your wife have been listening to vinyl. In the past you (and Andrew) have somewhat made fun of people that still listen to vinyl instead of digital media and questioned the resurgence of vinyl, especially from young people like me who love records. What made you decide to break out the record collection? Has your thinking on physical media vs digital media changed? And what does your audio setup look like? What turntable/receiver/speakers/etc. are you using?

I’m going to write about this soon, including the setup, but here’s the short version.

I’m not a fan of physical media for the most part, and vinyl specifically is not a great solution for most people. The records, used or new, are very expensive, sometimes crazily so. And because of the limitations of the format, it’s work-intensive: You have to get up and switch album sides every 20-25 minutes.

So why do we have a turntable now? My wife and I have listened to music together a lot over the years, but that usage has gone up a lot in the past year, and as we’ve improved the sound system in the sunroom, which now has a pair of Sonos Play:1s and a Sonos Sub, the combination of which can shake the entire house. What we’ve typically listened to are playlists that I make, and one of the things we enjoy doing while listening is adding or removing songs as we go. It’s often a bit more interactive than just passive listening.

But my wife and I also grew up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and so we came of age in an era in which complete albums were a thing. I had a big record collection in the early 1980s, both 45s (singles) and 33s (albums), and my criteria for buying an album at that time was that I needed to like at least three of the songs. Anyway, albums are one of the things we sort of miss from those days, this notion of a perfect album or, less rare, a perfect album side.

I bought the turntable as both an experiment and as a birthday present for my wife, and I was unsure if she would be interested. I knew that vinyl was expensive and that we’d never make any kind of shift towards this format (let alone any physical format), and my thinking was only that we’d buy albums we knew to be great front-to-back, and that we’d listen to these things intentionally. That is, we’d pay attention, read along with the lyrics, discuss the music, etc.

She loved this idea, more than I had expected. And our music nights have recently started with an album or album side before moving on to a more diverse playlist. But let’s be real here: This is an affectation, not a change in direction. I doubt we’ll ever have more than a handful of albums.

Anyway. I will be writing about this and the Sonos Move portable speaker soon.

1000

cottonwood asks:

FRD episode 1000 is coming soon – any special plans for this momentous occasion? 😉

FRD is obviously a lot more casual than a two-hour show like Windows Weekly, so this doesn’t feel quite as momentous as it otherwise would. But I’ll ask Brad about this.

OneDrive + M1 Mac

jwpear asks:

Have you had more issues with OneDrive on your Mac? I ask because I’ve started having issues with OneDrive on my 2020 Intel MBP. It’s running dog slow and any time I attempt to interact with it, I get the beach ball for a good 30 seconds or so. It is painful to interact with and it seems to impact Office app auto save. Makes me wonder if there’s a more widespread issue with OneDrive on Mac rather than just being an M1 issue.

For those unfamiliar, one of the compatibility problems I had when I started testing the M1-based Mac Mini was OneDrive: Every time I tried to access the app or even just mouse over it, the Mac would “beach ball” (hang), preventing me from configuring Files On-Demand. It finally started working about a day and a half later for no obvious reason, and it seemed to work fine from then on.

Last week, I started testing a new M1-based MacBook Pro, and with my previous experience in mind, I installed OneDrive from the Mac App Store alongside Microsoft Word and a few other apps. After signing-in to OneDrive, I experienced that same hanging, but this time I sat on it and waited. After a few minutes, the OneDrive interface appeared, so I clicked Help & Settings, waited minutes again while it hung, and then Preferences, and then waited, and then got into Preferences where I was able to enable Files On-Demand. And that seems to have solved that problem. I don’t use the Mac all day every day, but it does seem to be working OK now. Other than that weird initial performance issue.

I feel like this will all be resolved when the native M1 version of OneDrive is available.

Office Offline

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Since the Google apps will work offline on a Chromebook, do you think that Microsoft will add offline capabilities to the Office Web Apps before releasing Windows 10x?

That is a great question. If Microsoft really doesn’t intend to ship the native Office desktop applications with Windows 10X—which I assume could be a possibility—then I agree that offline support across the core Office web apps—not just Outlook.com, but Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote—seems like a requirement and not just a nicety. Regardless of 10X, they have to be working on this. Have to be. But the timing is unclear.

Future Build and Ignite conferences

will asks:

Curious what Microsoft’s plans are for 2021, even 2022, for conferences like Build and Ignite? While I enjoy the virtual conferences we have done this last year and into this year, I really do miss the community and just being around a few thousand peers. Not to mention the energy and excitement a conference brings is not the same as watching something online…with the exception of the Apple stuff from last year. All WWDCs should be opened like that IMO.

Nothing beats in-person meetings for sure.

Mary Jo and I have spoken a lot with some of the key Microsoft presenters about this, and while they’re not the decision-makers at the company, the consensus seems to be that Microsoft’s conferences will be in-person as soon as everyone thinks it’s safe to do so. The only real question, beyond timing, is how these shows change going forward based on the experiences of hosting these shows virtually for the time being. And I think the net change will be positive and will include more and better access for those people who can’t or won’t travel for whatever reason.

But all Microsoft has said publicly so far is that it will not be having any in-person conferences through at least July 1. I don’t see the vaccination process going well enough for that date to stick, though. So I bet we won’t have any in-person Microsoft conferences or other events until at least 2022.

C# training

Daishi asks:

On investigating this week’s Windows Weekly Udacity recommendation I found a conspicuous absence of C# content. Now I know that I ‘should’ be learning JavaScript instead, but I’m not. So I’m wondering, after your jaunts into Windows programming, if you have any suggestions for similar/alternative resources that do?

Yes. If you’re a beginner, I strongly recommend starting with Bob Tabor, who is now a Microsoft employee. He does a lot of their video-based beginning developer training materials, both on his own site and via Microsoft’s Channel 9. Two obvious courses are C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners and Windows 10 development for absolute beginners, though the latter is now out-of-date.

LinkedIn has C# video courses as well. And for more traditional, Udacity-style courses, you should look at Coursera and Udemy. You should look at the Microsoft Developer site as well.