Ask Paul: May 21 (Premium)

Happy Friday! We’re in Boston as part of the busiest month of travel we’ve had in years, but we can still kick off the weekend with some great reader questions.

NAS futures

helix2301 asks:

What do you think the future of NAS (Network Attached Storage) is I feel like the people that need that much storage are still going to buy them regardless of cloud storage.

It’s funny you ask this, as I was just thinking about this topic, though it was for more personal reasons. I’ve been using a WD MyCloud Ex NAS for six years now, and it’s been having a few reliability issues. Sometimes it just disappears from the network, in the sense that’s unreachable from my Windows PCs. And sometimes I get a red light on one of the two (redundant) hard drives, but when I investigate from the dashboard, I can’t see a problem. In both cases, unplugging it and then rebooting it seems to fix things, at least temporarily. But it’s really slow, to come up again on reboot and in general, and while that would bother me more if I relied on it more, it’s still not ideal.

I agree that there will always be a market for NAS devices, but I feel like the need is dramatically less over time because of cloud storage services. For me, the NAS is another backup of crucial data, and because it’s local, it’s always accessible, even if the Internet goes down. But it’s odd to me that it is much faster, and much more reliable, to find documents on OneDrive or Photos on Google Photos than it is to do so via the NAS. And I find myself “using” it less as a result. It’s still a backup point. But it’s not really my go-to anymore.

At some point, I’ll need to figure out how to move forward. I assume and expect that consume/prosumer NAS products have improved since I bought this, and you’re right that those who need lots of storage can benefit from using something like this. But for most consumers, USB-based hard drives probably solve that need, even though there aren’t many options with data redundancy capabilities.

Windows 10 anti-ransomware functionality

crunchyfrog asks:

I discovered something very interesting that I wanted to share with you and your audience. Microsoft has a way of coming up with innovative ideas but not really calling attention to them and leaving them buried in a sub menu and turned off. Case in point; Microsoft has placed an infinitely useful feature within Windows Defender that can thwart the scourge of ransomware by protecting the most useful and sensitive folders within your Windows profile such as Documents, Photos, etc.

To locate this feature the easiest way to get to it is click on Start and just start typing Ransomware. Click the switch to turn on the service and that’s it. If a program get blocked you’ll see a message in Windows and just head back to the Ransomware Protection feature and click on Block History and you’ll see the blocked app which you can grant access to. Users can also manually allow apps to access the folders as well. This escaped my radar and I had no idea it was there and was curious if you knew about this or use it. Simple and effective solution that I have read online has been tested and works well.

I only recently became aware of this feature as well, and just this past week I added it to my “To-do” file for the Windows 10 Field Guide. But it’s a great tip for everyone here to know about for sure. I should write it up for the site as well.

Setting sync vs. roaming

darkgrayknight asks:

So I don’t think Settings Sync, Roaming Profile, or Personalization roaming are the same things. “Sync your settings” has theme, passwords, language preferences, other windows settings. I would expect passwords to still sync and probably the “other Windows settings”. I do regularly use the settings syncing, though the backgrounds are not always as useful (some computers have 4K monitors, other have different resolutions and not every picture is great on every computer. Do you have any further information regarding the end of Personalization roaming? We do kind of rely on getting the clarity on what is happening from you (and Mary Jo) regarding the “communication” from Microsoft.

I’m starting to think you’re right, though Microsoft’s language is confusing here. The settings sync function in Windows 10 today started in Windows 8, I believe, but it is obviously based on the roaming user profile technology Microsoft created for commercial customers many years earlier. The gap between them has always been confusing, as is the fact that Windows 10 has never expanded the list of what syncs (or can sync). It feels like it’s been abandoned, or just left there to do its thing with no further improvements.

Anyway, now I’m not sure what’s happening here, meaning what Microsoft means exactly by personalization roaming and which customers it impacts. I suspect it’s a commercial feature and most likely the latest rendition of a feature that is part of roaming user profiles, but I will need to ask to be sure.

Favorites

j5 asks:

Favorite beer

I haven’t had a beer since December 2016, though I’ve tasted a few here and there. My favorite was probably a Brandywine beer made by the now-defunct Blue Hills Brewery called Fortis Pagus, though we knew the brewmaster and he shared even better versions of it with us that they couldn’t sell because they were too high in alcohol.

Favorite wine

This one is kind of tough because I like lots of different wines. But my favorite wines overall are Italian reds and include such things as Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Barolo, Chianti, and the like. I drink a lot of Chardonnay, and we like Sebastiani, which is from California (and not expensive).

Favorite mixed drink

My favorite is the Saketini, which is my wife’s creation and is, as far as I know, pretty unique. It’s based on Sake, the Japanese rice wine. You can find the recipe here.

Most expensive drink you’ve had. Mine was a glass of Screaming Eagle. Can’t remember the year but wow it was amazing!

Hm. I’m not sure I can recall what this was. We don’t really ever buy really expensive wine or other drinks. I’ve purchased $100-150 bottles of wine for anniversaries, but I don’t think I’ve ever spent much more than $100 on a bottle of wine in a restaurant, and then only rarely. We’re not collectors or anything like that either.

Wintopia

Matsan asks:

With the cancellation on Windows 10X and all the problems with Windows on ARM I have to ask your opinion: When will the Windows-Utopia finally arrive?

If this is an ARM-specific question, I’m not sure it ever will. The problem/reality of Microsoft’s approach is that it has this legacy desktop platform that has decades-old code that was written specifically for x86, and translating/emulating that code in ARM is never going to be efficient or ideal.

Just got my first M1 MBP 13″ and although I haven’t replaced my development station yet (some homebrew packages not working, my JAVA-based IDE is a bit sluggish and some Docker-related issues) I must say Mac-Utopia is pretty darn close especially for the average user!

Anyone interested in this debate should read How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS, and for many reasons. I feel like Apple, through some combination of luck and good engineering, arrived at a version of macOS that neatly takes advantage of the big core/little core architecture used by its ARM chips. And that this kind of thing isn’t possible on Windows unless Microsoft gets serious about transitioning its user base to ARM, which it can’t do because there are too many partners involved, especially important silicon partners like Intel and AMD that either won’t ever make this transition fully or will only slowly add similar capabilities to their own x86-based chipsets.

But this puts us back to square one in this discussion, which is that we have two sides, one that believes that Apple Silicon will forever change the way that PC-type microprocessors work, and the other who believes that this change only impacts the Mac dramatically if at all. I lean towards the latter. Microsoft’s ecosystem is just too diverse and partner-focused for Windows and the PC to make this shift fully.

Lipstick on a pig

justme asks:

With the upcoming Sun Valley UI refresh, how do you think it will be presented? Presuming this update will be more than just icons, rounded corners and floating windows, will there be a tutorial of sorts to walk you through the changes? I am reminded of the jarring experience that was Metro on Windows 8, with the (initially, at least) inability to revert to and remain on the more conventional desktop and lack of start menu. I am wary of this update, as I can see Microsoft trying to force either the “Teams-ification” of the desktop or the 10X UI, neither of which I am a fan of.

This is probably the central concern for Windows fans right now: Is Sun Valley just a UX overall and, if so, will it be truly consistent from top to bottom, or is it part of a bigger update that includes other changes to Windows? We can’t really debate this per se, since we’d all just be guessing. But I think that whenever Sun Valley appears—21H2 being the most obvious time—that that will be the only major change. And that it won’t be as thorough an overall as we’d all like, but rather a reasonable repainting of most but not all UIs in Windows. I also think that’s fine, really. We’ll all have a good time finding the legacy UIs that continue post-Sun Valley, but a UX refresh is still important and needed to help Windows feel more modern. If you look at how nice macOS Big Sur is, and how nice Android 12 should be, it’s not hard to imagine a similar visual refresh for Windows 10.

I don’t think it will have the problems Windows 8 did, since Microsoft was trying to hide the legacy UIs, and the new UX they came up with wasn’t fully formed or particularly sophisticated. With Sun Valley, I don’t expect the core desktop UI to change at, we’ll still have a Start button, Start menu, taskbar, desktop and so on. They’ll just look better.

That’s my guess, anyway. Based on rumors and leaks and common sense, meaning that we all have enough experience with Microsoft to know they’ll never really overhaul this thing in any meaningful, architectural way.

Linux

justme also asks:

One more for you: a couple weeks ago on Windows Weekly, you mentioned you were in the process of choosing a Linux distribution to use for an upcoming series. I was just curious if you had made the decision as to which distro you’ll use, and if you could give us any more details about what you are planning.

I’ve not settled on a distribution yet, but I’ve been experimenting with a few. I just want to look at the state of the Linux desktop and see how well my workflows work on the platform and whether it can make sense as a general purpose computing platform (as opposed to something for developers and IT admins). But I also have a web apps angle. I mentioned last week that I have a series coming about web apps, and I’m wondering if switching mostly web apps would make Linux more viable as a platform for those that feel constrained by Chromebooks.

I hope to get these things rolling soon.

Should also note that wright_is and justme also had some advice around Linux distributons—Pop_OS!, PiOS (Debian, which I assume is Raspberry Pi-based) and Manjaro. Pop_OS! and Manjaro are top contenders, as it turns out.

The next move

madthinus asks:

So I was interested to read that 4 years after your previous move you are ready to uproot again. I am between houses, a painful story in itself. Was interested to hear what the criteria is, what you are looking for in the location and house.

I wrote about this in this past week’s Premium newsletter, if you didn’t see it. As is so often the case, I started writing with one idea in mind—in this case, something about decision making—and then it took on a life of its own, and it ended up just being about what we’re doing. I’m always unsure how useful or interesting these kinds of things are to others, but I also feel like Premium is an opportunity to have more personal conversations, so… here we are.

The thing is, we still haven’t told most of our friends and family what our plans are. So you could view my blurting this out in the Premium newsletter as a relatively safe way to bare my soul to an audience who probably won’t be contacting my brother or mother, or whomever, to ruin the news. Which in some cases won’t be taken positively: We already have a set of friends and family who felt burned by us moving to Pennsylvania, and now we’re going to do that again to another (if smaller) set of friends and family there. It’s kind of a dicey thing because we have to do what we feel is right for us, obviously, but we also want to keep other people’s feelings in mind, etc. We’re in Boston now, as noted, so we’re going to explain our plans to some family and friends during this trip for the first time.

For me, the big deal is that we made a decision, and have a clear timeline, and we have things to do to prepare for that. I need that certainty.

But we don’t know where we’re going next. I think I wrote that we have some ideas, which we do, and there are several different scenarios/possibilities. We really want to split our time between multiple places, which complicates things. And we really want something international to be part of it. But there are also stages for getting from here to there, so to speak. Before the pandemic, my wife and I figured we’d start doing more home swaps but during the non-summer months when the kids are away at school. And that, over time, we would spend more and more time traveling (i.e. not being “home”).

The pandemic screwed that up, at least temporarily. But we want to shift into that mode now, if possible, and research places we might want to spend more time. We need a permanent base of some kind, of course. We want it to be smaller and we don’t want a mortgage.

I will discuss possible places at a later time. But I can’t live in the U.S. deep south (Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and most of Georgia) because I can’t deal with the heat/humidity, even in the winter. North and South Carolina, Tennessee, maybe Kentucky, and parts of Georgia are of interest, at least for places we’d want to be during the winter-side six months. But we would also consider swapping that and living further north, or in Colorado, for summer, and travel more in the winter, often to warmer places.

My wife suggested we could buy a place internationally and use that as the base, and travel in the off months in the US instead, and depending on the country, that could make financial sense. But we just don’t know yet. So we’ll look around and figure it out. Our friends and family are going to have their own ideas about what that looks like. We’ll factor that in, but we have to do what’s right for us.

Basically, the where bit is still unclear. We’ve only settled on when.

URL shortening

afotakel asks:

I recently realized that it looks like Edge (for desktop) is still missing a good option for sharing pages / URLs. For a URL to be shared, via email, messenger, Viber etc, either a copy past (!!) is needed or an extension. I am surprised that such a trivial thing has been missed so maybe I am missing something?

I’m surprised this isn’t a feature, too, if only an optional one. I know that Google has experimented with doing this in Chrome, and it may be telling that they’ve not pulled the trigger; maybe this is concerning to some users, too. There are URL shortening extensions, of course, that we can use in the meantime.