Ask Paul: March 18 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another great set of reader questions—with some consistent concerns, go figure—to kick off the weekend.

Reminder: GET-IT virtual conference is next Thursday

Nobody asked me about this, but I did want to remind everyone that Russell Smith and I will be co-hosting Petri’s free GET-IT Microsoft 365 Collaboration and Productivity Accelerator for IT Pros virtual conference next Thursday, March 24. This is an all-day event that runs from 9:20 am ET to 3:30 pm ET, and we’ve got some great speakers and sessions lined up, including a few I know like Michael Reinders and Shane Young. Here’s the official description:

The Petri.com Microsoft 365 Collaboration and Productivity Accelerator for IT Pros 1-Day virtual conference brings 7 sessions from industry experts, Microsoft Valuable Professionals (MVP), and Microsoft’s customers that are designed to help IT pros understand and get the most out of the collaborative features in Microsoft 365. Instead of focusing on the technical ‘how-to’ of implementing and managing Microsoft 365, these sessions provide a deep dive into how Microsoft 365 apps can be used to solve business problems and how IT pros can champion their use with business leaders and users.

It should be educational and entertaining. And did I mention it was free? Please do take a look.

Thanks! –Paul

TSA Pre vs. Clear

eeisner asks:

As a frequent traveler, how do you feel about Clear vs TSA Pre from a data security standpoint? Do you worry about Clear potentially being at risk to a data breach like Equifax, or do you trust them on the same level/more than someone like LastPass?

I have to kind of cast my mind back a bit here. Clear used to be something I only saw in Denver, back when I used to go there a lot for work, while TSA Pre was available basically everywhere. And so I went with TSA Pre. I do recall a few times in Denver looking at the lines and thinking I might have been better off with Clear on occasion, but on the whole it was the better choice for me. Even today, I do see Clear sometimes, but not always. (And I guess TSA Pre and Clear technically offer slightly different services, but the general goal is the same: get from outside security to your gate as quickly as possible. And it’s worth noting that Clear is significantly more expensive than TSA Pre, which probably at least partially explains why I never got both.)

I don’t have any real opinion from a trust perspective, They’re obviously a standalone company, and not part of the government, but it’s all biometric-based, etc. so I guess I would trust the service enough to use it. (In the battle of convenience vs. security, the former always wins with the public, and in this case, for me, convenience at the airport is job one when traveling.)

The mistake I made was not getting Global Entry sooner, given how much I typically travel outside the country. Global Entry isn’t even that much more expensive than TSA Pre, but it gives you all of the benefits of TSA Pre—expedited security into the airport (in the U.S.)—plus an incredible expedited customs experience when you return to the United States from another country.

On each of our last five trips home from Mexico/Europe this past year, we walked from the plane into an empty or nearly empty customs area at Newark Liberty, walked up to a Global Entry machine with no lines, took our picture, printed out a piece of paper, handed it to a guy, and walked on out. It’s the easiest, fastest thing imaginable, and a far cry from our horrific customs experiences in the past. Just amazing. Sometimes I have a positive airport experience where I’ll mention that this is “like traveling before 9/11” because it’s so good. Global Entry is better than that.

Anyway. Regarding TSA Pre vs. Clear. Get TSA Pre (or Global Entry), it’s a no-brainer. And then assess the need/availability of Clear where you travel to/from and go from there.

A new Windows 11 fail

cwfinn asks:

How concerning is “Background Task Host Failing” in Windows 11 and if it’s a concern, how can it be fixed? Started a week ago and happens several times daily. It doesn’t seem to have affected anything but…,?

I’ve never experienced this, and from what I can tell it’s not specific to Windows 11 (meaning it happens on Windows 10, etc. as well), and is typically triggered by third-party apps. (One might make the argument that there are apps that did not trigger this in Windows 10 but do in Windows 11. That’s definitely possible.) The general advice, which is useless, seems to be to uninstall the app in question. But obviously, most people are using whatever apps for a reason, so that’s not a great solution. If you upgraded to Windows 11, however, it may be worth uninstalling the app that’s causing this and then reinstalling it.

Can you at least tell which app is triggering this error?

Embracing Linux

bschnatt asks:

I realize your complaints about Windows (and Microsoft in general) are heartfelt and good fodder for your career (and Mary Jo’s), but I was thinking you could help push Microsoft in a better direction by enthusiastically embracing Linux (at least for certain use cases). Writing about good distributions, your experience with some of the better apps and how they’re better than XYZ from Microsoft might be a good cattle prod to a certain company in Redmond. Not a question, just a thought… 😉

So let’s see. 🙂

I have been testing Linux distributions again on a variety of hardware. I’ll be writing about that soon.

In general, I’ve long observed that Microsoft has done everything it can to drive me away from Windows, but I keep coming back because I dislike the competition even more. Just this week, I was playing with macOS, with its incredibly long install times for minor OS upgrades, Chrome OS Flex, and Linux (primarily Zorin OS), and there’s always something that is different/unfamiliar enough that I have difficulty sticking with it. For all its issue, Windows still sucks less, if you will. Or is at least more familiar and tied to my daily workflow. I will keep working on this.

More specifically, I probably irritate Microsoft enough as it is. I get some caustic commentary sometimes from executives and others there, and I’ve heard on more than one occasion that Panos Panay, in particular, is irritated with me. That’s fine. He can fix that by doing right by Windows for a change.

Qubes

bschnatt asks:

Actually, I do have a question. Have you ever looked into the Qubes operating system? It’s for hard-core privacy geeks (and not for the faint of heart). For those not aware, it’s a Xen-based hypervisor that lets you run multiple instances of operating systems in separate VMs (mainly targeting Linux), and it lets you open apps from different VMs in floating windows (making it fairly seamless).

I have not. But it sounds like Hyper-V Server on steroids in that you can mix and match apps from across compartments (I believe this is analogous to what Hyper-V calls partitions). I’ve always felt that this sort of thing was the end game, like the ability of Parallels Desktop on the Mac to surface individual Windows (or Linux) apps inside of macOS and alongside Mac apps. But mostly my head was more in the cloud streaming space, where you would run virtual apps in a cloud-hosted datacenter and have them appear locally on whatever device (as opposed to entire virtual desktop in a window, which isn’t ideal).

I will take a look at this, though, thanks. Here’s the site for anyone interested in it.

Money grab

erichk asks:

Hi Paul. Regarding Clipchamp and the cost for a subscription, I saw a quote from one of their customers on their website saying that they used to pay a whopping $140 per month for the competing video software that they *used* to use. Any reaction to that?

My initial reaction, literally, was to laugh out loud.

Though, as I was reading this, I was hoping you were going to tell me that Microsoft had communicated somewhere that Clipchamp’s current business model is unsustainable and that they will do right by paying Microsoft 365 customers soon.

Clipchamp is no more or less powerful than various free video editing solutions on the web, Android, or macOS (iMovie, which is superior). One obvious alternative on the PC is Adobe Premiere Elements, which can usually be had for under $100. And Movie Maker, which was terrific, was always free too. Ridiculous.

I hope Microsoft makes Clipchamp reasonable. Right now it’s a non-starter.

AMA

will asks:

Two things: First off I just wanted to say “Thank you” for all that you do and have done for reporting on Microsoft and technology.

Thank you.

Second, I wanted to see if there are any plans for another AMA live stream from the Thurrott team like you did awhile back? I think this was a Premium thing, but I could be wrong. Since in person events are possibly not going to happen much until 2023, I think it would be good to have a relaxed time with you and anyone else you had join for questions, laughs, and a good time.

Yes, I agree.

The first AMA we did (with Russell) was a test of sorts, just to see whether it made sense and could be done easily enough. But we (at BWW) had always intended for this to be more of a regular thing assuming there were no major issues. We’ve debated whether it should be just me, me with a regular co-host, or me with some rotating selection of other people, and I guess that’s not completely settled. But from my perspective, I would do this at least once a quarter for sure. I will ask about this at the next meeting. We will do more, for sure.

Portable displays

anoldamigauser asks:

Is that a Panos Panay action figure next to the speaker over your left shoulder during podcasts?

That’s Ryan Reynolds. Mint Mobile (which he owns) sends customers a holiday card every year, and that was in the card this past year.

Regarding your “more mobile” setup, have you looked at portable monitors so that the whole setup can go with you? I used a ThinkVision portable and it made remote work a lot easier, but that could have been a function of the work I was doing which would have been brutal on a single laptop screen. The fact that it added not much weight at all to my bag was a bonus, and it required just a single cable.

I have three portable displays here and have been meaning to write about this for a long, long time (in fact, predating the “More Mobile” series). The issue is, I just don’t like using two displays. I was able to adapt to using a laptop and its built-in display surprisingly well, but when I took the next logical step of adding a portable display to the mix, I just couldn’t do it. I can’t explain why per se. I just … don’t like it. Like I don’t like broccoli.

I guess I technically do use two displays in one sense: at my desk in my home office, I have whatever primary display, which I use with a PC, and then I have a separate display for the Xbox. I obviously don’t use the second display all day long, but I do prefer having those two things be separate. And were I to switch to PC gaming, or cloud gaming via the PC, it would be nice to still have that separation. (I feel like this may not work the way I want it to, but I did write a little bit about this in More Mobile: Gaming (Premium).

(What’s changed since then is that I did switch to an Xbox Series S, which is smaller and at least semi-portable. But I still use it with a big gaming display.)

Anyway. Like the Linux stuff above, this is something I keep going back to and experimenting with, but I’ve just never liked using multiple displays. And I’m fascinated by people who do use this configuration. When Richard Campbell visited right when the pandemic hit two years ago this month, I noticed that he was using a Surface Book with a USB-C portable display, and I did ask him about that. But every time I try it, I don’t know. It just doesn’t work well for me.

I will keep trying.

Phone

anderb asks:

What phone are you using this week?

I switched back to the iPhone 13 Pro when I got back from Mexico.

Critical apps

hrlngrv asks:

I realize your workflow is bound up in using Windows, but what software do you use which can only run under Windows (so not even Mac versions) with no practical macOS or Linux alternatives? For me it’s Excel, but nothing else.

There are three/four things.

The big one is OneDrive file system integration with On Demand. This is available on the Mac, which makes that platform easier to use, but there are also third-party solutions for Linux that I’m investigating now, like Insync. Maybe.

For writing, I use Word every day right now. But I had been using various Markdown editors and I recently started using Notion for the Windows Weekly notes, and so I experimented with using that for writing (primarily for the book so far) and it appears to output (copy/paste) to the web with no artifacts, so that could aid a transition to Linux. (There’s no desktop app on Linux, but the web app, which is identical, would work fine.)

The third one is graphics-related. There are two key apps here, Microsoft Paint and Affinity Photo. The first is not (to my knowledge) available on Mac or Linux, but I did find an app on Mac called Paint S that is perhaps close enough. I assume there are alternatives on Linux. Affinity Photo is an interesting case, as I had been using Adobe Photoshop Elements for years, and that transition was successful. It’s available on Mac, but I’d have to pay for it again. And for Linux, I would have to find something else, either a standalone app like The Gimp (not a fan) or perhaps a web-based editor.

When you look across these three things—document storage/access, writing, and graphics—that’s pretty much at the core of what I do every day. And it’s obvious I could make it work with some effort in each case. There are, for example, other cloud storage services that do offer Linux integration, like Dropbox (which is expensive). I feel like Notion would solve the writing thing (or maybe even the Office web apps). And graphics. I need to figure that out. But it’s a surmountable problem. I am literally working on this right now.

File Explorer alternatives

hrlngrv asks:

On a different tack re ads, what’d MSFT have to do to File Explorer for you to use a 3rd party alternative most of the time?

I feel like we’re on the cusp of something terrible with Windows. A lot of things that I find annoying in Windows (and Edge) today can at least be disabled or turned off. But there are indications that this may change. Consider, for example, Microsoft’s incredible and terrible response to third parties working around the onerous new Default Apps interface in Windows 11. What happens if Microsoft makes it impossible to disable these other terrible things?

With File Explorer specifically, let’s say Microsoft does start displaying ads there again. If this feature can be disabled, we’re good. I can publish a tip explaining how to get rid of that and I can add it to the book. But if this feature can’t be turned off, then we’re one step closer to me walking away for good. And in this case, that would mean using a third-party File Explorer alternative. If they do this enough throughout Windows, that will mean leaving the platform.

Related to this, spacein_vader also asks:

Given the uproar over the “accidental” insertion of ads into File Explorer and the fact that the software itself has barely been touched since Vista I wondered if you’d ever tried any 3rd party alternatives? Directory Opus is a paid version that’s been around forever and I’ve found a nice, clean app called simply Files in the Windows Store which works well and supports tabbed browsing. Tabs and the lack of a 2 pane layout option seem to be the major criticisms of File Explorer and have been for years. I can’t understand why MS has never addressed them.

Ah yes. I used Directory Opus on the Amiga, if you can believe that. I’ve tried something called Files, and it’s available in the Microsoft Store. It’s free, and open-source, and it works really well. And like Start11, it looks native, like something that came with Windows.

More Linux

justme asks:

I was surprised to see you mention you had used Zorin in this week’s Now What article. I am curious as to whether or not you were going to write up your Linux impressions, struggles, and results. I am particularly interested to hear your thoughts given how tied you are to Microsoft and WIndows.

Because I wrote about these topics above, I’ll just point you there. Yes, I’ll be writing about Linux soon. I will say that me being tied to Windows is kind of a two-fold thing. There are the apps I need/want to use, as noted above. And then there is just the basic UI and my familiarity with it and how I am more efficient using Windows because of that. Switching to another platform entirely can be difficult, but it’s something I am working through. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time over the years experimenting with this kind of thing. But I’ve always returned to or stuck with Windows.

Fixing Windows 11

justme also asks:

You’ve mentioned the excellent Start11 in various posts. Are there any other 3rd party programs you use to replace parts of Windows functionality?

No, but my primary issues with the Windows 11 user experience are shell-related, and Start11 has done a nice job of fixing the taskbar too, which I appreciate. But the person who created this solution, called Dock Folders, contacted me recently, and it does look interesting as well. Basically, a macOS feature applied to Windows.

Health wearables

helix2301 asks:

I wanted comment on something you wrote about while back as you have said about wearables and the Apple how they have changed things and how Tim Cooks legacy is health and privacy. I wear my Apple watch everyday I am not athlete by any means but I like the watch and wear it I go on walks and things like that but not a gym goer. Any because of wearing the watch everyday I noticed my in apple health my heart rate was high I went to the doctor and they found and issue and were able to give me meds to avoid a bigger issue down the road. To me this is an example of how wearable like you say have “made health more personal and available.”

First of all, that’s excellent. Don’t let my coming frivolity get in the way of that.

Part of my commentary on the Apple Watch is that Apple has done a tremendous job of marketing every single time someone has an experience like you did. But this type of thing is available on Fitbit and other wearables, too. The battle for the future is going to be around expanding the capabilities, doing more proactive detection, and hopefully being accurate about it. One thing that doesn’t get a lot of press, and I hear about this from my wife, who interviews doctors and others in medical, fitness, and wellness literally every day, is that Apple Watch and these other devices also lead to unnecessary doctor visits because people with too much data can freak out about nothing too. It’s always nice when a device saves someone’s life, or whatever. But there’s always that other side of the coin too.

On that note, my heart rate has been curiously and consistently low (mid-60s bpm) since we got back from Mexico. Not dangerously low, just low for me. But as I told my wife literally just today, Fitbit has figured out a way to raise it: it somehow managed to disable the feature that turns on the display when I raise and rotate my wrist. That it did this on its own so unlikely it’s amazing because that option is hard to find and even harder to change on the device. But God bless the little dickens, it found a way. I wish Apple would make a non-watch wearable. I really do.