Ask Paul: December 13 (Premium)

Happy Friday the 13th! It's time to kick off the weekend a bit early with another stellar round of reader questions. I'll do my best.
ALTernate lifestyles
wright_is asks:

On Windows Weekly, you said that Copilot is co-opting the "window menu" shortcut (Alt+Space), probably one of the biggest life-savers in Windows' shortcuts. Where is that moving to?

This was based on the Microsoft blog post announcing the new "native" version of Copilot that's now rolling out to all Insider channels. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Windows Insider Program, but they are unable to communicate clearly. So I don't know.

It appears that this keyboard shortcut could change, and why they don't just use the now-unused Winkey + C shortcut that Copilot originally used is unclear. But there is this note.
The Copilot app for Windows uses the RegisterHotKey function for the Alt + Space keyboard shortcut. Many apps use this keyboard shortcut today. For any apps installed on your PC that might utilize this keyboard shortcut, Windows will register whichever app is launched first on your PC and running in the background as the app that is invoked when using Alt + Space.
That doesn't address the window menu usage, but rather third-party apps (and even Microsoft apps, like PowerToys Run) that override this shortcut. (I change PowerToys Run to use Winkey + Space specifically because I, too, use Alt + Space for the window menu all the time.)

My guess is that this will change. But all we can do is guess. Because communication is hard for these people and the Windows team doesn't seem to understand the product they're responsible for now, and it will get a lot of negative feedback for all the obvious reasons.
This is what people who have never used Snapdragon X don't understand
will asks:

After having used a Snapdragon laptop for the past month I noticed just how smooth Windows performs. Yes battery life is amazing, but there are so many little details that just perform better. Take windows resizing, it is smooth and fluid. Just logging into to the system is faster and Windows Hello facial performs near instantaneous vs a new Intel laptop running the same stuff. I am curious, has Microsoft been optimizing and making Windows on ARM that much better? It’s almost like it’s a different version of the OS when you use it daily compared to a x86 version. It’s hard to explain just how relaxing it is to use Windows like this.

Exactly.

But no, this isn't Microsoft working to improve this functionality only on Arm. This is Arm being the superior platform and just working reliably. And it's precisely what the Arm haters don't understand: This platform just works better. Is better.

This isn't anecdotal. I review over a dozen laptops every year, and I have over 20 PCs here that I keep up-to-date. I have four brand-new laptops in-house right now, three running the latest Intel chips and one running the latest AMD chips. And while these are an improvement...