Ask Paul: June 21 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and Happy First Day of Summer (at least here in the Northern hemisphere). Here’s another Ask Paul to get the weekend started.
More early Microsoft content
SRRLX1986 asks:

So the Prehistory: Programming windows articles made me want to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley again. Do you recommend any other technology related movies, documentary or fictional?

There isn’t too much from the early days, unfortunately. Triumph of the Nerds is worth seeking out. I would look up old Computer Chronicles episodes on YouTube; like old issues of Byte, it’s kind of fun to pick through favorite topics. I used to have a big collection of Microsoft history books, mostly from the pre-2000 time periods, but I got rid of all that years ago. I’ve been re-researching that stuff for the series and will hopefully get a good list together at some point.
Containers
Vladimir asks:

I was following the discussion on containers in windows. Do you think in the future it will be possible to run containers in the cloud and stream them to your device? The dream would be a very light machine, always connected with long battery life.

Yes. But any such solution will mostly be for backward compatibility. For new apps, native or web makes a lot more sense and I think that will always be the case. Always-Connected PCs running on ARM are, in some ways, our first glimpse at that future.
PCs for college
jwpear asks:

Have family getting ready to start college this fall. What moderately priced laptops do you recommend for something durable enough to get them through 4-5 years?

“Moderately priced” and “will last 4-5 years” are a tough combination, given that this PC will be heavily used for that entire period of time. With a typical 4-year public school education costing over $100,000, maybe a better approach would be to think of this as an investment in your child’s future, and spend more to get more. I think the sweet spot is about $1000 to $1200 for something that will really be high quality and will last.

I’m not sure I have specific models to recommend per se---I do review several PCs every year, but that’s still a far cry from the 100s of models available---but I have some thoughts on companies and specifications. I’d stick to the major players---Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple---and to Microsoft, too. I would look for 8th-generation Intel Core i5 or better, 8 GB of RAM for most students (16 GB for engineers, developers, graphic artists, or the like), and 256 GB of SSD storage. A Full HD (1080p) display should be fine, but if a Quad HD (essentially 1440p) or 4K/UHD display can be had in the price range you’re looking for, consider the battery life implications before upgrading.

Tech enthusiasts naturally dump on Microsoft for not moving quickly to new tech like Thunderbolt 3. But the Surface Laptop 2 and Surface Book 2 are among the best PCs I’ve ever used. If you can live with the single USB port on the former, it would...