Ask Paul: September 25 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s an early start to the weekend and a look ahead to a new week that will be my first time off since the pandemic began.

Next week

Just a quick heads-up that I’ll be out most of next week. We’re driving our daughter to college in Charlotte, North Carolina on Sunday and will make a little road trip out of it. We’ll be in Charlotte Sunday and Monday night, Asheville on Tuesday and Wednesday night, Harrisonburg, VA on Thursday night, and then home on Friday.

Podcast-wise, Brad and I will do First Ring Daily Tuesday and Wednesday only next week, and I’ll do Windows Weekly on Wednesday.

And I’ll write something each day as needed, of course. But I’m going to try and take some time off as well. Long overdue, as it is for everyone, I bet. Hopefully, it will help.

Xbox Series S and X thermals

A few weeks back, someone asked me how much power the new Xbox consoles consume. I asked Microsoft and they told me that they typically release that information several weeks after a console launches. They have nothing to say about this now.

Teams for consumers

dougone asks:

What is the status of Teams for consumers?

Right now, you can use Teams as an individual with your Microsoft account on mobile in preview, and it seems to work fine. But I assume that functionality is coming to desktop soon as well. I’m not sure if there will ever literally be a separate Teams for consumers app, but I suspect not.

Family calendars broken

staganyi asks:

If you can get more info on Microsoft breaking the ms365 family calendar on desktop calendar/outlook apps and on mobile if not using outlook. If/when they plan on fixing it. Thanks.

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about this, and from what I can see from this support document that appeared September 6, Microsoft at some point recently turned off support for family calendars everywhere but Outlook.com and Outlook mobile. I assume that means that these calendars are not available in Outlook on desktop, Calendar for Windows 10, or any third-party app. That suggests they’re not fixing it. I will ask Microsoft about this.

Sony still makes smartphones

Eagle asks:

Do you have any initial thoughts on the Sony Xperia 5 II? Would you have any reservations with choosing a Sony phone?

I’m surprised that Sony doesn’t have a bigger presence in this market given that they’re a key supplier of camera lenses and have a rich history in consumer electronics. And while I normally don’t pay too much attention to what they’re doing, I did check up on the Xperia 5 II a few days ago and it seems solid, especially in the camera department. But Sony handsets aren’t very common in the U.S. and I’m not sure I’d go down that path unless I saw a lot of positive reviews and it made sense financially. $950 is a bit stiff for an unknown quantity.

It is almost time for me to upgrade to a new phone after 3 years (phone shutting down when it gets to about 33% battery life). I feel a bit burned by Google since I was planning on upgrading to a Pixel. That changed when Google went with the Snapdragon 765G for the Pixel 5. I feel underwhelmed by the stock android flagships, and the Sony Xperia 5 II seems to check most of the right boxes. Luckily, I have some time to wait for reviews and launches. Is there any current or upcoming stock android phone with flagship specs I should be looking into?

I’m with you on the Pixel 5. I would look at the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, which I’m considering myself, if the S20/S20 Ultra or Note 20/Note 20 Ultra are too expensive. I’m curious to see if OnePlus gets the camera right with the OnePlus 8T, because that could be a solid choice if so. And it sounds like you’re an Android fan, but the iPhone 12 Pro might be interesting too. That’s most of what’s interesting this season, at least to me.

What’s a monopoly?

Harrymyhre asks:

IBM had MVS, system 36, system 38, as/400 , vm operating systems. And more. They owned that hardware and the operating systems. They write applications software on those systems – PROFS. Db2 is an application. CICS is an application … DOJ said that was a monopoly.

Apple [has] Mac OS, iOS, Watch os, Mac hardware, iPhone, The watch, [and] plenty of apps. Why does doj give apple a pass?

I wouldn’t say that the DOJ is giving Apple a pass, at least not anymore. The company is currently being investigated for antitrust abuses, and thanks to the related investigations in Europe and elsewhere, and several other legal cases, it will almost certainly be forced to change its unfair business practices. These things move slowly.

But as Chris noted in the comments, the world is so different today than when IBM (or Microsoft) was under investigation. Apple is one of several big players—with Amazon, Facebook, Google, and possibly even Microsoft—that controls vast swaths of personal computing, and it’s clear that this market power will be checked. But there’s no reason Apple can’t control its own hardware, services, and apps. It just can’t abuse its power by harming competitors and consumers as it has been doing in recent years.

Walk-on

bschnatt asks:

So, everyone knows you’ve done cameos on Family Guy (ahem), but would you do a REAL cameo (or even a longer role) in a live action TV show? If Jim Gaffigan can do it, there’s nothing keeping you from doing it 😉 Imagine Paul Thurrott playing a zombie on The Walking Dead, or a cynical CEO of a social networking company…

For those unfamiliar, he’s referring to Justin Solvato’s funny Family Guy/Windows Weekly/FRD mash-ups, which are posted on Twitter. (For example, here, here, and here.)

But … no. 🙂

Not an actor, not a singer, not an entertainer in any way.

Xbox cloud streaming + Android TV

vernonlvincent asks:

Are there any Android TV devices that support Microsoft xCloud? After the not-unexpected decision by Apple to deny xCloud from being in their store for whatever made-up reason they want – I am looking at Android TV again as a sort of XBOX Series Lite if there is a device that will run xCloud.

Not to my knowledge, but that has to be coming. I would want to use that as well.

Review laptops

Nic asks:

You’ve reviewed a whole lot of laptops over the years – what is the one machine you most regret having to send back after testing it out?

The thing I regret most is having to send them back. Not because I necessarily want to keep them, but because It’s a pain to manage all that. Every once in awhile, I’ll send several of them back at once because I procrastinate so much. I know, first-world problems.

This year, the hardest one was the Dell XPS 13, but then I got the Dell XPS 15 and then one will take the prize. I feel like the next laptop I buy will be a 15-incher, and that’s on the shortlist (with the HP Envy 15).

In the past, there were some sweet ThinkPads I’ve only begrudgingly returned, especially the X1 Carbons and X1 Yogas.

Xbox Series S/X storage

darkgrayknight asks:

Will there be any additional ways to store games on the new xbox series X/s? 2TB does not seem like enough with the size of current games. My wife has an Xbox One S with 1 TB and run into issues with storage all the time. I haven’t added a second hard drive yet, as I have an Xbox One X that is my primary gaming system with an external drive. Since she doesn’t play many games, we have to manage it regularly unloading non-played games and re-downloading games when we want to play them. If we have to manage which games are on which drives in order to play them, this becomes a mess.

Sort of.

You must use the internal storage or an expansion card (both of which are based on modern, high-end PCIe-based SSDs) if you want to play a game that was optimized for the new consoles. But you can store and play any compatible (previous-generation) Xbox game off of an external USB 3.1-based hard drive.

The good news? You can store but not play optimized games on USB as well, and transfer them to SSD to play them. This information comes from Microsoft, which notes that “You can … use USB 3.1 storage to store next generation games, optimized to take full advantage of the Xbox Velocity Architecture, for quick transfer and play on Series X|S.”

I suspect we’ll see bigger capacity expansion cards in the future too. And of course, prices can only come down over time.