Ask Paul: October 23 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and welcome to the fourth and penultimate edition of Ask Paul for October. Let’s kick off the weekend…

Office 365 wonkiness, Apple relationship

SherlockHolmes asks:

Hi Paul, for a few weeks now, I noticed some weird behavior with Office 365. For no special reason, Word and Outlook are opening very slowly and sometimes it needs two or more klicks to open at all. Do you know anything wrong about Office at this time?

No, sorry. I don’t use Outlook, but I do use Word every day and on multiple PCs and I’ve not seen any performance issues. I’d suspect the machine over the service, I guess.

And out of curiousity about your “special” relations with Apple: I can understand why someone finds Apple a bad company. But to be fair: Microsoft also made some bad choices in the past. And also Microsoft too does produce bad Updates for its OS. So how would you describe your relationship with Apple. Im curious because I recently made the switch to an iPhone and iPad.

My assessment of Apple, or any company, is based on what they’re doing now, not what they might have done in the past. But I hope it’s a sign of my objectivity that I can feel like Apple is a terrible company, with immoral and hypocritical values that directly contradict its advertising and chest-pounding, but still see the attraction of its hardware. There is so much wrong with Apple, I don’t even know where to start. But I evaluate (much of) it’s hardware and think, yep, I get it. It makes great hardware products.

To put this in historical context, I had a real crisis of faith with Microsoft during its U.S. antitrust era, as more and more internal documents came out and exposed how terrible the company really was. And I felt very strongly that the software giant deserved and needed to be broken up. And I’m still a lot less impressed with Bill Gates today as a result, though I do recognize that he has somewhat redeemed himself through his philanthropic and healthcare work.

What I don’t understand is why so many of Apple’s fans give the company a pass for its own terribleness today. And the big problem with Apple—and Amazon and Google and Facebook—is their respective terribleness impacts so many more people than Microsoft ever could back in the day. Meanwhile, today’s Microsoft isn’t even the same company it used to be. It’s a model I wish the rest of Big Tech would follow.

Mint and prepaid mobile plans

zcarter68w asks:

Like many people are probably doing, I am going through our budget to see where I can trim some of our expenses and of course, my cell phone plan is one that I would like to reduce. I am currently on an unlimited plan with AT&T but I’m not using enough data to warrant it. I have narrowed down my choices to two prepaid plans. AT&T offers 8 GB/month for $25/month, while Mint offers 12 GB for the same price, $25/month. My question is how have you liked Mint’s service? The only advantages I can think of that AT&T may have is data speed, and coverage but I am wondering if I will really notice. Curious how Mint compares to other carriers you have used. Definitely interested in making the switch.

I’m very happy with Mint and am planning on re-upping when it’s due. But a couple of thoughts…

Thanks to COVID-19, I can’t say that I’ve done a lot of traveling, so my experiences outside my general area are limited. Mint uses T-Mobile, so I suspect it’s fine. But I can’t say for sure. I didn’t have any connectivity issues when we drove to North Caroline, in fact, I saw some 5G connectivity.

Which is a point in Mint’s favor: All of its plans provide 5G for free where it’s available. (I’m not sure how AT&T handles this.)

But the nice thing here is that cellular pay-as-you-go plans benefit from the same niceties we see with cord-cutting services and other subscriptions: You’re not bound to an annual contract or whatever, and you’re free to move your number whenever you want, and as often as you want. So if you try Mint and don’t like it, you can leave. And if you’re worried about that, just try one of the shorter plans first.

This is the sort of thing I usually stress over, but my experiences moving my number from AT&T to Google Fi and then most recently to Mint have always been positive and basically instantaneous.

Boo!

ErichK asks:

Hi Paul, on the lighter side of things, now that Halloween is coming up, any chance we can convince Mary Jo to wear the Notepad icon as a costume? 😉

I think getting Brad in the Clippy costume is as close as we’re going to get, sorry. 🙂 Maybe a Linux penguin?

2004 to 20H2

madthinus asks:

So 20H2: When is the enablement package being deployed for 2004? Is that also throttled? I am not seeing it on any of my computers. All running 2004 and fully patched. Also, nothing says confidence than an insider build of the just released product with list a mile long of issues fixed. Is this a soft launch with Patch Tuesday the real launch? WTF is going on with the Windows team?

My understanding was that those on Windows 10 version 2004 will typically be offered 20H2 immediately when checking manually since these two versions are really the same version and should have exactly the right hardware compatibility.

That said, I decided to re-read Microsoft’s blog post about this release. And while it does mention that those running Windows 10 version 2004 will have the fastest upgrade experience, it doesn’t say anything about their eligibility being better. Instead, it simply says that 20H2 is available initially for “select devices running Windows 10 version 1903 or later.” It seems like the throttling would be more for those on 1903 and 1909 since they’re likely experiencing a blocker (for 2004, and now for 20H2) anyway.

So, yeah, I guess we can think of it as a soft launch since it’s only going out to seekers. And I think Patch Tuesday marking some next-step release milestone makes sense. But … does the Windows team ever really make sense these days?

Phishing for an answer about Outlook.com

will asks:

What is going on with Outlook.com and junk emails showing up in the Inbox? This is a topic that was raised on the site, and honestly I thought it was something I did on my end that has allowed so much obvious junk email to start showing up in my inbox, and it is very obvious it is junk email. Curious if you have any insights or information to know what has changed in the past few months?

No, sorry. I just know that I’ve been getting fake emails from “Netflix,” “PayPal,” “Apple,” and others asking me to fix a payment method or whatever and wondering why this is happening since these emails are clearly malicious. Oddly, since tweeting a couple of nastygrams to @microsoft and @outlook a few days ago, it just as mysteriously stopped. But I keep checking every day and expect the fix to be temporary. It had been happening for weeks.

Linux and Hyper-V

OldITPro2000 asks:

Paul, about a month ago Microsoft submitted patches to the Linux kernel in an effort to allow Linux to be the root partition for a Hyper-V instance. My assumption is they are doing this strictly for performance reasons as most customer VMs on Azure run Linux. I’m interested in your thoughts here and was also curious to know if you heard anything about this. ZDNet ran an article on it but I didn’t see much chatter about it beyond that.

I hadn’t, but I was just discussing this with Mary Jo, who pointed me to the ZDNet article you reference and we think you’re right: That this change would improve the performance of Linux instances in Hyper-V on Azure, which makes sense as there are more Linux instances than Windows Server instances.

Kangaroo PC

Clarkb asks:

Do you still use your Kangaroo PC? Back in 2016 you posted an article about ordering the upgraded version of the Kangaroo and had thoughts that “this might make a very interesting living room device.” I have the original hooked up to a TV in an exercise room but added a Fire Stick last year so haven’t used it in a while. Was checking it recently and the battery had swelled and popped the back of the case. Made me think of your article and wondered if yours is still in use.

No. And I hadn’t honestly thought of this thing in a very long time, and now I’m wondering where it even is. I do semi-regular purges of old/unused tech, but I don’t recall coming across this. Hm.

I actually first wrote about the Kangaroo back in 2015, and followed that up with the article I think you’re referencing and then one about a portable version. But it appears that this product line has since been discontinued.

I’ll see if I can find it.

Virtual reality/Augmented reality and mini PCs

bschnatt asks:

Have you tried to incorporate VR into your daily regimen in any way, shape or form (design, gaming, etc)? Personally, I would never use standard VR because of the eye strain issue, but the HoloLens is very tempting because of the ability to “put a PC in front of your eyes”. I’ve often wanted to start up Windows Weekly (or some other obviously lesser podcast) and continue to watch it while walking down into the kitchen without having to tie up my hands. Do you think we’ll ever see a cheaper HoloLens competitor (or a cheaper HoloLens) come around?

I’ve not, but I don’t think VR or AR has any role in my day-to-day work. I see VR as mostly for entertainment whereas HoloLens is perhaps more productivity-focused. Just not for writing or traditional knowledge worker-type work.

You’ve reminded me of an early AR/MR demo in which a playing video was mapped to a picture frame in a real room and as you moved around, it would “stick” there and work normally. I could see something like that happening, where that video moves from location to location as you literally move around a house.

I’ve often dreamed of being able to buy a stick PC (or very small NUC) and use that as my main computer (including development, gaming), but I have yet to see one that is powerful enough, equipped with enough storage and memory, or small enough to fit the bill. (That’s why Dex and Continuum really piqued my interest – too bad neither uses Windows.) What’s the latest progress on that front? I’ve been the victim of theft too many times, and hate having to worry whether someone’s gonna rip off an expensive laptop or desktop PC. It would be great to shove my “daily driver” PC into my jean pocket and walk off. (Obviously, I could still lose a keyboard and monitor in a burglary, but this is still preferable to having to buy a new laptop and take 2 or 3 days to fully configure it the way I need to…)

This is an interesting follow-up to the Kangaroo PC question, and I have likewise always been interested in this kind of thing, though the “stick” PCs I’ve used have always come up short and that type of product seems to have disappeared. I feel like a more likely future is that everything is cloud-based and you authenticate against screens/hidden PCs in different places (cafes, libraries, an airline seatback, your TV) and then gain access to all of your documents and other content and can work from anywhere. It’s kind of a Star Trek-like vision of the future, I guess.

The end of charging ports?

helix2301 asks:

Leo and Rene said that the new iPhone 12 charging magnet could be the start of Apple removing the charging port have you heard anything about this and do you think this might be on the roadmap for Apple. Then all headphones and accessories would need to be bluetooth or wireless.

Yeah, Andrew and I discussed this same idea on What the Tech yesterday and I do think that the MagSafe technology in iPhone 12 is the first step to a future in which the iPhone (and other Apple devices) no longer have physical charging ports. What I said was that everyone keeps waiting for Apple to replace Lightning with USB-C but that the more likely outcome is that Apple replaces Lightning with “nothing” (meaning MagSafe). I don’t believe MagSafe has any data transfer capabilities, however, and that could be a sticking point in the short term.

But this is so Apple: They moved quickly on removing the headphone jack, and I could see them taking this step as well.

Shared family calendars, again

staganyi asks:

Last go around on the shared family calendar fiasco. Can you find out what’s Microsoft plans for the built in calendar app and the ability to add calendar events when clicking the date in the taskbar to support the new family calendar. Or should I just create a new shared calendar and move on with my life lol.

I can ask, yes. But I don’t see Microsoft fixing this, sorry. It seems purposeful.

Windows 10 on ARM or Windows 10X?

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Windows 10X…any news? any thoughts?

No news. And while this isn’t a new thought per se, I don’t see how Microsoft can ship another Windows product that doesn’t run some or all Windows apps. We know the hang-ups are compatibility and performance. And I don’t see this happening until both are fixed. If they do ship Windows 10X without Win32 compatibility, it’s over.

And not to be a jerk about it, but Windows 10X looks terrible. This is not an attractive or modern UI at all.

Would you rather, Windows 10X or Windows on ARM?

Windows 10 on ARM. If they can figure out 64-bit x86 applications—first by making them compatible and then by making the performance adequate—this platform will finally make sense.

That said, doesn’t Windows 10X seem like the type of thing that might make even more sense on ARM than on Intel/x86 PCs?

Long-term reviews

Daninbusiness asks:

In the interest of longer-term reviews – what kind of battery life are you really getting on most of your “daily driver” PCs after 1-2 years? I see the 9-19 hour figures mentioned in reviews (granted, those are with new batteries and what I assume is a fairly pristine state of the OS) and am finding that my real-life experience rarely comes close.

Most of the PCs I’ve reviewed probably come in between 50 and 65 percent of the claimed battery life at the time of the review. Those higher figures are almost always for local or streamed video playback.

Longer-term data is a bit tough as I tend to move from PC to PC. But there is one notable exception: In February 2019, I got an HP EliteBook x360 140 G5, and I eventually reviewed it in June 2019. More to the point, I’ve continued using it and have never reset it because it’s one of my favorite PCs and I’ve used it for a lot of the software development projects I did over the past year.

What I noticed over time, at least in part because I was using it mostly with Visual Studio and Android Studio, which aren’t exactly good for battery life, is that the battery life was way down over time. Or at that’s how I perceived it. What I had written in my original review was:

HP claims 17 hours of battery life, but that’s for video playback on the model with the low-end Full HD display. My review unit came with a 4K display, which is rated for far less battery life. And while I no longer test video playback, I did observe an average of 4:35 of real-world battery life, with a high of 9 hours and 45 minutes, over four months of use. As important, the EliteBook x360 1040 supports fast charging via its 65-watt USB-C-based charger. You can achieve an incredible 50 percent charge in just 30 minutes of charge time.

Looking at a new battery report, I see that the average battery life is now 4:22. So still terrible, but not as different as I had thought. (The best battery life it’s reported since November 2019 is about 5:32, and the worst is about 3:44.)

Premium renewal

Scottbrownphd asks:

Hi Paul, My premium subscription renewed today. What brand of whiskey will you purchase with your hard-earned wealth?

I don’t benefit directly when anyone pays for Premium or upgrades, but thank you: I at least have a job. 🙂

WSL 2 issues

proftheory asks:

Was WSL2 fixed in the 20H2 rollout?

This was fixed in version 2004 ahead of the 20H2 rollout, so it should be fine in 20H2 as well.