Ask Paul: January 7 (Premium)

Happy New everyone! Here is our first Ask Paul of 2022 so we can kick off the weekend early with some great reader questions.
Too many connection attempts
sherlockholmes asks:

I have a weird problem with my Windows account on Windows 11. I got the error in the settings app "Too many connect attempts. Try again". Any idea what could caused that? Thanks.

I’ve never seen this, but it could be concerning. So it’s probably a good idea to do a bit of troubleshooting. I’d start with trying to sign in to your Microsoft account on the Microsoft account website. Assuming that is successful, you can navigate to Security > Sign-in activity to see whether there is any suspicious activity in the recent activity list.

I assume your account is protected with two-step verification, etc. and that you have multiple verification options configured. If not, visit Security > Advanced security options and do so. It’s not a bad idea to check over these settings from time to time regardless.
Pixel 6, Tensor, and benchmarks
wright_is asks:

I posted in the forum (although it has yet to appear, so I'm guessing that is due to spam precautions and it is waiting to be cleared), that the Google Tensor SoC seems to have really bad performance, compared to its rivals (about a third slower than other Android flagships, using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or the Galaxy S21 Ultra, with its Exynos 2100 SoC.

Sorry about that. The post is available now.

I'm guessing in day-to-day use, that it is fast enough. But did Google make a mistake releasing the chip this early? Should they have kept it in-house for a generation, until its performance was on a par with its competitors?

For all my complaints about the Pixel 6 Pro, performance is not one of them. In fact, the performance is spectacular. Here, I’ll just fall back on my running argument against benchmarks, which is many-fold: they do not measure real-world performance, I feel that many chipset makers optimize their products for these benchmarks, and that overly-relying on benchmarks as a reviewer is lazy (how many reviews have you seen where 80 percent of them is just benchmark graphs?). What’s it really like?

Could it also be first generation teething problems with the Tensor that are causing the delays in the Android updates for the Pixel 6?

Interesting.

This is just an opinion, but I don’t believe so: I think there are many, many problems with the Pixel 6 series, and what we’ve heard about this delay is that early upgraders experienced communication issues, which is obviously job one on a smartphone. But as far as Google waiting longer, etc., it’s pretty clear in retrospect that the mid-range Pixels that it released in 2020-2021 (the Pixel 4a, 5, 4a with 5G, 5a) were cost-saving stop-gap measures so that Google could get Tensor where it wanted it. And, sure, it’s reasonable to expect big improvements in subsequent generations. But I’ve never once experienced a stut...

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