Ask Paul: September 16 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another great set of reader questions to kick off the weekend before the Windows 11 22H2 launch a bit early.

PC longevity

ErichK asks:

Hey Paul, where do you see PCs in about five years? I ask because a couple years ago I bought a prebuilt Core i7 system from Micro Center, and I’m so happy with it, I can’t imagine I would need to upgrade it anytime soon. And it’s already so fast… I mean, I got 32 GB of RAM, I run games at 1440p, etc., etc. Sometimes I worry that someday, we’re going to need to put 128 GB of RAM in our machines in order to run Outlook.

I don’t think you have much to worry about: Microsoft did raise the minimum requirements for Windows 11 (mostly artificially), but they’re still ridiculously low-end (dual-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage) and far below what I recommend (16 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage minimum). Plus, your PC is upgradeable should your RAM, storage, and graphics (and, to some degree, CPU) needs evolve.

But there are other trends at play here too. For example, PC reliability has gone up dramatically, and that means that PCs will remain viable for longer, both from a real-world usage perspective and from a software perspective; the only thing that could screw the latter up is another Microsoft shift years down the road that would prevent you from installing some future version of Windows on that PC because of its CPU or whatever. But that is unlikely and/or far off.

We discussed a related issue on Windows Weekly this past week when we debated convertible/2-in-1/tablet PCs vs. traditional laptops, and I noted that PC makers make a disproportionate number of these transforming PCs despite the fact that so few need or want those capabilities (smartpen, tablet form factor with touch, etc.) From most buyers’ perspective, I assume these things are aspirational—you never know, maybe I will use those features someday—but for PC makers, they’re higher margin, which I think really explains why it happens. (Don’t misunderstand if you like/need this kind of PC, I’m not saying they shouldn’t exist, only that most people would be better served by a traditional laptop.)

The pandemic created an artificial need for more PCs over the past few years, and we’re seeing that dying down, and PC sales should return to whatever healthy level going forward. So the only way that Microsoft and PC makers can try to generate more upgrade desire going forward is to put some exciting new features into Windows and to make new form factors like folding PCs. The introduction of such things doesn’t impact you and your PC, nor does it impact most people. But they could be a driver for some to upgrade for sure.

But really, the folding PCs of the next five years will be a lot like the Tablet PCs of the early 2000s: interesting, for sure, but it’s not clear whether they will drive a new wave and grow the market. We’ll see, but the Tablet PC failed in that regard. And they’re still pimping its successors today, regardless. I guess this kind of thing has emerged as the one big differentiator between the PC and the Mac, though it’s worth pointing out that Chromebook users have plenty of convertible/2-in-1 choices if they want such a thing.

Obviously, if you are gaming on that PC, and if gaming is a primary function, you’ll be on a quicker upgrade path. But again, you accounted for that by getting a desktop PC. You have some runway there.

Thanks!

spacecamel asks:

This is less of a question and more of a thank you, but I wanted to thank you and the talented team behind this site.  Y’all have made something pleasant to read and beautiful.  Considering what other sites have done this week, I look forward to reading your site daily and plan to be a paying subscriber for many more years.

Well, thank you.

Most—no, all—of the credit for the improvements that have happened here over the past several months goes to George Coll, our owner. He works tirelessly, regardless of what else is happening with the business or in his personal life, to improve matters. I see it in the work he does to improve the site in the face of adversity—Nick’s unexpected and sudden departure being an obvious example that some on the outside may be at least partially familiar with—but many of you see it when you have a customer service request of whatever kind. George isn’t just polite, professional, and fast, he is on another level entirely. Some you don’t really see: he’s been fighting for you guys with OpenWeb to fix whatever issues we’ve had implementing their new commenting system—notifications being the big outstanding issue, but also the typing with no spaces bug, some accessibility issues, the overly aggressive moderation functionality, and so on. He’s the Terminator of customer service. He won’t stop until it’s right.

There are other individuals assisting us on the technical end, and to date, they’ve worked directly with George, so I’ve not gotten to know them yet, but I hope we can highlight what they’ve done for us at some point. It’s kind of amazing, frankly, and we’ve shifted from using a single individual for web tech to a team of people who all have various skills, and it’s worked out very well.

Also, I should point out the work that Laurent has done writing news, which has freed me for other work, of course. But more important is the level of quality and the teamwork element that you can’t really see from the outside. I like working with Laurent each day, and his presence here has made this site, and my life better. What you don’t know about Laurent is that he’s splitting his time to work on Petri as well, and much of that is happening behind the scenes. He’s become a real asset to the company on multiple levels.

Finally, I should thank all of you more broadly, not just for your support, which is always appreciated, but for your patience and understanding as we evolve the site. We have big plans but limited resources, and we’ve certainly had some setbacks this year in particular. But it’s clear that most understand what we’re trying to do, and are doing, and, again, anyone who has interacted with George, I suspect, really gets it. But we’ll keep pushing forward.

Anyway, thanks. Seriously.

Related to this, wright_is asks:

I’d just like to say a big thank you to George and the team for all the hard work and OpenWeb for getting the problems sorted out with Firefox and Safari this week and for their continuing work with the filters.

Do you have an update on the overall Thurrott dot com re-implementation project and how things are going?

The big issue right now is getting comments where we want them. I addressed most of that above, but we fixed some issues and are working on a few others. According to an exchange with OpenWeb, the biggest problems are importing legacy comments into OpenWeb, forums, the basic member tokens for accessing 3 Premium posts each month, and performance optimization (comments sort of slow load, which I find weird). And there are some user pain points around the mobile experience, search, and basic RSS. George is all over all of this.

We will have a more formal post about where we’re at and what’s next soon—we’re trying to get comments in the right place first—but aside from that, we’ve migrated the site from AWS to the WordPress Engine and have since stayed current on all the latest releases and updates, which we’d never done in the past. (We just updated to the latest WordPress release last week, for example.) The net effect is incredible from a performance and reliability perspective. That change was unplanned, but it made a huge difference.

More soon, promise.

Windows 11 version 22H2 on a new PC

will asks:

I just received a new Dell laptop with Windows 11 22H2 installed as the default OS.  I am surprised it is on new hardware before it has been released as GA for everyone to install unless I am missing something?

It is odd that you received that already, but Windows 11 version 22H2 was finalized weeks ago and Microsoft will be adding some features at a later time. (For example, we can assume that File Explorer tabs are not the in “RTM” version because of where this feature is being tested in the Insider program.) But this kind of thing happens sometimes; for example, there were reports this week of people getting an iPhone 14 ahead of today’s release.

Xbox vs. Sony

will also asks:

What do you think Sony is looking to get in order to be “Ok” with Microsoft purchasing Activision?   Maybe some long term guarantee they get first dibs on CoD content for the next 5-10 years? Outright split Infinity Ward from Activision?

Sony would prefer for Microsoft to not acquire Activision Blizzard because it has seen the impact that Call of Duty had on PlayStation when it entered into that exclusivity arrangement several years ago. (This isn’t the only reason, obviously, but it’s not coincidental that the PS3 and Xbox 360 wound up basically neck and neck but the PS4 outsold the Xbox One by more than double.)

But Sony is also realistic, and I assume everyone understands that there will be compromises if this acquisition is going to be approved by regulators. So, Sony’s goal is to get the most concessions possible from Microsoft. The question is, what’s reasonable within the scope of any antitrust regulator OKing this mammoth acquisition?

We probably all have opinions about this. From my perspective, Microsoft should be forced to continue releasing new games in existing franchises on PlayStation, period. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t do so regardless. But this should be formally required as a condition of the acquisition and without any time limit. (Perhaps limits could be based on some metric like PS console sales or installed base, or whatever.) As long as PS is viable, Microsoft should continue to support it.

But this is perhaps a red herring, too: Sony and Microsoft are probably more fixated on the future, which is cloud-based game streaming. And here, Microsoft has the more compelling offering right now, and Sony is racing to catch up. Microsoft very much intends to release Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard titles to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming, and this will give Microsoft’s services a huge advantage over Sony. And I have to think that this is the real sticking point. Over time, console-based games will be less important than cloud-based games.

The compromise there is stickier: perhaps Microsoft should be required to support Sony’s subscription offerings in addition to their consoles. That is, PS Now subscribers should be able to access Microsoft’s games—for download or streaming—and Sony should be forced to pay equitably for those titles, meaning commensurate with whatever fees they pay for similar titles from other companies. (Here, Microsoft has some insight because they’re doing this already for their own services.)

From a gamer’s perspective, this is all about fairness: console—or, soon, platform—exclusivity is bad for gamers, so it’s bad for the industry. And since streaming games obviate the advantages of particular hardware platforms, that becomes less compelling, and putting games everywhere makes more sense. My hope is that Microsoft will simply do the right thing—for them and for gamers—by supporting as many games as possible on as many platforms as possible. But if they need to be forced to do that by agreeing to do so as a condition of the acquisition, so be it.

And there’s more to this. Sony is being very public and aggressive here, but surely some of these other game platform owners have concerns here as well: Steam, Epic Games, and even Google (Play) Apple (Arcade) must be looking at this acquisition with an eye to their respective futures. I’m surprised we’ve not heard more from other companies.

Microsoft Editor vs. Grammarly

yb asks:

This is about Microsoft Spell Check on Outlook-on-the-web. I have been using Outlook on the web[the online edition]  since the mid 90s [good old Hotmail!] when I was traveling a lot; I could access my mail and documents everywhere. I stuck with the habit ever since.

Recently I deleted and re- loaded google on my laptop, but forgot to load Grammarly.  So the native spell checker went into action- when using Outlook on the web. It is really awful; in about half of the cases it does not suggest the correct spelling or the right word- so I have to use google instead.  I have used spellcheck on Google [the best], Brave, Firefox- all of which are way better than Outlook-on-the-web facility.

Do you know what powers the spell check on outlook on the Web? it is Bing?  have you tried using it?

Yes, I do, and yes, I have: Microsoft has a sad Grammarly competitor called Microsoft Editor. And I’ve found what you’ve found, that Microsoft’s solution is terrible and cannot replace Grammarly. Worse, I’ve seen the impact of the Microsoft Editor on Microsoft’s own blog post, especially from the Windows Insider team. You’d think that the company that makes Microsoft Word would get this right, but no. Editor is even available in Word now, go figure: it’s in the Review tab.

Anyway, use Grammarly. It’s the better solution.

By the way, one thing I like about Grammarly is that I write in Word and take advantage of its spelling and grammar checking capabilities, but then post what I wrote into WordPress in a browser, and Grammarly inevitably flags issues Word never did. This is a long post, about 2600 words, so this is skewed, but Grammarly flagged dozens of issues and several were legit. Why isn’t Word better? Right. It’s the same tech as Microsoft Editor.

Recent books

wmurd118 asks:

Hello Paul. I’m an avid reader (and I include audiobooks). What are some books you’re reading now?  I assume you read many.

Right now, I’m reading Fairy Tale by Stephen King, switching between Kindle and Audible semi-successfully, and am about 50 percent of the way through now. It’s excellent so far. I’ve purchased Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir by Jann Wenner on Audible and will listen to that next. And I’ve preordered Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow on Kindle.

The most recent books I’ve read/listened to otherwise are The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson (Kindle, excellent), Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell (Audible, it’s OK), and After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost its Soul by Tripp Mickle (Audible, highly recommended). Well, and a book about Mexico City most probably wouldn’t care about: Mexico City: The Ultimate Travel Guide by Mario Favela (Kindle).

Just out of curiosity do you purchase most of your reading material and do you ever download books from your local library?

I do purchase the books I read on Kindle or Audible (and rarely, on both). I have no good excuse for not using the local library, especially given that my wife does this regularly for her Kindle.

New Surface PCs

Yman71 asks:

Any thoughts on when we might be able to expect some new Surface devices?

Well, if I did know about this, I wouldn’t be able to discuss it, but let’s just say that Windows 11 is launching next week and Ignite is in mid-October, and I would be shocked if Microsoft didn’t hit a hardware event in there somewhere. Last year’s Surface fall event was September 22, so we’re due. Also, we’re overdue for a Surface Laptop 5, and there are rumors that Microsoft will consolidate Surface Pro and Surface Pro X into a single product line.