Ask Paul: November 4 (Premium)

Happy Friday! It’s been a frustrating morning of technical issues, so let’s kick off the weekend a bit early with some great reader questions.

Note: Speaking of which, we had some issues with this week’s Ask Paul forum post, which prevented some people from posting questions. Sorry about that, but this is a weird ongoing issue that may/may not only be tied to Ask Paul posts for some reason. We’re looking into it. –Paul

NextDNS  update

Anlong08 asks:

Sorry to hear about your dog’s passing.  We went through the death of a beloved dog 2 years ago and it’s miserable.

Thanks. This one hit me harder than I expected.

For the question. How has your Next DNS experience been going? I was surprised at how often catalog.gamepass.com quires, but was confused that I didn’t see a firehose of quires overall in the logs.  I’m chalking that up to using privacy focused browsers.  I did have to turn it off to get comments to work on thurrott though.

For now, nothing has changed: I’m using NextDNS successfully on my mobile devices and love it. I’ve had no issues (at least not that I’ve noticed) with sites not working etc. Everything is good. What I’m not doing is using it on my PCs or network-wide via my router. And … that may change. I’m on the cusp of updating our home network from the Wi-Fi 5-based Google Wifi mesh network we currently use, and will move to something Wi-Fi 6E-based, probably the Google Nest Wifi Pro because of the pricing. When that happens, I’ll see whether it’s possible to just put NextDNS on the router and have it work on all devices automatically. And if that does work, I’ll need to figure out how to work around it on PCs for the reason you mentioned: it blocks OpenWeb (our comments system provider) by default.

But that, as they say, is a problem for another day. I’m watching out for Black Friday and other sales before I take the plunge. (Supposedly, some Google Wifi users are seeing a 30 percent off offer in the Home app, for example, and I keep checking but am not getting this offer.)

Firefox vs. Brave

rbwatson0 asks:

What are your opinions of the pros and cons between Firefox and Brave? I have tried both, and find that there are certain things I like and dislike about each. Firefox seems to be slower at rendering pages, especially on mobile (Android), but I think that Brave’s sync feature is way to clumsy for use between devices. I know you are using Brave – at least, at the moment. Any other tips, hacks or gotchas with either of them?

My heart is with Mozilla and Firefox, but as I opined years ago, they have boxed themselves into a corner by refusing to adopt Chromium. I know this is controversial, and I know some of you don’t like this opinion, but standardizing on the web rendering engine is both right and correct, if that makes sense, because it makes life easier for web developers and has/will result in better web experiences. By continuing to use its own out-of-date and slower web renderer, Mozilla is losing users and is holding back the users it still has. As you note, and this is what I see as well, Firefox is perceptibly slower than other browsers. It just is.  And it always will be.

But that’s part of what makes Brave so special. It’s the new Firefox in many ways, but it goes even further in its default privacy protections plus it has all benefits of using Chromium. I cannot recommend Brave enough. And for whatever it’s worth, yes, I agree that the sync system is a bit of a leap at first because it’s so different from every other browser. But honestly, it works great. And as goofy as this sounds, I’ve come to prefer it.

These kinds of transitions take time, but everyone who loves Firefox needs to evaluate Brave. It’s a much better experience.

And I know how some of you feel about this. But this is not the time to voice your support for Firefox. I know you’re out there. But … the world is passing this browser by. Sorry.

Snipping tool

KidChris asks:

Can you recommend any snipping tools with email integration besides the Windows 10 and 11 default applications?

I use Greenshot for screenshots for the book and otherwise and it works great. Email integration is a bit light, and I don’t even use this, but if you are an Outlook user there is an integration there.

But whatever you use for screenshots, even the built-in WINKEY + PRTSCN stuff, you can easily share screenshots and other files via email using the Windows share functionality. I use that with Nearby share to get screenshots from one PC to the one I’m writing on. But you can use share to create OneDrive links, share with built-in apps, and so on.

Call of Duty

will asks:

Now that Call of Duty [Modern Warfare II] has been released, all be it not fully released just yet, I wanted to hear how the multiplayer part of the game has been for you?    I have seen comments on both sides from it is one of the best Call of Duty games in a long time, to it is a game that is built entirely on an algorithm of what a great game should be.  Personally, I have enjoyed the game, however I do find the fact that you cannot disable cross-play for next gen consoles a little frustrating and I would like to see a little less on the SBMM (skill based match making).  Plus, the menu system needs to be toned down a little.  Maybe this will come with time as it should be a game that is fun, enjoyable with friends, and not something that is always a workout.   Anything you would like to see improved or changed?

For the first time since 2018—when Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was released—I am playing the newest Call of Duty title online successfully, and I couldn’t be happier. The intervening games, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Call of Duty: Vanguard, had too many multiplayer issues, leading me to play the same old game over and over again (Black Ops 4) with a few side-trips into older titles (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered, etc.). But basically, I’ve been playing the same damn COD game for four years. Four long years.

I wanted so badly to like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and I did eventually finish the campaign out of boredom and frustration. The issue, which was repeated with Cold War the next year, was that the lag/latency was so bad the multiplayer games were unplayable for me. There was nothing I could do to overcome it. Vanguard solved the lag/latency thing, but it had different issues: the multiplayer game itself looked horrible, like a previous-gen title, and I found the levels uninspiring and uninteresting. It was weird to me that I’d switch from the bland-looking Vanguard back to Black Ops 4 and be greeted by a more colorful and better-looking (and 3/4-year-old) game.

But Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II gets it right. It looks fantastic, it plays properly with no lag/latency issues, and the levels we have at launch are to a one fantastic, meaning they’re right-sized for the type of game I play, and are interesting looking and varied. And that is job one: they nailed the basics.

Do I have complaints? Of course.

Only one is major: I play Hardline Team Deathmatch exclusively, and there are no Hardline playlists at all. Fortunately, that is coming on November 16, and I will happily switch over, my one major complaint solved.

I have more minor complaints related to the complexity of the loadout configuration interface, which is horrifically complicated. And there is so little time between matches that I can’t make meaningful changes to loadouts without dropping out of a lobby first. That’s a weird thing to complain about, I guess, but at this early phase, everyone is probably still experimenting with different loadouts and is still leveling up, and it just adds another layer of complexity.

I found the matchmaking to be non-existent when I first started playing—I joined days late because I was away when it launched—but that seems to have cleared up. I’m not sure I care too much about disabling cross-play matchmaking, but that feels like one of many features they’ll add over time. It’s still in an incomplete state in many ways (no Warzone, etc.).

I will say this: getting into the first match couldn’t be easier. You basically run the game, hit “A” twice, and you’re in a match. That is a huge improvement over BO4, which I’d been stuck with.

Anyway, this one is so good I know I’m in it for the long haul, and I feel no need to go back to BO4. Thank God. It’s been a rough few years there for me.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

JustMe asks:

If Microsoft were to soften the hardware requirements for W11, do you believe they would face backlash from OEM vendors? Do you think any uptick in W11 usage numbers in such a case would be able to compensate for the current W11 lack of adoption rate?

The question here is which customer is more important to Microsoft: enterprises or PC makers? Microsoft wouldn’t make hardware requirement changes to appease individuals, but I could see it doing so for the businesses that want to stick with the same PC hardware for a reasonable few more years.

On that note, I always sort of assumed that the 8th-Gen Intel requirement was literally based on Windows 10’s support expiration, meaning that by the time late October 2025 rolled around, any PCs based on 7th-Gen or older Intel chipsets would be almost 9 years old on average. And that it would seem reasonable to require customers on such old hardware to move to a new PC. But that’s not how the real world works: I still see Windows 7 PCs everywhere—my dentist, for example—and I know they’re not paying for extended support. You still see XP PCs out there sometimes too, in mass transit/airports, and so on.

The good news is that Microsoft does at least have a compelling story—for now—for businesses that want to stick with older hardware: Windows 10 works great, is secure, and will be supported for three more years. It’s not like when we were all stuck on Windows 8.x and Windows 10 came out and it was like being released from prison. The Windows 10/11 combo is a better world than was Windows 8.x/10. But the clock is ticking.

Apart from reducing hardware requirements and W10-adoption-style nagware, is there anything in your opinion Microsoft could do that would increase W11 overall usage?

No, not really. It’s more likely that they’ve given up on worrying about that and will instead make another big push with a Windows 12 release in 2024 and then see how that three-year active lifecycle thing is working again. It wouldn’t much matter if Microsoft provided all of the security innovations in Windows 11 to Windows 10, but over time that gap is only going to grow and that better world thing I noted above becomes less good. But I guess by that time, we’ll have a Windows 12 upgrade strategy to worry about.

Phones, the final frontier

Daninbusiness asks:

It feels like it’s been at least two weeks since you’ve last debated what phone to use. ? Any updates there, do you have more concrete plans to try one of the new Pixel 7 phones?

You joke, but I do really think about this all the time. I will be getting some form of Pixel 7, at some point, and like the Wi-Fi 6E thing mentioned above, it’s just a matter of timing. But here’s where my heads at: I don’t see myself switching from the iPhone to a Pixel over the coming several months, but there are still good reasons to “upgrade” my Pixel 6 Pro to either a Pixel 7 (in some ways a downgrade) or a Pixel 7 Pro.

Through the end of November, I can upgrade to the non-Pro 7 for just $100, and doing so would give me access to Photo Unblur, which I could use on older, scanned-in photos. That alone is worth $100. And I like the size of the non-Pro 7, which is between the iPhone 13 Pro/Pixel 6a (a bit too small) and the iPhone Pro Max/Pixel 7 Pro (a bit too big). And I like that it is a flat screen, unlike the 6 Pro and 7 Pro.

But there are downgrades, and the only meaningful ones are camera related: the 6 Pro and 7 Pro both have telephoto lenses, and the 7 Pro has an improved telephoto and a wider ultra-wide lens. (The non-Pro 7 has the same lackluster ultra-wide as my 6 Pro.) The 7 Pro also has Macro Focus, which I’d rarely use.

Moving forward to a late 2022 phone now, especially if I can do so cheaply, will help with resale next year when the Pixel 7a and/or Pixel 8 handsets arrive. And then, you never know. I might be ready to switch. But the upgrade price right now for the Pixel 7 Pro is a bit too high: through the end of November, Google will give me $500 on trade for the 6 Pro, but that means I’d still pay $400. I can’t do that right now. Not for a phone I know I won’t be switching to. That’s why the Pixel 7 at $100 is so interesting. I could at least review it and use that Photo Unblur feature.

I have until the end of November to decide. There may be other deals, Black Friday or otherwise. There is news of a $100 Google Store credit for some customers, and I’ve asked Raphael, who recently did switch to Pixel, to look out for that, since we’d both get that $100 credit if he referred me.

We’ll see. But I’ll be getting a new Pixel soon, I bet. I just won’t be switching.

You know, probably.

Twitter and the future

rossfinnie asks:

Hi Paul. Do you think any of the proposed changes to Twitter will have a positive effect and clean up the platform?

No. If anything, they are a major step in the wrong direction. Twitter didn’t need cleaning up: it was correctly preventing misinformation and hate speech before and it is trending now toward what some erroneously calls “free speech,” which in Musk’s view is really just the ability to spread misinformation and hate speech. That’s not what free speech is. And Musk is no free speech advocate. He’s chaos, and it’s more likely he’ll kill Twitter than expand or improve it.

Related to this, helix2301 asks:

What are your feelings on mastodon and other open-source social media platforms? The last two weeks its all Leo has been talking about which is ok with me it’s interesting.

Twitter is a problem for me because I use it regularly, have a decent following, and it’s impossible to replace. Mastodon, for those unfamiliar, is billed as an open Twitter replacement, but its audience is tiny compared to Twitter, so it’s not really in the same league. It reportedly added 665,000 new accounts in the wake of Musk’s takeover of Twitter, but that’s nothing, comparatively. It would need to gain hundreds of millions of users to make sense.

I will keep an eye on this, of course. But the notion of starting over from scratch is unappealing.

Zorin

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Have you started testing Zorin yet?

Technically, I’ve never stopped testing it, as I do maintain a Zorin Linux-based PC. But as I mentioned before, I only have so much time, and I’m devoting too much of it to the Windows 11 Field Guide now to spend a meaningful amount of time on that. When the book is in better shape from a content coverage perspective, that will change. But for now, I need to stay focused and get ahead of the book.