Ask Paul: December 15 (Updated) (Premium)

UPDATE: My answer to “Which Windows sign-in?” below has been updated to actually answer the question. 🙂 –Paul

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It’s beginning to feel but not look a lot like Christmas, but I won’t let the lack of snow stop me from enjoying another great of reader questions. So let’s get this going.

More like Google Meat, amirite?

simont – α Ⓟ

One very surprising thing from the OpenAI fiasco that almost nobody commented on, is that the board used Google Meet for conference calls. An actual company that uses Google Meet. What do you think of that?

I realize this is humor. So please excuse the serious response.

Google said that Workspace had over 3 billion users worldwide in 2021, though I dispute that number as the vast majority of that must be free Gmail accounts. Third-party reports suggest that the paying number is closer to 6 million subscribers. But whatever, Meet (and the related Google Chat, these should be one product) is available to everyone in Google’s sphere. So, yeah, I assure you that Google Meet is used by many millions of people every single day.

By comparison, Microsoft 365 has north of 350 million paid commercial subscribers—it’s been a while since we got a hard number—while the latest figure for Teams is 300 million. And Meet usage apparently exceeds that of Skype.

FWIW, we use Google Meet when we meet with the newsletter folks at The Intelligence. It works great.

Finally, as I wrote in Cut Me Some Slack, Slack (Premium), Slack’s insane (perhaps literally illegal) billing policies triggered a rethink of what we use for day-to-day chat-based communications here at Thurrott.com. I got my wife’s account refunded by Slack, and Laurent and I will likely move off it soon (though I need to use it for the web team). Google Chat is my top choice, as we already pay for Google Workspace. (We don’t do much in the way of video meetings.)

Which Windows sign-in? (UPDATED)

SherlockHolmes asks:

Hello Paul. I’ve been using Microsoft 365 business standard for a year now. And the benefits of less advertising outweigh the price of just under €14. The question I have is about Windows. Is it possible to change the use of a PC afterwards? So from personal use to use for an organization and for work? Until now, whenever I wanted to use Microsoft 365 with Windows, I had to reinstall the computer.

UPDATE: Thankfully, a reader helped out here. And while it’s not all that obvious, it’s also not that hard:
Open Settings and navigate to Accounts > Access work or school. Click “Connect.” In the “Set up a work or school account” window that appears, do not enter your email address. Instead, click “Join this device to Microsoft Entra ID.” Then, sign-in as required. Now, when you sign-out, there will be a new entry on the lock screen for signing in as another user. Use your work or school account ID, authenticate as required, and you’re in. Now you will see both account choices on the lock screen.

Thanks! I will be updating the book as soon as possible to include this information. –Paul

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My original reply:

When I first blocked out the Work and School Accounts chapter for the Windows 11 Field Guide, I had assumed that one could simply add a Work and School account to the PC at any time as you can with Microsoft accounts (MSAs). But if you scan through that chapter, you’ll see a dirty little secret in that I don’t address this directly because it’s not possible … to my knowledge. That is, my understanding based on a lot of work and some research is that you can only add a Work and School account to the PC at initial Setup, during the Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE), and that if you configure the PC that way initially, you can then add other sign-in accounts, including MSAs. So it’s kind of a one-way street.

What you can do once Windows is up and running is change an MSA to a local account or change a local account to an MSA. That’s it. So if you want to switch your PC to a Work and School account, or have the option to sign in with either an MSA or a Work and School account, you need to configure the latter first.

That’s my understanding. If anyone out there knows of a way to add a Work and School sign-in to Windows 11 after the fact, please let me know. I had expected to write about that for the book and will add at immediately if it’s possible normally.

(There’s a whole can of worms associated with this too, as you can use any online account, including a Microsoft Work and School account as an MSA. Just know that if you configure your Work and School account a new sign-in in Settings > Accounts > Other users > Add other user, you’re not adding the Work and School account, you’re adding an associated MSA as a sign-in. That said, you could then add your Work and School account to OneDrive, email, and apps, and sort of get the benefits of Microsoft 365 commercial but without any of the organization-based restrictions and policies.)

Also, thanks for another year of excellent work and Merry Christmas to the whole team.

Thanks! 🙂

Finally, a paid subscription to Windows!

helix2301 asks:

I know Microsoft for big corporate companies can get Windows updates on EOF Windows for 3 years at a steep price and it’s always been a business thing. My question is why has Microsoft never turned this into a consumer or education business I think there are enough people out there who would pay $9 or $15 bucks a month to keep getting updates on older computers rather than buy a new PC. Do you think this would possibly hurt PC sales that why they have never offered it?

Well, they are going to offer it for Windows 10 though we don’t know the pricing yet. Frankly, I think this should be included with a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription. But we’ll see where the pricing lands next year.

As for why they never did this for consumers before—Windows XP and 7 both had Extended Security Updates (ESU) programs too, and XP’s was extended, I believe—and why they are doing this now, that’s anyone’s guess. But that’s what we’re here for. So let’s guess.

The Windows XP and 7 ESUs were similar in that they very specifically addressed problems with the Windows versions that succeeded them (Windows Vista and Windows 8, respectively) and the fact that enterprises simply refused to upgrade to those versions. And since these businesses represented, then as now, the lion’s share of annual Windows revenues, Microsoft’s hand was forced. Too, it didn’t matter at the time which Windows versions these businesses used as they were paying an annual per-user or per-machine fee for a license that covered all supported versions of Windows.

When we shifted to Windows 10, however, things changed a bit. With that release, Microsoft really wanted to get as many customers as possible on the same code base, the idea being that this would make servicing easier, and so most/all of the user base would be secure. Of course, this is Microsoft, so they muffed it by releasing a new Windows 10 version every six months for several years, which ended up bifurcating the user base more than it had ever been. And so they put the brakes on, and when it came time to release Windows 11, Microsoft made it clear that there was a shared code base and that Windows 11 was essentially Windows 10 with a new user experience.

But Windows 11 complicated things by trying to formalize the secure hardware base of Secure Boot and TPM 2.0, artificially cutting out large portions of the user base from upgrading. And businesses are still businesses: Few have upgraded because of the switching costs associated with learning the new UI and its functional regressions (features that are in Windows 10 but not in Windows 11).

Windows 10 is getting an ESU because the user base is still so big compared to the newer release, so in that one way, it’s a similar situation to what happened with Windows XP and 7. But Windows 11 isn’t “hated” in the same way that Vista and 8 were, and so it’s reasonable to expect that the relative user bases of Windows 10 and 11 will be pretty close when late 2025 arrives. We’ll see.

Anyway, my guess is that Microsoft is going to offer the Windows 10 ESU to consumers because of its arbitrary Windows 11 hardware requirements. Otherwise, it would simply direct them to the free upgrade. This will let them get a reasonable number of years of use out of the PC hardware they purchased. I mean, think about it this way: The cutoff for Windows 11 is essentially an 8th Gen Intel Core chipset, which first appeared in late 2017, and so the notion that someone would want to keep using a computer that they purchased in 2016 or older in late 2028 when the ESU runs out, is remote. That would be like clinging to a computer from 2011 or older today.

But I suspect it will make more sense for many to simply upgrade that PC rather than pay for the ESU. Year-over-year PC upgrades aren’t usually all that interesting, but over several years or a decade, it’s significant. And this will be a great time for many in that audience to look around and perhaps go in a different direction too, perhaps a Mac or a Chromebook. Anyone who is clinging to a really old PC may be a good candidate for something simpler.

Web apps

spacecamel asks:

A couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that Microsoft should make their web version of office to be their main offering.  Considering all of their recent Office 365 offerings have been web-based, do you think they will go this way?  Considering we are moving into a multi-operating system world, this would make sense but sometimes Microsoft does not make sense.

I am very surprised that Microsoft hasn’t already made the web versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint more sophisticated and usable as offline-capable desktop apps. It’s just so obvious, and there are literally no technical blockers there. They just need to do the work.

Obviously, these web apps are subsets of the full desktop apps, and there will always be some who need the full feature set. But the web apps are capable enough for the vast majority of users right now, I bet. (I would personally love to use a simpler version of Word in particular.) There must be some reason they’re not doing this.

Here’s my guess why: It’s tied to Microsoft 365 subscription tier pricing. With the base Microsoft 365 Basic plan, you get access to the web apps only at $6.00 per user per month, but the cheapest plan with the desktop apps, Business Standard, is $12.50 per user per month, more than double that cost. If the web apps were too capable, a lot of businesses would save $6.50 per user per month by switching to Business Basic for as many users as possible.

Whatever the reason, this is overdue.

The Ocho

spacecamel asks:

I think you missed the biggest story of the week.  Last Saturday the Excel World Championship was held in Las Vegas.   Can we get more Excel coverage on the site?  Maybe send Brad to cover it next year?  🙂     (On a serious note, how does this get onto ESPN?)

My good friend Stephen Rose hosted this event and he was particularly happy to finally get on ESPN. 🙂 He also hosts the UnplugIT podcast that we publish on Thurrott.com, so he may cover that event in a future episode.

I’m not sure how this got on ESPN, but given how popular sports-adjacent events related to video games and poker are, I guess we’re entering a new era of entertainment in which traditional media is trying to compete more effectively against online services. It’s possible they paid big money to broadcast this event.

Read it later

Cdorf asks:

I know you are a big Pocket user and I am curious how that fits into your workflow for news consumption. I have tried to get “into” Pocket but I end up just using Feedly for my RSS and Google, and half the time I abandon my Pocket “read laters”. I do like the idea of Pocket Premium and saving the article in case it is ever removed or changed, as too many times I bookmark something for reference on a blog and it gets moved (Thanks Microsoft and Technet) or other such stuff.

On Windows Weekly this past week, I shared my Xbox Year in Review stats because they were absurd. Despite only using an Xbox console for the first two months of 2023 and then only sporadically playing PC-based games since, my stats are curiously good: I’m somehow in the top 15 percent of players for hours played, the top 40 percent of players for Gamerscore, and the top 35 percent of players in achievements unlocked. I am in the top 10 percent of the most active players of Call of Duty and the top 15 percent for Halo Infinite, a game I don’t even like that much. All this makes me worried about the health of Xbox as a platform on one level, but seeing it also made me wonder about the other ways I spend my time. As I told my wife, I read a lot more than I play video games. Where are those stats?

Well, Pocket just provided some of it in a timely email. For 2023, I’m in the top 1 percent of Pocket readers, having read over 946,000 words, which it tells me is the equivalent of 13 novels. So that made me feel a bit better about myself and the way I spend my time. And Pocket is just one of the many ways in which I read daily.

So. How do I use Pocket?

First, I install the Pocket app on my phone and configure it to appear as close as possible to the first position in the Share sheet (this differs a bit between Android and iPhone). And I install the Pocket extension in every browser I use on desktop, and place it on the toolbar (as opposed to hiding it in the Extensions menu) so that I can quickly “Save to Pocket” any article I want to read later.

On a day-to-day basis, I read two newspapers, a Google News feed for tech, and the Google Discovery feed every morning before working, and I read books on Kindle, posts on Medium, and saved articles in Pocket at odd times throughout the day and at night before going to bed. I probably don’t save an article to Pocket every single day, but it’s close. This can come from any of the non-Kindle sources noted above, or on my PC from any website. (I use an RSS reader called The Old Reader for work-related news gathering, and I open relevant links in tabs during the day. But I also see things in there that I just want to read later, so I’ll save that to Pocket as well.)

Sometimes, I use Pocket as a reminder of sorts. For example, when I look at my most recent saved articles, there’s a blog post near the top detailing a sale on Amazon tablets. I only saved that to remind me to look at the Fire HD Max as part of the tablet research I mentioned in All-In on Pixel (Premium), not because I wanted to “read” it. But I usually archive those types of things quickly. Similarly, I will see random tips, usually Windows related, that I put aside in Pocket so I can go through them and see if they’re anything useful and new that I might want to put in the book.

But my guess is that at least 50 percent of what I put in Pocket is literally longer-form writing that I think I’m going to want to read. In my 10 most recent saves, I have articles about why multitasking is not productive, FTC chair Lisa Khan, Google’s antitrust loss to Epic (from Stratechery, which I’ve still not read), the top 40 albums of 1973 (which I have read but kept unarchived because I might use it as the basis for YouTube Music playlist), and an MIT Technology interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai about Gemini and AI. So it’s a mix of personal and work interests, which probably isn’t surprising.

Keeping up on the Pocket list is a lot like keeping up with email. Meaning, the goal is “zero inbox” but the reality is that it gets out of control sometimes. I will periodically scroll down to the bottom of the list and see if there’s anything that’s been there a while that I can triage, with three possible outcomes for each: Read it and archive it, just archive it because it’s no longer interesting or relevant, or keep it there because I will need it later. (With email, I archive whatever emails are still in the inbox from the previous month at the start of each month, but only after making sure there isn’t something important that I skipped over.) It’s “work,” I guess, but it’s not hard. And I did save those articles for some reason. (The oldest article in my saves is from 2023, but there are only a handful from the first half of the year.)

I love to read, and I use Pocket literally every day. But one thing I don’t do is pay for Pocket Premium. It’s not because I’m cheap or whatever, I feel it’s important to pay for the things you use. It’s just that I don’t need any of the features that are unique to the subscription.

Mobile browser

leoaw asks:

With your Pixel being your daily driving these days, do you use the native Chrome browser or an alternative browser app?

I use Brave everywhere, including on my phones and tablets.

But of course I also use Chrome sometimes because it’s forced on you in certain cases, like in Google apps like the Discovery feed. I also mix and match with Chrome and sometimes other browsers just for account simplicity purposes. For example, I sign into Brave with my primary account, but I may use Chrome for one-off things I need to do with a different Google account (though this is more common on desktop).

Half-Life

ianceicys asks:

Paul, how are you doing playing Half-life? Have you finished the game, any take aways?

I only play it occasionally, but it’s also the only thing I’m playing at the moment. I will say, I’ve been distracted by Black Mesa, the modernized version of Half-Life (using Half-Life 2-era graphics) that was developed by enthusiasts and eventually supported by Valve. I had purchased this at some point in the past but had never played it, and after I watched the recent Half-Life 25th Anniversary documentary, I went down a rabbit hole of Half-Life videos on YouTube and ended up watching a two-hour-plus documentary about Black Mesa that makes me want to start over with that game instead. So I just installed and started it so I can decide. It’s not just about the graphics or sound (though Black Mesa is a huge improvement): What the Black Mesa team did with the final part of the game, called Xen, is very interesting to me as this is the only truly weak part of the original game, and something that was clearly cobbled together quickly so Valve could meet some ship date.

Whichever direction I go, I will likely spend a lot of time with Half-Life one or the other for a while. I’m interested in playing Half-Life 2 yet again, but also the Blue Shift and Opposing Force spin-offs of the original game.

Anyway, here’s a graphics comparison from the beginning of each game: