Happy Friday! Another busy week, another terrific collection of reader questions to kick off the weekend a bit early.

Windows 11 on Arm vs. audio hardware

Olgeezer asks:

I have been looking for a Windows solution which runs silently and cool, and the new Snapdragon may hold the key.  Not so sure about any forthcoming Intel chip but nothing in life is perfect and being in my 70’s I now haven’t got a youthful zeal interest in starting again with a MacBook.

We’re in a weird moment in time.

Yes, the Snapdragon X-based PCs I’ve tested all run silently so much of the time I feel like I could call them “statistically silent,” if that makes any sense. I would almost have to purposefully invoke some processor-crushing workload to hear them. I honestly can’t recall the last time I did.

But these PCs also run Windows 11 on Arm, which brings some important caveats, especially for those like yourself who have very specific hardware (and/or app) requirements. And this is where things get complicated…

My main objective is to have a DAW running nearby when recording audiobook type media, and I want to be REALLY sure that running Windows (11-12etc) on the new Snapdragons will NOT have high latency when connecting to Focusrite (or other) typical equipment.

Focusrite doesn’t currently support Windows 11 on Arm, so this is a non-starter. I mentioned this in Snapdragon X Copilot+ PC: Hardware Compatibility Update, and this is my one major hardware incompatibility with the platform. I’ve not yet investigated how I might fix this for myself, but I can’t use a Snapdragon X-based laptop with the Focusrite and HEIL microphone in my home office, which means I can’t use it to record podcasts (or whatever else) there.

This came up in when I was in New York this past week: I was there for an HP event on Thursday, and my wife and I were planning to come the night before so we could hang out with Mary Jo. But Wednesdays are complicated because of Windows Weekly. Mary Jo recommended that we come in the morning so I could just record it from her apartment, and I could use her setup if I wanted. This made tons of sense, but she has the same Focusrite/HEIL equipment I have, and that means I couldn’t use my Surface Laptop or another Snapdragon X-based PC. I considered a few options, but since we were driving, I just brought a second (x64) laptop, an HP Dragonfly Pro, and used that.

This is a long way of saying that I can’t speak to the latency issues, if any, when using a Focusrite with Arm hardware because they don’t yet work together. I have little doubt that this platform is good enough to handle such a thing perfectly. But without native drivers, there’s no way to know. And I don’t have any other USB audio interfaces I can test. (I’ve used an Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB cardioid condenser microphone connected directly to a Snapdragon X-based laptop and that works fine.)

Finally, I’m writing here because your Windows Weekly input is excellent, so hope you might raise this at some point as latency issues started arising for me and others about two years ago slowing them down, even on a CLEAN vanilla reinstall.

Two things to this: It’s not clear whether this is a Zoom or Focusrite issue (we record the TWiT podcasts over Zoom now), but I’ve found that I need to unplug the USB-C cable from the Focusrite and then re-plug it right before we start recording; otherwise, the audio develops a kind of digital flutter that resembles the problems one sees with connectivity issues. And I strongly recommend using Reset this PC 2 to 4 times a year on the PC you dedicate to recording to keep it as clean as possible. (And doing as little as possible otherwise on that PC.) I skirt around this thanks to my unusual usage patterns: I switch PCs all the time for testing and reviewing purposes, and so the PC I’m using for podcasts is typically renewed (either by being new or a replacement or via Reset this PC) several times each year. So I don’t experience the cruft that most people (who typically only use a single PC or maybe a few PCs) do. I’m surprised you’re seeing issues on clean installs. That makes me wonder if the problem is related to Focusrite (probably the driver). This isn’t rocket science.

Whatever it is, I would really like to solve this Focusrite issue myself. Perhaps there is another USB audio interface that works natively with Windows 11 on Arm and/or works better than Focusrite. I’m just not aware of one myself, sorry. But I’ve not really researched this too much yet.

Mid-life crisis

spacecamel asks:

I listened to The Acquired Podcast episode on Microsoft where they did a pretty good analysis of the first half of their history.  They reminded me that Microsoft’s 50th is next April.  Are you planning on doing anything special for this momentous day?

Coincidentally, Mary Jo mentioned this podcast to me this past week, as she took part in that episode. I had never heard of it before, and she noted that they typically record 4+ hour episodes (over time, not all at once) for each company they cover, which is interesting. I haven’t had an opportunity to check it out yet.

I don’t have anything planned at the moment for Microsoft’s 50th. This is my 30th year covering the company, however, and I’ve been updating Windows Everywhere and writing a related article (which may turn into a series of articles, we’ll see) on the history of Windows on Arm that ties into that. But that book is probably by main contribution to covering its history. We’ll see. As this gets closer, perhaps there will be more to say.

It’s in the math

Sprtfan asks:

My daughter is starting college this Fall. She plans on being a math teacher, and I’m torn about what 2 n 1 laptop she should get, with the Snapdragon based systems looking like viable options. I wish there were more time to evaluate them, but I will need to decide soon.

Yep. As noted above, and this is kind of a theme with Snapdragon X, we’re in this moment of time, and it’s a big improvement over x64 in important ways, but there are also caveats around compatibility, mostly for those with unique needs. Your daughter likely doesn’t fall into that category, but we’re also on the cusp of some new AI PCs based on new AMD and Intel chips, and the first of those announcements is imminent. So we’ll see where life takes us.

Here’s the good news: This is always true, broadly, right? You buy a new PC and then a newer, better version arrives. This was a Simpsons gag in 2000, almost 25 years ago. But this isn’t a concern for almost anyone aside from people like us. So don’t worry about that aspect of it.

She doesn’t game at all, and the only software I know she will need is Immersive Reader and Grammarly. She also wants something with good pen support. Do you think going with a Snapdragon laptop would be asking for trouble in college?

Probably not. This is a random coincidence, but my sister is a high school math teacher, and she uses a Surface Pro 7 or 8, I can’t recall, and loves it. And I asked her if there were any specific apps or whatever that her or her students use, or might need in college, and there wasn’t really anything specific or unusual. And so a Snapdragon X-based Surface Pro 11 would likely work well for your daughter, as it’s the obvious combination of performance, battery life/efficiency, and pen support. It should be fine for four years of college and more.

I was considering buying a model from last year that can be found cheaply now with the expectation of upgrading in a few years instead of making it last 4. We should know by then how things worked out for the Snapdragon and also if Intel or AMD newer chips are better. This would ultimately cost more and be a hassle, too. I would love to hear your thoughts on what option might work best.

Yeah, I guess would compare it to previous Surface Pro models, but that gets weird quickly: Surface Pro 10 is only sold for businesses, though anyone can buy one, but it’s also based on Meteor Lake, which could impact battery and reliability. And Microsoft still sells Surface Pro 9, but that’s based on 12th Gen Intel Core chips, which should be OK for mainstream use in four years, but it’s hard to say. Either way, I’d scour reviews of both. (I didn’t review either, sorry.) I’d consider the different keyboard/pen options. Future-proof it from a RAM perspective (which, for your daughter, would likely just mean 16 GB of RAM). I believe any of these will have easily serviceable/replaceable SSDs, at least.

My daughter also has a Surface Pro (something, 9?) and she loves it too. She’s also in college, but not math related. I need a bigger screen, but even for writing, I found Surface Pro to work well, and that new Flex keyboard, while expensive, should be even better from a rigidity perspective. Ultimately, it sounds like your daughter will land on some version of Surface Pro, and I think that will be fine. And I wouldn’t worry about Snapdragon X: I have no major concerns using it myself and I think mainstream users will have even better experiences.

Free enterprise

SAJohnson53402 asks:

I have legitimate access to Windows 11 Enterprise.  If I were to get away from Windows 11 Pro, do I gain anything – ie. less junk?  Do I lose anything?

I looked at Windows 11 Enterprise over two articles–Hands-On with Windows 11 Enterprise: Are You Enshittified? and Wrapping Up the Windows 11 Enterprise Experiment—back in April and concluded that it doesn’t really address the biggest issues with the platform. It solves a few of them, like the forced telemetry and preinstalled crapware, but those are relatively minor. What it doesn’t do is change any of the bad Edge or OneDrive behaviors. (Though it’s possible Windows 11 version 24H2 will tone down the OneDrive terribleness, it’s still early.)

There’s no reason not to use Enterprise, I guess. You can sign in with a Microsoft account (MSA), which makes sense for most people. And you shouldn’t see any functional differences compared to Windows 11 Pro. But as far as fixing the big enshittification issues with Windows 11, not so much.  It’s a bit better, but that’s about it.

OneDrive granularity

SAJohnson53402  asks:

I’ve heard your comments on OneDrive and I wholeheartedly agree with your concerns (which may or may not be corrected now).  My bigger concern is that I want more control over what directories are backed up to the cloud. Yes, I want some of the directories OneDrive allows, but I want more granularity as well as the opportunity to backup other directories/drives.  Are there any good options that allow that?

Yes. You just have to work at it a bit.

The Folder Backup feature in OneDrive, which ties into the new Windows Backup “app”—it’s really just a front-end to other Windows 11 features—will auto-enable syncing for the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders by default. (Microsoft calls this backup, but it’s really just sync.) When enabled, the local Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders disappear and those file system locations redirect to the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders in OneDrive. From a file system perspective on my PCs, that means that C:\Users\paul\Desktop no longer exists, and the Desktop folder is now located at C:\Users\paul\OneDrive\Desktop instead. And so on.

Folder Backup also lets you optionally back up (sync) your Music and Videos folders too, with the same results. If you enable Folder Backup, you can choose which of those five folders (Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos) to sync. But you can’t arbitrarily add other folders to that list, which seems like an obvious feature.

But OneDrive also lets you arbitrarily sync any folders (or files) between your PC and the cloud, as long as they’re in OneDrive path (C:\Users\paul\OneDrive in my case) on the PC. This is straightforward in that you can just right-click a folder and choose “Always keep on this device,” and it will sync and then stay synced.

I’ve pretty much never used OneDrive Folder Backup (outside of a test account for the book) because I have my own way of doing things. But when Microsoft started silently enabling Folder Backup even after I declined multiple offers to do so in October 2023, I decided to reorganize my OneDrive folder structure so that the OneDrive Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders (and, the Music and Videos folders, too, though I never use those) are empty. And I created a new folder structure with a root “Paul” folder, and put my content in there. I wrote about this in Following My Own OneDrive Advice (Premium) last October.

To be clear, you don’t need to do that. But however you choose to organize your content in OneDrive, you can selectively use OneDrive Folder Backup (maybe you want your Desktop folder synced, perhaps) or not use it at all, and still arbitrarily sync whichever other folders you want with OneDrive. They just have to be in that OneDrive path on the PC. (You can’t arbitrarily sync local folders anywhere in the file system to OneDrive.)

For me, I have a Documents folder under that root Paul folder that’s organized how I want it. And I use subfolders in there, like To-do and Book, that I sync with the PCs I use. This system works well for me, and while I don’t use Folder Backup per se, you could. Either partially or fully.

Phone linked

MichaelMDiv asks:

I ike that Phone Link is coming to the Start Menu; I think that is a good place for it, but the main reason I don’t use it myself is I get tons of spam texts and even though they go to the Spam folder on my phone, Phone Link insists on showing them to me like they are regular texts, which is bad enough, but it also adds to the count of unread texts. I don’t want to click on them, to make them “read”, because that lets the scammers know they have a live one (and get even more spam texts). I like the notification alert, because sometimes I miss new texts coming in, but I hate that the count is like “50 unread messages” when they are all spam. Is there an option I have missed in Phone Link that might change this experience? Is there any chance that putting this app on the Start Menu means that Microsoft will pay attention and make this app what it should be?

Phone Link feels fragile and tenuous to me, and part of the issue, from my perspective, is that it defies experience by randomly working correctly or not, no matter how you configure it. Having to document this for the book puts me in an awkward place because it’s not always possible to say, “if you want to do this, configure it this way.” It just work ssometimes, or at all, depending on your phone and the phase of the moon, from what I can tell.

But you’re touching on a broader issue here. And that issue is more about phones, or maybe phone platforms, and how they handle spam texts (and spam calls, which can be just as problematic). We’re all getting these messages now, with variations of “Hey, this number has been in my contacts for years, who is this?”, “Hey, we’ve meeting John for dinner on Wednesday, what time works for you?” or whatever. And … come on. This feels like a solvable computer science problem.

With spam calls, my wife and I are oddly lucky in that we moved from suburban Boston with our 617 area code numbers, to eastern Pennsylvania, where the area code is 610. These are very close, which makes for awkward pauses when someone local asks for our phone numbers (“6, 1 … wait, did you say 7?”). But it’s great for spam: If we get a call from a 610 area code number (or other local exchange), we know it’s probably a real call because no one from 610 would randomly dial a 617 number. But when we get a call from an unknown 617 number, we know it’s spam, and we can ignore it. This has pretty much worked out 100 percent of the time.

Spam texts come from all over, of course. (As do some spam calls.) But just as spam calls taught us to simply ignore calls from unknown numbers, this explosion recently in spam texts is doing the same for messaging. I said to my wife literally yesterday that it’s fascinating to me that spam has triggered a phone usage change in which we simply don’t engage in traditional phone usage anymore. We’ve been trained not to.

Anyway. My point is only that there is no reason a text messaging app couldn’t automatically ignore, reroute/archive/delete, and/or mark as “read” all messages from unknown numbers. There are issues with this, I know. Some 2FA schemes still rely on texts. And we do get legit texts from unknown numbers. But these can be whitelisted. They could be whitelisted at the carrier level. This is solvable.

But it’s not solved. And because it’s not solved, you’re seeing all these unread messages in your notifications in Phone Link, which is further abstracted and unsophisticated from the source. But it does not have that. I mean, of course it doesn’t. It’s Phone Link.

I wouldn’t ignore the spam messages (and don’t). I mark them as spam, report them as spam, and delete them. And it’s a pain in the butt. But with enough of this feedback, perhaps Google, Apple, Samsung, the carriers, whatever, will finally put a stop to this. Again, it just feels so solvable.

I wish there was something that just worked. But I’m not aware of anything like that.

EfficienPC

Markld asks:

I am looking at my huge Lenovo Thinkcentre WorkStation that is paired to an equally ‘thirsty’ energy hog Dell Desktop in my SOHO. The electrical costs where I live will continue to grow and probably double in a few years. Right now, rates are rising quickly. So it has caused me to seriously consider the energy used by my PCs. By next spring, I will need to have these two PCs most likely changed out. Right now, I am using those two PCs for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. I am not mining for bitcoins or gaming. I am mostly researching on the Internet or typing away on the keyboard.

Here’s the good news. This is finally changing. Not just because of Snapdragon X, but because this is a growing issue worldwide, and governments and the industry have taken note, and we’re collectively working towards a more efficient future. So it will get there. Eventually.

How much will those small form factor PCs(similar to the NUCs) give me the energy savings I need?

I’m not sure what you’re doing on your PCs. But assuming they are what I’d call normal productivity workloads, there are all kinds of things you can do to reduce your energy consumption. The most obvious/general is to use more efficient desktop PCs of whatever kind. These could be NUC-style PCs or small form factor (SFF) PCs with more efficient processors (U-series on Intel, for example, Apple Silcon-based Macs, etc.) for starters. But there are little things that matter too. Here’s an unexpected one: You may have noticed that as computers get more serviceable and repairable, even laptops, that RAM is often soldered on the motherboard rather than placed in a DIMM slot or whatever that would make it replaceable/upgradeable. And you may have wondered why. It’s not about money, it’s because that RAM configuration is physically smaller (which matters in portable PCs) and consumes less energy. (Integrated RAM, like that in Apple Silicon and Snapdragon X systems, is even more efficient still.) So a NUC or SFF PC that is essentially a U-series laptop but without the screen is a good first step.

But if you’re going to do that, you might also consider just using a laptop. You could run it on battery during the day and then charge it overnight when energy costs are lower. You could also configure it to charge in a way that is optimized for battery lifespan, which will charge it more slowly than normal, which is fine because you’re doing this overnight and won’t be using it. This might require a laptop that could actually work on battery all day, of course. And if you like to use big screens and lots of peripherals, it’s a non-starter. But an efficient laptop on battery during the day would save a lot of energy and related costs. If you can’t go the laptop route, perhaps just look at ways to reduce the number of peripherals you use at once and/or get smaller, newer, and more efficient displays. (OLED displays deliver a 20+ percent decrease in battery life, in my experience, compared to LCD/IPS.)

Whatever system/system types you choose, make sure they’re configured for efficiency not performance. Again, workload specific. But a lot of PC makers bypass the Windows settings and offer more optimized power management profiles that do for energy consumption what variable refresh rate displays do for smooth scrolling: Disable power-sucking components unless they’re needed.

What might I save if I did use two small form factor PCs instead of those beasts? A money figure is not what I expect you to figure out as there are factors that you do not know about or could you consider. Perhaps a % of some sorts makes sense.

In discussing efficiency recently, I’ve struggled to explain what this means in terms of real world impact because efficiency means so many things and it’s different for different people. But in your case, what you’re talking about is literally just TDP (thermal design power). And that’s all about the range of power consumption a chip—but also the motherboard, RAM, SSD, and other components in the system—can consume. And it is a range. A U-series Intel Core CPU rated at 15 watts can consume power at a much higher rate, but it typically won’t, and definitely won’t at idle. Fans can cool the system, lowering the overall TDP, but fans require some energy too.

Your best bet at the moment is almost certainly an Apple Silicon M3-based Mac, or if you need a desktop, a Mac mini (which I think is M2 at the moment). The MacBook Air is passively cooled so it can’t consume too much energy.

I can look at a light bulb, read the wattage, but where would I find out that same data on any PC?

It looks like you’ve already done it: I also bought, but rarely used, and now can’t find a wattage meter called Kill A Watt, and I may be getting another one myself soon. This device sits between your PC’s power plug and the power receptacle on the wall and it’s the most accurate way to see what’s happening. But you could try a software utility like HWINFO to start. (This isn’t Arm native, and it only measures CPU and GPU power draw.)

So… how do you use these PCs? Why are there two? Which apps to do use, etc.?

A virtual Arm

anderb asks:

What virtualisation options are available for the snapdragon laptops? e.g. does vmware player or virtual box work? Is the WSL available?

I’m not aware of any third-party virtualization solutions that work with Windows 11 on Arm.  But if you have Windows 11 Pro on Snapdragon X, you get all the virtualization options we see on x64, including Hyper-V and Windows Sandbox.

And yes, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is available too, including on Home edition.

Xbox Game Pass shenanigans

helix2301 asks:

If you could please explain what is going on with the Xbox game pass you can?

I’m not sure anyone can explain this per se. But I wrote about this a bit yesterday, in part to just work my way through the changes in my own mind. It’s unclear to me why this blow wasn’t softened by a related announcement in which it explained exactly which Activision Blizzard games were coming to Game Pass and when. Because the one thing that’s always been clear is that Game Pass and Microsoft’s day one promises for Microsoft Studio games was incompatible with its need to sell new AAA titles, especially Call of Duty, on day one.  And that, at the very least, the prices of those subscriptions were going to have to go up.

So, that happened: The subscriptions are now more expensive. But Microsoft also replaced Game Pass for Console with Game Pass Standard, which removes the day one availability perk. And so the only conclusion here is that Microsoft clearly wants its most avid fans to get on the most expensive tier, Game Pass Ultimate. Which retains the day one availability perk.

I don’t understand why we need another tier. The prices jumped a few bucks is not a big deal but what do we need another tier for plus a grandfathered in tier plus with more rules very Vista-like with all these different SKUs or tiers?

It’s not so much another tier as it is a new tier replacing an old tier. This will happen over time, but Microsoft will eventually force existing Game Pass for Console subscribers to adopt Game Pass Standard (or upgrade to Ultimate).

They are not just raising the price to co-pilot level pricing on the best plan but we are adding a plan and getting rid of a plan if you already have it you’re fine. The PC pass is still cheap but lets make core more money and mess with the release schedule and ea games.

I feel like Game Pass Core is priced to make it less attractive. Obviously, Microsoft wants to push customers to the higher cost tiers. It has to recoup its $68 billion somehow.

This seems very confusing to me at times feels like there making it over complex to just push you to the ultimate cause you don’t understand it lol.

Even if you do understand it, they’ve made Ultimate a bit less avoidable, which is to its benefit. But that’s understandable.

Here’s the bit I wish I had added to yesterday’s post.

Microsoft has been losing in consoles since it created Xbox, but this became especially problematic with Xbox One, when the PlayStation advantage over Xbox hit 2-to-1 or worse. And so Microsoft began adjusting the strategy to make Xbox more of a platform and less about just the console. Game Pass was a big component of this, though it started on console as a way to grow average revenues per user per year by providing a new subscription that was, at the start, just about catalog games. This benefited everyone. Gamers got an affordable way to play hundreds of games they did not pay for outright. Developers would get new revenues from older titles that were never going to sell anyway. And Microsoft got its cut.

Game Pass expanded to PC and then cloud streaming, and with the cross-platform shift the definition of Xbox expanded too. But it was still losing to Sony, and so Microsoft added a really nice perk: It would provide all new Microsoft Studio titles to Game Pass subscribers, on whatever platform, on day one. This was fine when Microsoft had a handful of studios and an even smaller roster of true AAA titles, and it was a nice win for Xbox fans. Xbox Game Pass became a no-brainer for many people.

The Activision Blizzard acquisition complicated things greatly. Now, Microsoft is one of the biggest game makers in the world, and it publishes some of the biggest games on console, PC, and mobile. But that day one perk no longer makes sense, and if you look at just Call of Duty, which is perhaps the most dramatic example, you can see why: There’s an annual release, it generates billions of dollars every single year, and it is unique in that so many gamers only play that one game exclusively. Call of Duty can’t be a perk of a subscription, it’s too expensive and generates too much money. So something had to change.

And now it has.

We’ll be debating this for months to come. I have this random belief that nothing had to change other than Microsoft excluding Call of Duty from Game Pass entirely. That would have upset people, too, but it’s understandable. But whatever our opinions, here we were. Microsoft can’t give up the annual Call of Duty revenues, and it can’t raise the price of the mid-tier Console/PC Game Pass subscriptions enough to cover those revenues. So it did with it did. I disagree with a lot of it.

It’s tough for Game Pass to go back to what it was (just catalog titles). But that’s why a related Activision Blizzard announcement would have helped: Adding all those catalog titles to Game Pass and then revealing a schedule for new games coming to Game Pass would have been better received. For example, if you could get Call of Duty 6 or even 12 months later, great. Maybe some smaller games will arrive on Game Pass more quickly. Maybe some will simply be there day one. But just remove the day one guarantee as it’s no longer viable.

I don’t have a real answer, just questions.

Mexico

train_wreck asks:

Paul can you take Mexico City questions? If so just curious how the book/YT channel is coming along, and if you know when the next video might be posted. I’ve been living in South America for the past 3 months and have been traveling here off and on for the past 2 years. I’ve enjoyed seeing you & your wife’s perspectives on Latin culture and have had some parallel experiences with regards to things like currency conversion and of course aprendiendo la idioma. Thanks and take care!

It’s been a weird month for us, sorry. We worked a lot on the book while we were in Mexico and since, and it’s a big undertaking. But we were sidelined by the Michelin Guide coming to Mexico, and so we also spent a lot of time and money on that last trip visiting Michelin-recommended restaurants, many of which we had never even heard of. The theory there was that people will want to know about this stuff because of Michelin’s popularity. But what we discovered was troubling: Many of their recommendations don’t deserve special attention, and in talking to restaurant owners we know there, we verified what we had come to believe: That system is largely graft-based, and Michelin didn’t spend a lot of time trying to find the best places, it went off recommendations made by paid representatives of certain high-profile places. That will change over time, apparently. But this first set of choices is off. It’s very strange.

Anyway, we have dramatically expanded the set of places we hope to cover in the first version of the book, especially (but not exclusively) in Roma Norte. But we’ve had less time for videos. And to be clear, we’re not doing this full-time: We both have jobs that do pay and require attention, and so we’ve had to focus on writing, both for the book and for our regular jobs. We have several videos in various stages of completion, and we had hoped to get more out while we were there on the last trip. But we will get caught up on those soon. We also originally hoped to get some first, incomplete version of the book out quickly, but we instead dug in and are getting more detailed for certain places. We’re going to revamp the website and publish longer reviews there first, for example. (There’s one up now already, this is kind of a prototype for the longer restaurant reviews.)

Anyway, thanks. We’ll be back soon.

Re-readable

Leo_W asks:

I’ve been reading and enjoying “Commodore: A Company on the Edge” by  Brian Bagnall at your suggestion. I have the other two books in the series lined up after that. I’m at the point the C64 is developed, which has me wondering about the rest of the industry. Do you have any recommendations for similar books detailing IBM/Microsoft and Apple at those early days of home computing?

So many.

And this comes up enough that it occurs I should create some kind of reading list document or whatever that I can add to and edit over time.

For now, I’ll start off by pointing out that many of the older books that were highly recommended about the early days of Microsoft, Apple, and IBM, in particular, never transitioned to digital, which is troubling. My favorite Microsoft book, perhaps, is Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft, but it’s only available in paper form. Not ideal. Same for Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire.

I think I will work on a longer, more complete list. But here are a few top choices and recent picks.

Microsoft/early industry

Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer

Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America

Microsoft/antitrust

World War 3.0 : Microsoft and Its Enemies

Competing On Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape and Its Battle With Microsoft

Microsoft/other

Hardcore Software: Inside the Rise and Fall of the PC Revolution

Apple

West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer

Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing

Steve Jobs

IBM

Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?

Too Blue: The IBM PC from an Acorn to a Renegade

Other (recent reads/re-reads)

Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System

Almost Perfect: How a Bunch of Regular Guys Built WordPerfect Corporation

Space Battle: The Mattel Intellivision and the First Console War

A year or so back I bought and watched “The Commodore Story – Changing the world 8-bits at a time.” I need to watch it again after I finish these books to see the people I’ve been reading about with a new perspective.

Yes. I would also look for anything with Sam Tramiel in it. I wish that guy would write a book about his experiences at Commodore and Atari. Also, anything with Bill Herd, who wrote the amazing Back into the Storm: A Design Engineer’s Story of Commodore Computers in the 1980s. Also, former Commodore exec David Pleasance, who self-published Commodore – The Inside Story.

I gotta make this list.

Eero

Leo_W asks:

From your recommendation, I recently purchased the eero Pro 6Es. I’m wondering if the subscription service for those is worth the extra expense. Is that something you use with your eeros?

No, I’ve resisted paying for Eero Plus, mostly because I don’t feel like I need most of that functionality. The most interesting to me is ad blocking, but I can add that for free through NextDNS if I want (I haven’t yet). But depending on your needs, the 1Password and VPN bits may be worthwhile, or whatever else. $99.99 a year is a bit tough, though.