Ask Paul: August 23 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Well, it’s another blockbuster week for questions, so thanks to everyone for that. Let’s kick off the weekend a bit early.

Set yourself free

jeroendegrebber asks:

You shared an update about LibreOffice.

Yes. This hit at the crossroads of two things I care about deeply: Native Windows on Arm support and software that solves a serious enshittification problem, at least for me.

When I was comparing the feature set vs MS Office, I noticed that LibreOffice has none or little of the “online co creating” abilities that MS Office claims to have. My personal experience in this is somewhat limited I must confess, but my team does use other tools like trello, miro, notion etc for task overview, whiteboarding and collaborating on content. In your view, to what extent is Libreoffice solving a type of problem (creating documents) that is maybe becoming less relevant to the workforce? To be honest, Word/Google Docs is currently always a final step in creating something that can be delivered to our clients (with a version number, that our government customers seem to covet).

We forget these things, but the co-creation capabilities in Office were actually inspired by Google Docs, which launched with this as its central benefit (and was otherwise dismissed as being too light a tool to take on Office). Microsoft responded with its Office Web Apps, which were limited in many other ways, and eventually pushed collaborative editing to the desktop apps starting with Office 2010. This always felt wonky to me, and my experiences live editing in OneNote with Mary Jo for the Windows Weekly show notes were so consistently terrible that I switched to Notion and never looked back. So I can’t speak to how well it works today.

I also have no opinions about how popular or necessary this functionality is. But it’s always felt shoehorned in on the Microsoft side, and I suspect that’s because it was, and that this is why Microsoft has been working on the Fluid Framework infrastructure that we see now in Loop, not just the standalone app, but it’s integration throughout Office, especially in Teams and Outlook. In other words, live collaboration in traditional documents is what’s out of date–what’s solving a problem that is become less relevant to customers–and that the future of collaboration is what we see now in solutions like Teams (or Trello, Notion, whatever).

We all evaluate LibreOffice or whatever software based on our own needs. But the cart this horse is following is traditional productivity apps, as expressed by the Office desktop suite. And its core competency was obtained via antitrust regulator forcing Microsoft to open up its proprietary document formats. Now that Microsoft uses open standards for that, LibreOffice and other software can be fully compatible, though as an open solution, it of course defaults to the OpenDocument format that was specifically created as an alternative to Microsoft’s then-proprietary formats. So yeah, it may be “TSAing” this problem, as I call it–fixing yesterday’s problems today–in some ways, but it’s still important work. And it’s still a viable thing to do: As I’ve written, LibreOffice, or at least the part I care about, is very much a solid alternative to Microsoft Office. In my use as an individual.

Is it a viable alternative to Office in businesses? On the one hand, I kind of don’t care–I care more about the consumer/individual side of things than the business side–but on the other, I would just say, it depends. If you need that kind of thing, rely on it, even, then you can only evaluate LibreOffice in that light. But again, I think the world is changing. And even Microsoft sees that, as evidenced by its more modern Office (Microsoft 365) apps, all of which are web-based and use more componentized, interoperable underpinnings. The Office desktop suite is too pervasive to just disappear. But it is being left behind from a technology perspective, at least for these use cases. It never really caught up, in some ways: Google Docs being web-based from the beginning and not beholden to old-fashioned native desktop software norms is what made collaboration possible in the first place.

Anyway. I guess the short answer is just that it depends on your needs. For your company, it appears that sticking with Office is the only choice. For me, I’m glad I have many choices. And I’m not using Word to write this, nor will I ever collaborate with anyone in real-time in any app, even though I do engage in collaborative projects with others. (Including with my wife, as we’re writing a book together. This capability is unnecessary to us.)

Wait for it, wait for it…

Markld asks:

I am reaching my wit’s end. I am seeking a tool to summarize my large collections of Word files and, more recently, Google Docs. This all started because I was looking for specific categories of information, and doing a File Explorer search was fruitless. Over the past 22 years, I have accumulated hundreds of Word files, many of which contain important information. These documents are stored across OneDrive and somewhat in Google Drive in various folders, but they are often difficult to navigate due to the lack of consistent organization, such as headings within the Word documents, making it hard to find specific content using the “Find” function.

…

I am looking for a tool or method that can automatically read and summarize the content of these files, ideally providing a summary or key points that I can quickly review. My hope is to gain better access to the valuable information within these documents without having to manually sift through each one. I’ve considered using MS Recall, but it appears to focus on screenshots rather than document content. Is there any software, service, or method that can help with this task, considering my files are in various folders on OneDrive and Google Drive? I was hoping AI could rescue me.

We are on the cusp of having exactly the functionality you require. And it’s difficult not to look back on the goals of Longhorn and the database-based file system it was supposed to have as the way Microsoft would have solved this issue 20+ years ago and wonder anew what happened. I will say that I often navigate into my OneDrive-based document archives on whatever PC, find the starting point for a search–like the root “SuperSite” folder–type in a search query and … nothing happens. No search occurs, nothing. Other times, it does search and it works correctly. It’s unpredictable and unreliable. And when it fails, I go to the OneDrive website and that does work, it’s just that the interface stinks and I want to open/preview files in the results in desktop apps, not on the web. The whole experience is not ideal.

Just looking at the Microsoft space, the modern solution to this problem started with the Microsoft Graph, a means by which Microsoft provides a single endpoint to what it calls silos of data, the places within Microsoft 365 that individuals and entire businesses store data in separate containers. Email. Meetings. Document archives in SharePoint, OneDrive, and elsewhere. Chats in Teams. All kinds of things. At a very high level, any individual, searching within the context of their organization, should be able to get results from all the constituent data silos from a single place, and not need to individually search each. This is a wonderful dream, and I assume it works: I’ve not actually experienced it, since I’ve never worked for a managed Microsoft 365-organization of the size and scope that would need such a thing.

Consumers don’t have this capability, of course. But they could. And there’s no reason Microsoft 365 consumer couldn’t offer something like this that would span your data in OneDrive, Outlook.com, Teams, etc. In fact, I was told by an insider in Windows that the reason Microsoft is forcing OneDrive folder backup on everyone is to achieve this personal data set for Copilot AI: In the same way that business users can use Copilot for Microsoft 365 to act against the data in the Microsoft Graph, individuals could use Copilot to act against all the data they store in Microsoft’s consumer offerings. The only issue is, this hasn’t happened yet. Today, even with Copilot Pro, one can’t just ask it to find whatever content across whatever data silos.

But it is happening. Copilot is extensible. It’s possible for a third party to add this type of capability for whatever data stores (Dropbox, Google Drive, whatever). Microsoft will do this. And for those with PCs with powerful enough NPUs (currently just Copilot+ PCs, but that’s changing soon), Recall will do this at a local level, and only per device.

One of the many misconceptions about Recall is that it’s “just screenshots.” It’s more sophisticated that many seem to realize–the ability to “find that blue sweater I was shopping for” is powerful in implementation, and simple enough anyone could use it–but Recall will get more powerful later, when it works beyond a single PC. When it integrates with the Microsoft Graph, for businesses, or with the whatever that solution for consumers is. The future here is obviously about syncing that data through your Microsoft account, but even before the security drama delayed it, the company was purposefully moving slowly for privacy and security reasons.

The short version of this is that, it’s happening and it’s just not quite there yet. This will be true with Google and Gemini and whatever data you have in Gmail, Drive, and so on, for consumers and businesses. And there will be third-party AI that does the same. I need this functionality myself. As noted, my OneDrive searches today are … lackluster.

It’s only a matter of time. And given the speed at which AI happens, it won’t be long.

Flopping like you’re Bill Lambeer

Christian-Gaeng asks:

I wanted to ask you what you think has been the biggest flop in the area of new software in recent years. The things that come to mind are: PWAs (never really took off), Firefox (wrong decisions by the developers), Teams (introduction of a private and business version), etc. And actually all the major updates to Windows 11. To be honest, I don’t use any of them. I’m someone who sticks to my old habits and I don’t like people telling me how to work on the PC.

It’s not PWAs, that technology is solid, and established, and has led to many cross-platform apps we all use every day. More broadly, web apps–with native and offline capabilities–are obviously successful. As noted above, every new app in Microsoft 365 is implemented as a web app. This is where the world is heading.

Firefox is an interesting choice. And a troubling one because we should all objectively want to support this company and what it’s trying to do. But its decision-making seems flawed, and like many in the tech industry, it sometimes has trouble seeing past idealism and harming itself in the process. It abandoning what became PWAs was a strategic misfire, and not surprisingly, it’s now revisiting that decision. But it may be too late for Firefox. Does that make it a flop? I don’t know. It dominated briefly and was overtaken by Chrome. If that’s how me measure a flop, then MS-DOS and Windows became flops too. I’m divided on this one.

Teams is the most successful product Microsoft has made in over 20 years. So that’s not a flop, but its consumer version failing is probably tied more to the company’s inability to resonate with consumers generally. Nothing it’s done with consumers in the past 20 years is a success of any meaningful kind. I feel like people using Windows and Office/Microsoft 365 is more pragmatic or even inertia-based than anything. It’s certainly not enthusiasm, like we see for iPhone and Android. So … not a flop, I guess. But almost a marketing issue.

Windows 11 … No. If we accept the “fact” that there are 1.5 billion PCs in the world just to make the math easy, and accept the StatCounter numbers as “fact,” another horrific caveat, we can see that there are approximately 462 million Windows 11 PCs in the world, compared to about 975 million PCs, a bit under three years after it first launched. Or, roughly 30.82 percent of PCs are running Windows 11, compared to 65 percent for Windows 10. In a similar timeframe, Windows 10 accounted for 46 percent of Windows PCs out in the world, as I say, compared to 40 percent for Windows 7 and roughly 10 percent for Windows 8.x.

That looks like Windows 10 was doing a lot better than Windows 11 is now. But the version comparables are unfair: Windows 10 fixed the problems with Windows 8, the most loathed version of Windows ever created, and it was free (a first for a major Windows upgrade). So the world upgraded en masse. Windows 11, by contrast, is competing with an OS (Windows 10) that people seem to love all of a sudden, and while it is free, it also arrived with artificial hardware limitations that artificially limited its uptake. In our insular enthusiast community, everyone points to little issue like missing context menu items as being huge issues, but the broader world doesn’t care about any of that. It’s just that many of them were not offered Windows 11, and PCs work so well now, and are so much less important, that many never even thought about this upgrade. The world is different.

So, no, I don’t see Windows 11 as a flop. There will soon be 500 million Windows 11 PCs. That’s no flop. It’s problematic for all kinds of reasons. But it’s doing fine.

I suppose we could measure these things subjectively. We all have our preferences and whatever. But objectively, I think of flops as products that just didn’t meet their potential, failed in the market place, and disappeared quickly.

In the Microsoft space, something like Windows Phone wasn’t a flop, per se, it was just too late to market and too closely associated with Windows at a time when normal people were going nuts for iPhones and Android phones.

Zune was a flop, though. It was ridiculed from day one for being a me-too product (and for “squirting,” for F’s sake), is still the butt of jokes–this might be my favorite Family Guy moment of all time–and disappeared in a manner that no one even noticed it had happened in the first place.

Windows 8 and RT were absolutely flops: They were designed to counter the mobile threat and failed, they alienated the customer base, and Microsoft quickly worked to reverse all the problematic changes they brought. (Windows Me, by comparison, wasn’t really a flop, if only because its impact was so small, and it contained numerous technologies people later associated with Windows XP).

This is kind of an interesting thing to ponder. What else would be on this list? Kin, undermined by Verizon’s too-high pricing, qualifies. It’s kind of a short list. Microsoft Band? Bing? God, what about Surface? That it’s endured is fascinating to me. But flop? Hm.

I think Zune is number one on this list. Microsoft at least recovered from Windows 8 to some degree and did right by customers. But Zune? That was a one-way, dead-end street for the ages.

God, I loved it.

Proton Drive is the perfect name and you know it is

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

What has been your experience with the Proton apps? Do you feel like they are something that you could introduce to normal family members with a reasonable expectation that they might use and appreciate them? I am leaning towards getting a family account, but have no idea if I could get the rest of the family to follow, which might just argue for going with an individual account.

This is a lot like the LibreOffice question above in that its suitability will depend on you and your needs. I’m moving slowly here, but I like everything I’ve seen from this company and its offerings so far. Right now, I use Proton Pass full-time, and I’ve discussed moving my wife to it with her, as the experience is so positive. I can’t really switch to Proton Mail for a variety of reasons, but that has nothing to do with the quality. The Proton Drive tiers are more expensive than what you get from Google, Microsoft, and probably elsewhere, but that’s likely a -“you get what you pay for”-type thing in the sense that truly private cloud storage seems almost like an oxymoron.

I guess my advice here is to move slowly. I would experiment with these things for myself before pushing them on others, just to make sure they meet the need. Actually, I guess I’m technically doing that myself right now. All I can really say so far is that I’ve seen no red flags. I think this company is legit, and I think its approach is correct. And I can see a future where I do just move it all there. We’ll see.

You’ve been bookmarked for extinction

j5 asks:

Hi Paul, in one of the recent Windows Weekly you mentioned putting your bookmarks in a separate app instead of your browser when you’re using multiple browsers, paraphrasing you here. But it had me wondering if that’s what you do? And if so what apps do you use? And if you don’t I’d be really interested in a review series from you of the bookmarking apps that are out there.

Like anyone else who has used a web browser–literally everyone–I’ve gone through all the traditional phases of bookmarking sites, configuring a home page (now a New tab page), and whatever other organization. This is a lot like any other data storage when you think about it. You can be highly regimented and create complex folder structures of bookmarks organized by topic (or whatever else), you can just not care about that and use search to find things, or you can be somewhere in the middle.

I don’t recall when this happened, probably incrementally over time, and it’s likely that my bouncing back and forth between multiple browsers made this happen more quickly than it would have if I just stuck to a single browser, as most people probably do. But at some point, I arrived at where I am now. Which, to this topic is:

• I use a third-party extension to replace the New tab page in whatever browser I’m using. This was Momentum Plus for quite a while, but more recently, I’ve switched to Bonjourr. Both of these offer minimalist experiences with a pretty photo that changes each day.
• I don’t use bookmarks in browsers at all. If there are bookmarks in one of my browsers, it’s because I never deleted them. I always configure the Bookmarks Bar (or its equivalent) to always off, when needed.
• For any web browser I use, I have a standard tab layout (that I have to create manually each time I bring up a new browser on a new PC) with some pinned tabs and some normal tabs. This has grown a bit too big, and I have been thinking about ways to streamline it. But for now, I have Gmail, Google Calendar, and three social networking services (Twitter, Mastodon, and Threads) pinned and then five normal tabs for those sites I need to use throughout the day every day: Thurrott.com, the OpenWeb comments management portal, Thurrott.com Threads management, Google News (Technology view), and The Old Reader (my RSS reader).
• I configure Bonjourr so that I can easily replicate that layout in any new browser. There are two link pages, Work and Pinned, each of which displays icons for each of the sites noted above, plus a few others that I use left frequently (Leanpub, for example).

And that’s it. That’s all I need.

Which reminds me, more of a site comment but we need a way to see all our forum posts within our Profile. A link that goes to just all of our posts.

I feel like this has come up before. I will ask Robert about that, but I feel like there’s a reason we don’t have that.

Belittling the mousers

bob asks:

You keep putting down the use of the mouse and features that are mouse centered, such as the start menu. I am a consumer who seldomly uses the keyboard, not a creator, and the use of the mouse is far more efficient than only using the keyboard. Windows supports feature that support different usage stiles.

So I don’t usually do this–I like “Ask Paul” to be a kind of freewheeling, in the moment kind of thing–but I saw this question pop-up and asked a follow-up because I wasn’t sure what you were getting at here. I assume you didn’t see it, so I’m guessing at why you’re asking me this, sorry.

I don’t know what you mean by putting down the mouse or feature you see as mouse-centric. Windows was designed from the get-go to support both mouse and keyboard navigation–I mentioned one of the more esoteric vestigial leftovers of this behavior in a developer post the other day–but no one is confused that computer GUIs are mouse-centric and that most people perform most operations in them using the mouse. These interfaces were originally described as “WIMP” for “windows, icons, mouse, and pointer,” after all.

What I have said is that knowing keyboard shortcuts for things can make you more efficient. This is one of those “how to become a power user”-type tips, I guess. For example, I recommend that people consider removing the Widgets, Search, and Task view icons from the Windows 11 Taskbar even if they use those features regularly because each can be triggered by a keyboard shortcut, and doing so frees up Taskbar space for app shortcut icons you use every day. (Widgets is a caveat since it displays a weather forecast that even I find useful.)

What’s interesting about that tip is that in freeing up that Taskbar space, allowing for more app shortcut icons, I don’t ever launch Taskbar app shortcuts using the keyboard, even though there are shortcuts for that, too. I mean, who would even try to remember that, say, WINKEY + 5 (in my case) launches Notepad? That said, I do use the keyboard to launch apps all the time. I’m more like to type WINKEY + note + Enter to launch Notepad than I am to click that Taskbar shortcut I made. But others click Taskbar or Start menu shortcuts.

To each his (or her) own. I’m a writer, and so keeping my hands on the keyboard is job one, and moving them off of that to use the mouse feels less efficient. If you’re not in that position, you’re free to mouse away. That’s how Windows is designed, to accommodate both needs, but yours is the primary use case by far. When I wrote about a weirdism with an HP keyboard recently, I noted that while the keys I was having issues with were standard in Windows and had been for decades, I’m likely one of the few people using them regularly. That doesn’t forgive the issue, but at least had that perspective. I don’t believe that the way I do things is for everyone. Just that it makes me more efficient, and that’s important to me. It may not be to others, that’s great.

In a weird coincidence, I have a similar complaint to the keyboard issues noted above but related to touchpads and more universal to Windows. (That is, this isn’t a problem with a particular laptop or keyboard, but is rather a problem with Windows that impacts everyone.) I’m not sure why I haven’t written it yet, but I will soon. This was a helpful reminder to do that.

I feel like I mentioned this once, but my wife and I were flying home from Mexico earlier this year, and we were both writing whatever on our respective laptops. I looked over at her screen at one point, she was using Word, and I saw her move the mouse cursor up to the Save button in the ribbon and click it. I was like, “what are you doing? Just type CTRL + S for crying out loud.” Her response was, she just does things the way she does them. And that was that. Fair enough.

I mean, I do think less of you for using the mouse. Let’s be clear about that!

But I kid.

Complexity, thy name is Microsoft

helix2301 asks:

I noticed that on my intel box running 24h2 beta the captions feature works and some of paint features work then other stuff like webcam features and picture features dont work cause you need a snapdragon pc. Why do some features work on intel and not other its because of the NPU is that correct?

Yep. This is complicated.

And I wrote an article for that reason that describes how and when you get various features in Windows 11. Which is itself very long. Because this is complicated. Plus, it took me forever to even find it, despite it being just two months old, so I can’t imagine it was obvious to anyone.

Short answer. Some features come with Windows 11. Some of those features require specific hardware. Some other features only come with Copilot+ PCs today–which is its form of specific hardware, when you think about it–though that target audience will expand as Copilot+ PC-level hardware comes to AMD and Intel-based PCs.

Maybe the way to think of this is as a three-tier system.

The Windows 11 features that use cloud-based AI–Copilot, Image Creator and background removal in Paint, background removal, blur, and replacement in Photos, and so on–are available to everyone. If you’re using any supported version of Windows 11, you will see these features.

Only one Windows 11 feature–Windows Studio Effects–works with any PC with an NPU, though you will only get basic effects on Meteor Lake (and equivalent, and older) AI PCs.

If you have a Copilot+ PC with a 40+ TOPS NPU–or, soon, an equivalent PC based on Intel Lunar Lake, AMD Zen 5, or newer chips–you gain access to so-called Copilot+ PC features, which include the full Windows Studio Effects (with additional effects), Cocreator in Paint, Image Creator and Restyle Image in Photos, Auto SR for games, Live Captions with real-time language translation, and, soon, Recall in preview.

The latter two of those tiers require an NPU and, in the latter case, an NPU with a very specific performance rating.

This is beaten to death in that article linked above. Sorry it’s so long. The part you care about is towards the end.

I still can’t recall

hastin asks:

With Recall now in “Insider testing” starting in October, do you still see Microsoft announcing Copilot+ PCs with non-Snapdragon chips for this holiday season? Do you still think that comes with Windows 11 24H2?

It was never clear whether Microsoft and the industry would use the Copilot+ PC branding with non-Snapdragon-based PCs. And the closer we get to October, and the more information we get from hardware makers (AMD and Intel, but also PC makers), the more it appears that these PCs will not be called Copilot+ PCs. Instead, it seems they will be marketed as AI PCs that have “Copilot+ PC” or “Copilot+” capabilities/features. For now, at least, Copilot+ PC is reserved for Qualcomm and its Snapdragon X chips. But that may be permanent.

It doesn’t matter.

In the end, this is just branding. And as we’ve discussed in the past, these names go away in time, right? We used to have Tablet PCs, Media Center PCs, Ultramobile PCs, Multimedia PCs, etc. And now those are all just PCs: The market matured, those capabilities were all rolled into mainstream Windows, and the hardware they required became generally available, just part of the base platform. That will happen with Copilot+ PC and AI PC as brands. They will just be PCs.

The question here isn’t whether Copilot+ PC-capable PCs running on AMD and Intel chips will get Copilot+ PC capabilities, they will. It’s when. And my guess is still that this happens with the (second, final, whatever) broader release of Windows 11 version 24H2 in October … or at least within a reasonable time frame of that (shortly thereafter). I mean, that has to be the goal. The hardware makers can’t stop talking about (and around) it. It must be imminent.

The sub-question here is about Recall. Microsoft just revealed that Recall would finally enter preview in October, right when 24H2 lands. And the commentary here is around the small population of users that could even test it. If they leave it, literally to Copilot+ PCs, that’s a small audience, even in the context of the cross-section of enthusiasts who would have purchased such a PC and participate in the Windows Insider Program. But if they expand that audience to include those with Lunar Lake/Zen 5-based PCs … that’s still a small audience. But a bigger audience. And that would make sense. I don’t see Recall being tested on “normal” PCs without a powerful NPU. After all, it requires such a thing.

But that raises another interesting point. I argue that the security concerns with Recall are overblown because those reports were based on people using the feature in preview on non-Copilot+ PCs that are not protected by the stringent security features inherent to that platform. And I know there are detractors and doubter (not to mention conspiracy theory nut jobs), but that argument is bullet-proof and correct. You cannot judge the security of this functionality based on experiences on a normal PC. It’s impossible. Copilot+ PCs are secured to such a degree that it obviates every single concern those people raised. This was a non-event, manifested into a crisis.

Here’s the wrinkle in all that.

AI PCs using Lunar Lake/Zen 5 chips with powerful NPUs can run Recall. Are those PCs protected in the same manner as Copilot+ PCs? No. They are not. It’s impossible: Any enthusiast can, or will be able to, buy those chips off the shelf, assemble their own PCs with their own parts, install Windows 11 version 24H2, and—presumably–use Recall. And in that case, those arguments–or at least some of them–may be valid. On an unprotected PC like that, there are other concerns. Perhaps real concerns.

Will Microsoft allow Recall on those PCs? You bet. Maybe not at first, I’m curious to see how that goes. But in the sense that Copilot+ PCs and AI PCs going away, as noted in the previous answer, all PCs will run Recall at some point. So the underlying platform needs to be shored up as much as possible. And Recall may need to be further secured as well, if only to address concerns that are or may be valid on non-Copilot+ PCs. We see hints of this in the rumors/news about BitLocker/full disk encryption coming to all PCs, regardless of whether the user signs in with a Microsoft account (MSA). And in the increased requirements for signing in with an MSA in the first place.

That’s where I’m at now based on what we know at this moment. We can only guess until/unless Microsoft and its partners are more explicit.