Ask Paul: November 15 (Premium)

Happy Friday! This is our last full week in Mexico, so we’ll be heading home soon. But first, an early start to the weekend.

Terrible is as terrible does

Christian-Gaeng asked:

I have a question about OneDrive or OneDrive Business. Like you, I have been using Google Drive for a while, simply because it works and isn’t as annoying as OneDrive. My question is whether OneDrive for Business behaves just as stupidly as the private customer OneDrive. Or would you recommend the business version?

As I was testing using a local account over the past two weeks, I also configured two PCs for a Microsoft Work or school (Entra, I guess) sign-in from initial setup, in part for the book and in part to check on this exact thing.

On one of the PCs, I signed in to OneDrive using that WSA account. It’s not as annoying as consumer OneDrive, but it did still harass me upfront to configure OneDrive Folder backup a few times. But since then, it’s calmed down and it hasn’t auto-enabled it (yet?). So far so good.

But there is one potential issue with this configuration if you intend to use a local or Microsoft account on the PC too. Many corporate policies are applied to subsequent sign-ins and some of them aren’t great. So it’s better, I think, to sign in with a Microsoft account first (or maybe a local account if you then properly secure it, encrypt the disk, etc.), and then use the WSA on there.

It’s an interesting comparison to the local account experience I’ve had recently. When you use a local account sign-in from the start, that seems to work to suppress some of the harassment, too. It’s not perfect, you still get things like the “Download now” animated icon in the File Explorer address bar and the occasional “You should use a Microsoft account” notes in Settings and Start. But it’s still better than Folder backup just getting enabled without your consent.

That said, I need to use both of these configurations longer to be sure. But most of the PCs I have here in Mexico are now set up with a local account first, with one remaining on the WSA first configuration. So far, neither has any major issues, and the harassment levels, while a bit different between the two, are down from a straight-up MSA sign-in.

Taking the leap

CharlesVincent2 asks:

Taking an experimental leap of faith.. ordered surface 7 elite 32 gig 15” for new daily driver. ..for travel, corp use, financial modeling, productivity, collaboration and graphic apps, some video editing, thick training docs, product manuals and multimedia presentations, plus heavy dose of zoom and teams video. Moving from ThinkPad i7 4core 10 gen. Looking forward to silent, performance boost and full plane ride on battery. Hope it feels as snappy as M3 mac book pros.

I feel pretty good about all that and suspect you are going to love it. Surface Laptop 7 is my favorite laptop of the year, and the one I would choose if I were forced to give up all but one computer. It has never let me down. It’s so good, I had to force myself to put it aside so I could spend an adequate amount of time with the laptops I was reviewing on this trip.

Curious how 3:2 screen will feel.

If you are used to a 16:9 display, it will look and feel different, but it’s particularly well-suited to productivity use, whether it’s one app or two apps side-by-side. If you’re coming from 16:10, you might not even notice.

Never felt need for touch screen. Can one disable touch screen?

Yes. I made a video about this earlier this year. But as it turns out, Surface Laptop 7, at least–not sure about earlier and/or non-Arm-based Surface PCs do this–requires a slightly different set of steps.

So, open Device manager, expand Human Interface Devices, and disable the following three devices: Surface Touch Communications, Surface Touch Pen Processor, and Surface Touch Screen Device.

Not sure I recommend this per se. But it does work.

Microsoft Start, end

helix2301 asks:

Paul I noticed on my Iphone Microsoft start is now msn start. Windows central and others covered the rebrand and home page change I wss wondering your take on it.

I don’t think most people would even notice. Neither is a beloved brand, I’m not sure most were aware of Start to begin with, and I guess if you had to Sophie’s Choice it, MSN is the better of the two. A low bar.

Microsoft doesn’t have many successful consumer brands. Neither of these is on the list.

Snapdragon Dev Kit

train_wreck asks:

What plans, if any, do you have for the Snapdragon dev PC that Leo said he would send you?

This is the PC I’ll use at the desk in my home office. So this is what I’ll be using for podcasts, meetings, and so on. But I spend more time on laptops, and work around our place, throughout each day. So it’s a secondary PC for the most part.

Calling an audible

louiem3 asks:

Hi Paul, curious if you still listen to Audible and if so, recommend any good titles that you’ve enjoyed?

I do, but I publish a post each year about this–you can find the 2023 version here–and that will be happening soon, so I don’t want to step all over that now. But the short version is that the five most recent audiobooks I purchased are Brothers by Alex Van Halen, which I finished quickly and loved, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (because it’s read by R.C. Bray), Different Seasons by Stephen King, Dreamcatcher (also Stephen King), and Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.

But … more on all that soon.

Let’s get physical

Leo_W asks:

This year has been breaking a trend for me. After a decade plus of almost exclusively buying comic books and books digitally, I have bought a number of physical books. Some of that has to do with sales or print only versions of the books. The net result is I either need to divest myself of some of the physical books I previously bought or get another bookshelf. Next thing you know I’ll be buying DVDs and CDs. (Don’t get me started on the vinyl I have bought in the past few years.)

I know you have spent the past few years moving towards digital media. Since starting that journey have you found moments where you’ve taken a step back into analog media or see circumstances that would prompt you to buy physical books/music/movies?

I’m 100 percent digital. We used our move to Pennsylvania in 2017 as an excuse to get rid of a lot of physical items–I even tossed out the books I had written–and since then, we downsized even further when we sold the house in early 2023. We still have “stuff” in boxes in our condo in Pennsylvania, and that is an ongoing to-do, but now that we’re going back and forth between there and Mexico City, keeping it as light as possible is important. We have basic setups in both places, now, and a good feel for what we “need” at a minimum for normal day-to-day stuff.

But I understand the allure of physical media to whatever degree. I feel like there are different motives for going this route. For some, it’s literally nostalgic and/or feels better or simpler in an age of wireless everything and tech overload. I guess have less sympathy for younger people who get into vinyl, dumb phones, or whatever, that seems misguided to me.

We were walking through a residential area (Condesa) at night recently and there were these big apartments that were mostly ceiling-to-floor windows on the street side, so you could see a lot of these places. And one had this big bookshelf, stuffed full of books, with more books on either side, very French, really, and I did have that slight pang. I miss books … sort of. It feels like an affectation, like I just like having them around, and seeing them sometimes. But this also doesn’t make sense with our lifestyle.

One thing that is semi-related to this was my various pushes into smart home tech. At one point, I thought we’d be automating everything and having smart devices everywhere, but we scaled that back very quickly. Sometimes, simple/”dumb”/disconnected is just better. Sometimes not. It’s a balance thing, and different people probably have different lines. We’re pretty light on it, and we like it that way.

I was discussing smart door locks with one of neighbors in the building here in Mexico, and was saying that the issue was that there two basic types, one that is fully electric, and would be difficult to connect through the concrete here, and one that is battery powered. And that because of the place and whatever, we’d have to get one that also had a normal key slot, so we could enter if we were gone for months and the battery tied. And he asked why I would even spend time on this. I didn’t get it at first, I felt like we have a pretty flimsy door lock and that it should be at least buffed up with a dead bolt or whatever. But he said that we have 24/7 physical security and alarms in the building. And that there’s no reason to even lock the doors, really, it’s the safest neighborhood around, and no one is getting in anyway. And he’s right. So that was the end of that.

Anyway, no, no books or other physical media to speak of. But there is also a related issue between that interim digital technology where you would download and “own” a thing, be it a PDF, an MP3, an MP4, or whatever, and today’s everything-is-a-streaming-subscription world. And I am sort of navigating through that bit and thinking about where the line should be there. I don’t see myself buying paper books or movie Blu-rays. But I could see myself with more digital media and fewer subscriptions. That feels inevitable.

Judge me by my size, do you?

Pakeha asks:

Over the years I noticed you have been using the Intel NUC computers. Since that all moved to Asus have you moved to other NUC type computers or are you waiting until 2025 for Arm SFF computer to appear?

I was a big fan of the Intel NUC, and I owned at least three of them I can think of. But I still use small form factor (SFF) computers. They’re just not as elegant or small. My current desktop is an HP Elite Mini 800 G9, and as noted above, I’ll be replacing that soon with an Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit, which is sadly unavailable for purchase now. I suspect we’ll see more Arm-based SFF PCs, however. It seems ideal for that form factor.

Anyway, in the PC space, the HP Elite Mini I’m using seems representative of where this form factor has gone, at least for businesses. There are many similar PCs, like the Acer Veriton Vero Mini I reviewed a year ago, and the Lenovo ThinkCentre line (that I could have sworn I’d reviewed at least one but can’t find). I’ve not tried any of the more NUC-like devices, but I’m curious about the Beelink mini-PCs, which seem to be a spiritual successor and come in AMD variants, and seem reasonably priced.

The new Mac mini is obviously compelling, unless you’re dead-set against Apple and/or the Mac. This would be an interesting way to run Windows 11 on Arm, though you’d need to pay for Parallels and Windows too. If I spent more time at a desk, I’d consider it. I feel like a docked laptop makes the most sense for most people, though. And that’s what I use here in Mexico.

Which lake?

gg1 asks:

You’ve expressed that Lunar Lake has been troublesome so far, giving you serious reliability, battery, and performance issues. Do you think Intel will be able to fix these issues or do you see them as more akin to Skylake and something that will just remain?

I think they are fixable, just based on what Intel has said and done so far, and what I’ve heard from other reviewers. It’s possible this was rushed to market so quickly that Intel skipped some quality control work at the end or whatever. But I will try to keep an eye on this.

Beyond that, assuming somebody has to buy an Intel laptop, ceteris paribus which one should somebody get: Lunar Lake or Meteor Lake?

I don’t see a world where anyone has to buy an Intel-based laptop, and if you are buying new, and right now, and need x64 for whatever reason, I think AMD’s Zen 5-based chips are the clear winner. This appears to be the case as you expand the search into Arrow Lake and desktop-class chips too. That I have not experienced.

But in this theoretical world in which the choice is Meteor Lake or Lunar Lake, it’s still hard to answer with anything but, it depends. If all-day battery is a literal concern/need, then the choice is obvious, you have to get Meteor Lake. But I very much prefer Lunar Lake, despite the issues, and if only for the graphics advantage, which is meaningful, and the Copilot+ PC designation, which will bring Recall to the equation. I feel like that’s a game-changer.

The problem with all this stuff is that your experience will vary. Some PCs do a better job than others at fixing issues, regardless of the cause. So I’d stick with Lenovo and HP, pretty much. They ship firmware updates pretty regularly to the machines with the iffy Intel processors, and I had a good experience with that this summer, with a laptop I thought I was going to have to give up on. The Lunar Lake-based laptop I just reviewed is so close to being terrific, but I can put up with the battery life around home because it doesn’t matter. Plus, Intel laptops have to be plugged in to see the full performance of the CPU anyway.

This is a great example of my central issue with technology, which is that it’s rarely consistent. You can have a great experience with an Intel-based PC, but it depends. You can also have a horrific experience. There are a lot of variables.

I will say, it was nice to finally see others experiencing the problems I had. The Lunar Lake stuff is the fourth time/generation in a row I’ve found a serious issue with an Intel microprocessor, but the previous three times, it was like I was on my own. On Lunar Lake, at least, there is consensus. Intel can’t and won’t ignore this.