Ask Paul: December 13 (Premium)

Happy Friday the 13th! It’s time to kick off the weekend a bit early with another stellar round of reader questions. I’ll do my best.

ALTernate lifestyles

wright_is asks:

On Windows Weekly, you said that Copilot is co-opting the “window menu” shortcut (Alt+Space), probably one of the biggest life-savers in Windows’ shortcuts. Where is that moving to?

This was based on the Microsoft blog post announcing the new “native” version of Copilot that’s now rolling out to all Insider channels. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Windows Insider Program, but they are unable to communicate clearly. So I don’t know.

It appears that this keyboard shortcut could change, and why they don’t just use the now-unused Winkey + C shortcut that Copilot originally used is unclear. But there is this note.

The Copilot app for Windows uses the RegisterHotKey function for the Alt + Space keyboard shortcut. Many apps use this keyboard shortcut today. For any apps installed on your PC that might utilize this keyboard shortcut, Windows will register whichever app is launched first on your PC and running in the background as the app that is invoked when using Alt + Space.

That doesn’t address the window menu usage, but rather third-party apps (and even Microsoft apps, like PowerToys Run) that override this shortcut. (I change PowerToys Run to use Winkey + Space specifically because I, too, use Alt + Space for the window menu all the time.)

My guess is that this will change. But all we can do is guess. Because communication is hard for these people and the Windows team doesn’t seem to understand the product they’re responsible for now, and it will get a lot of negative feedback for all the obvious reasons.

This is what people who have never used Snapdragon X don’t understand

will asks:

After having used a Snapdragon laptop for the past month I noticed just how smooth Windows performs. Yes battery life is amazing, but there are so many little details that just perform better. Take windows resizing, it is smooth and fluid. Just logging into to the system is faster and Windows Hello facial performs near instantaneous vs a new Intel laptop running the same stuff. I am curious, has Microsoft been optimizing and making Windows on ARM that much better? It’s almost like it’s a different version of the OS when you use it daily compared to a x86 version. It’s hard to explain just how relaxing it is to use Windows like this.

Exactly.

But no, this isn’t Microsoft working to improve this functionality only on Arm. This is Arm being the superior platform and just working reliably. And it’s precisely what the Arm haters don’t understand: This platform just works better. Is better.

This isn’t anecdotal. I review over a dozen laptops every year, and I have over 20 PCs here that I keep up-to-date. I have four brand-new laptops in-house right now, three running the latest Intel chips and one running the latest AMD chips. And while these are an improvement of sorts over their predecessors, they have the same reliability issues as ever, especially regarding what happens when you open the display lid. Sometimes they come on right away or reasonably quickly, sometimes not. Sometimes Windows Hello perks to life immediately or quickly, but just as often the eyeball thing looks left and right, the seconds tick by, and then it fails, and you have to type in a PIN. Etc. On and on it goes. Like a sad game of roulette.

We can only guess about the specifics of why Windows 11 on Arm is superior to that on x64 like this. But I have ideas based on my many years of experience with many dozens of different laptops, and my relationships with PC makers. And everything I see tells me that it’s because x86 is literally broken. Each new chipset arrives with its own unique problems, that’s always been true. Intel/AMD and the PC makers fix them as they can after the fact repeatedly, which has always been true, too, but it’s worse this year–seriously, the number of firmware updates I get from Lenovo and HP over this past year is notably more than ever before–and it’s this never-ending game of “ship it, then fix it.” Sometimes it eventually works. But the instances in which a new PC arrives and doesn’t work correctly is on a noticeable upward curve this past year. And the fixes don’t always get to the heart of the problem. Which is that x86 is archaic and needs to die. This platform does not work.

This is the real reason Intel created a foundation to try and fix x86 by simplifying and standardizing it. It (and AMD, ever the follower here) are advancing their chips so rapidly to keep up with what Qualcomm (and Apple and others) is doing that they’ve introduced even more problems than usual too. But x86 is broken. And I am not sure if it can be fixed. I don’t believe it makes sense to even bother. We need to move on, collectively, as an industry.

In short, no, there is no special work being done on Arm to make it special. It’s just that Arm is special, so everything just works. It’s the opposite of the x86 experience. It’s obviously superior. All you need to do is use it and then it’s clear.

Battery preservationist society

jt5 asks:

I just got a Surface Pro 11 and love it. My question is about preserving the battery. I use a Microsoft docking station and it works fine. The battery icon does not show the battery preserver like other Windows 11(I have only seen it on the x64 laptops). My concern is I don’t want to kill the battery. I looked and don’t see anything that points to maintaining the battery at 80%. Right now- when I am done using it- I just unplug it from the docking station. Do you have any suggestions on how to preserve the battery for the long haul?

This touches on one of the weirder Windows features that’s tough to document because it’s literally something only the PC maker can configure. So what we see–and get–differs by PC.

That feature is called Smart charging. As Microsoft says, “some device manufacturers turn on Smart charging in Windows 11,” but the emphasis there is on “some,” and it’s not universal to PC makers, it’s different for different PCs. Or, “every device manufacturer implements Smart charging in a slightly different way that’s optimized for their specific device.”

Smart charging usually bites me in the opposite direction: I don’t want it charging to 80 percent, I want it to charge to 100 percent, and with older (x86) Surface PCs, you could disable Smart charging but only temporarily. So every once in a while, I’d be out in the world with a non-full battery. That was annoying.

But again, it’s different for every PC. And while you would think that Microsoft, of all companies, would implement this correctly and/or consistently, that’s not been my experience. And with Surface Pro 11 (and Surface Laptop 7, which is essentially identical), Smart charging is not available. This is configured in the Surface app, but it says that it’s “paused.” This is curious.

Or not. It isn’t well documented, but I believe that Smart charging will auto-enable when required. That is, because the PC is Arm-based and new, and presumably set on the “recommended” power management mode, it is not raising temperatures and stressing the battery. But as it ages, its effective lifetime will go down, and Smart charging will come on.

This isn’t something I worry about, regardless. I’m not sure how long you expect to use this PC, but it’s unlikely it will ever have serious battery longevity issues. This is yet another advantage of Arm as a platform.

Coding challenges

helix2301 asks:

I’m just wondering if you would or ever considered any coding contests that leo participates and codes in? Have you ever done that kind of stuff?

I think about that, but have never done so. Semi-related, I was literally just looking through Udacity to see whether any courses made sense to me, but I didn’t see anything relevant. Short-term, I just want to finish the initial phase of my .NETpad modernization, keep working on the tabs interface for phase two, and work up my Windows customization app. That’s more than enough to keep me busy coding-wise for the next year, I think.

Arm roadmap

helix2301 asks:

Brad and you had cool conversation about building arm desktop eventually are there any desktop motherboards with arm what the road map?

Qualcomm has never specified a road map, but they have been very clear that Snapdragon X will come to a variety of form factors, including desktop PCs. Based on what I’ve learned, the second-generation Snapdragon X processors, with improved GPU performance, will ship in new PCs by mid-summer 2025. But that’s all I know. That said, there are Snapdragon X-based NUC-style mini-PCs in the works, and those will basically be laptop motherboards but inside a SFF case. I don’t see why those can’t happen immediately.

I suspect we will see the first official desktop Copilot+ PCs at CES in January, BTW.

In-person events

helix2301 asks:

Someone by way had questions on forums and I’m not sure if you saw it are there any plans to do any thurrott events at ignite or build like when site first launched?

Sorry, I don’t recall seeing that, but yes, if Mary Jo and I had both gone to Ignite, we would have had a meet-up. If we’re at Build next year, I’m sure we will have a meet-up. I was in NYC this past Monday for a work thing and we usually see each other on these days but it didn’t work out this time. For me, it was several hours of travel for about 90 minutes of face time, not sure if that’s worth it, but it’s infrequent. But if it was something longer, I could see throwing something informal together.

Swagified

helix2301 asks:

How’s the swag shop coming?

Fine, it’s just sitting there. 🙂 I updated it weeks ago based on the feedback I got at the time (including a high-quality “Pretty Bueno” t-shirt). I did order several items to check on the quality, and it seems fine to me for the most part.

What AI?

j5 asks:

Hey Paul, what AIs have you used? I have ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude installed on my iPhone. I really like using ChatGPT for simple searches, when did this person die, who was the actor that played this role, etc. And for other things like generating a list of usernames, or asking for synonyms for a word, etc. I like to use Perplexity to summarize articles, I think it does a much better job than the others. Claude I’ve only dabbled with to help with learning Python, and one of my friends said it’s great to help with their writing (articles, poems, etc.) but I haven’t tried it for that.

I’ve used most AIs to some degree, but the top several in order of time used are probably Copilot/Designer, Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Brave Leo, and now Apple Intelligence (which will likely be one of the top 2 or 3 soon). I like Arc Search on mobile for getting answers to specific questions as well.

I coincidentally just referenced this above, but after I posted about my work on a tabbed-based version of .NETpad, I received a feed notification that Anthropic had just updated Claude and that it pair coding improvements were part of the update. So I asked it to recreate the C# class I had made manually as part of the .NETpad work using the prompt:

Create a class in C# called DocumentTab that has three properties named TextHasChanged (a boolean), DocumentIsSaved (a boolean), and DocumentName (a string). There should be two constructors, one with no arguments that adds default values to each property, and one with three arguments so the code calling the constructor can pass its own arguments, of types boolean, boolean, and string.

I was surprised, and delighted, when it spat out code that was almost identical to mine. This is a big deal to me, as I’m not a professional and I’m always curious if there’s a better way to do things. I will be using this, and GitHub Copilot, this coming year with .NETpad to see how they can help.

I have Brave installed as my second browser, Safari is my main one. And Leo AI is decent at summarizing articles.

I’ve not done as much with article summaries as I thought I would, but I bet that changes as this functionality is made more seamless in browsers. That said, I also disable Copilot and the sidebar in Edge, so maybe this is self-inflicted.

I only really use CoPilot at work and I use it for all my work tasks. It helps with creativity, crafting emails, and training documents, and fleshing out my work notes. I have it and Designer installed on my iPhone. But they don’t get used as much as the other AI apps do.

I continue to use and prefer Copilot (really Designer) for creating images for Thurrott.com (as per this post), though I keep testing Gemini in particular, just in case. I did use Apple Intelligence (Image Playground) to create cartoon heads for my wife and me for our Eternal Spring logo (below). And we’re using those throughout our Eternal Spring book (which will be out in first preview this weekend).

Just curious about what you’ve used, your personal experiences using them, and your thoughts on them. And now that we officially have the second round of Apple Intelligence available, I’m curious how all these other ones are going to respond.

Everyone talks about how late Apple is, etc. But I think the main thing Apple got right, and this is really important, was the seamless integration bit. They’re putting AI where people will want/need it, which is a silly thing to have to write, like “putting features where people want/need it.” But it’s notable that most AI feels a bit tacked on right now. I suspect Microsoft, Google, etc. will learn from Apple’s implementation style.

As a fun, brain rot, side note. My wife and I spent over an hour on the couch making Genmogis of us and our kids. The kids, teenagers, sat next to us sending us pictures from their older iPhones and we’d make Genmojis for them. It was a lot of family fun. 100% fluff and not significant. But just 100% significant that a silly phone feature like that brought us some family enjoyment for a while.

Yes. 🙂 I did this with our faces too, including our kids, just yesterday and the weirdest thing about it is how different those images look compared to the ones I made with Image Playground. But I suppose that’s related to the nature of style of emojis. It’s only a matter of time before people start making reaction emojis that are a cartoon version of them being excited, sad, angry, or whatever. It’s pretty fun. I don’t think of this as fluff. You interacted with your family. It doesn’t always have to be about productivity and efficiency.

AI meeting summaries

hensonr asks:

Paul, any ideas on AI that will let you upload a video, and get a written summary or guide (and maybe screenshot excerpts from the video)? My specific use case is many hours of Teams meeting videos on an EHR implementation. I have a new employee, and asking him to watch all those videos seems inefficient (where there may have been internal discussion on options, which he only needs the result of, along with the implementation specialist’s advice/direction of how to do that function). Thanks!

This is a feature of Microsoft 365 Copilot (and, perhaps, Copilot Plus). Copilot in meetings provides meeting transcripts, as you would expect, but also a summary with bulleted lists of key points and other information. Perhaps, you could collect these summaries and provide them to new employees as part of the onboarding process.

Microsoft has a site for Copilot in Teams with more info, but also a page specifically about Copilot in meetings.

The sad state of tech journalism

digiguy asks:

I am sure you have heard the kind of fake/misunderstood news by PC World about Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. In my understanding, there is nothing new and if anything what Microsoft wrote it a warning that you won’t be receiving updates once you update to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware.

Yes. And you are correct: This is not new (or news).

The short version is, I wrote The Windows 11 Watermark Isn’t New to address this poorly sourced and reported story.

The long version is, this kind of thing pisses me off.

PC World used to be a reputable publication. But in just the past few weeks alone, I have seen multiple instances of the following:

• A post about something that seems like news, so I have to go look at it.
• It’s an English translation of a post that first appeared on some German, Swedish, or whatever blog. That I presume PC World either owns or partners with.
• Its sourced from an even less reputable blog, typically Windows Latest, which appears to be in an arms race with Neowin to see which can write more about nothing as inaccurately and poorly as possible.
• It’s incorrect and/or superfluous, so now we have this circle jerk/telephone game of idiots wasting our time by spreading the same nonsense.

This topic you cite is just one example.

I don’t know if this is something worse than the current situations (you receive monthly updates but not major updates). At best this means you need to try and hack your way into every new major version of Windows, at worst that you won’t even be receiving (some) regular updates. At this point I would say updating now is pointless and it’s best to wait just before Windows 10 end of support (I guess 25H2?). What would you do? Personally, I still don’t know if I’ll tray to install 11 anyway. One option I am considering and testing is using my Windows 10 unsupported devices as thin clients for remote desktop into my Windows 11 devices, no port forwarding, just at home on the local network with apps like Teamviewer, Splashtop etc. (so nothing would be downloaded or installed on them, and no browser would be opened).

Here’s all that’s happening. You can install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. It works fine. I see no reason not to do so. Microsoft may display a watermark, but it never has. Microsoft may not let you install updates, but it never has. In fact, it auto-installs every single monthly security (cumulative) update, and, if you enable that option, preview updates too. The only thing that doesn’t auto-install is the annual feature update. So you just have to download and install that manually. Not a big deal.

Certainly not worth all the silly stories I still see out there on this topic. It’s infuriating. Did I mention this is infuriating?

I have an aversion to this kind of amateur hour, sorry. :/

Watchable

MichaelMDiv asks:

I noticed that you did a first impressions of the Pixel Watch 3 back in September, but I couldn’t find the full review. Did I miss it or are you still working on it? On a side note, is the Samsung Fit 3 still your daily driver, apart from reviews?

You’re killing me here. 🙂

Sorry, I was holding off on this one for one of my end-of-year reviews, which will be called something like “My Favorite Devices of 2024” and may or may not be combined with a related post called “2024: The Year I Went Deeper on Apple.” Either way, it’s coming. But the short version is that my Pixel Watch 3 experience was positive enough that I got an Apple Watch Series 10 fairly recently for comparison purposes. I haven’t written about that yet, but that’s part of this too.

So thanks for ruining it! 🙂 Kidding. But… this month, sometime.

Bring out your dead

anderb asks:

What’s deader? Intel or PWAs?

Only Intel is dead, so I don’t understand the question.

PWAs are everywhere and on the upside: All new Microsoft desktops are web apps/PWAs, including the (wink, wink) “native” version of Copilot.

Intel is spiraling the drain and will be split up soon. These things are not comparable.

Possibly the least ugliest ugly sweater yet

Omegaman asks:

Any word or info about Ugly Sweater 2024?

Yes, Microsoft’s 2024 ugly sweater is themed after the Xbox Red Ring of Death and it even features an animated red ring. Sadly, it’s only been made available to Microsoft employees for some reason, which is why it’s not been publicized as before.

Ah well.