Behind Thurrott.com: New Book, New Podcast, New Newsletters, and More!

There are numerous changes happening at Thurrott.com, and all at once, but it’s all good news. Here’s a quick overview.

? Windows 11 Field Guide, 25H2 Edition

After a lot of back and forth, I think I’ve finally found a format I like for the next edition of the Windows 11 Field Guide. It’s going to be different from the current edition, and more task/action-oriented. But it will grow over time to be just as thorough, I hope.

Here’s what’s happening.

Moving to an annual edition format

I’ve wanted to move the Windows 11 Field Guide to an annual edition format for at least a few years now. To date, I’ve just updated the book each year as Microsoft released new versions. But now, there will be a unique edition tied to each Windows 11 version. So this next book will be called something like Windows 11 Field Guide, 25H2 Edition.

The writing is mostly new and not based on what’s in the current Windows 11 Field Guide. It will be shorter overall, with far fewer images and more how-to/tip/secret-type content.

How I will (try to) handle upgrades

I really like Leanpub for the most part, but one of the limitations there is that it doesn’t offer any form of upgrade pricing. So there’s no way to check whether someone buying the new book already owns the previous book and then offer them a lower price.

To make up for that, I’ll sell the new book two ways. There will be a standalone $4.99 version of the book, which will not include the previous version. And then there will be a $9.99 bundle that includes both. That way, those who already bought the Windows 11 Field Guide will effectively get the new book for half price. And those that don’t have the current book can get both together at the normal $9.99 price.

Formatting

To better understand how this new edition will look and feel, I created a complete sample chapter covering the Windows 11 Desktop. It’s likely that I will tweak a few things as I complete other chapters, but I feel like this is pretty close to where it will all land. Here’s what it looks like (currently) in PDF form.

I’ll work through a few more sample chapters and adjust the formatting as needed. And then I will have the first in-progress version of the book on Leanpub by October.

?️ New podcast

Stephen Rose and I have recorded several episodes of a free new podcast called Desk to Destination that focuses on the travel tech that matters most. It’s hosted by Spotify and will be available on the Thurrott.com YouTube channel as well. The plan for now is to post a new episode every other Wednesday.

The first episode, TripIt and Travel Organization, is available now on Spotify and YouTube, but I will be pushing it to all the major podcast players and distributors soon. (I couldn’t do this until at least one episode was live.) I will post each episode here on Thurrott.com as well, as I do with my other podcasts.

? New newsletters

I wrote about the newsletter changes back in July, but this is the week it’s finally happening: Chris Hoffman is switching over to his new newsletter, and I’m excited to partner with him on it. If you already subscribe to the previous newsletter, Windows Intelligence, you probably know what’s happening, but here are a few new details for those who do not:

• The new newsletter is called The Windows Readme
• There will be more content from Thurrott.com in this newsletter than was the case with Windows Intelligence
• It will be free, released weekly, and will go out every Friday

Concurrent to this, I will revive the Thurrott Premium newsletter, which will also go out weekly, day TBD. This will be complementary to The Windows Readme, and per the name, it will focus on the content I create for Thurrott Premium and not news, how-tos, and so on. But anyone with a Thurrott.com account can subscribe, and perhaps we’ll get some new Premium memberships out of that. To do so, sign in to your Thurrott.com account and visit your My Account page: There’s an option under “Thurrott Newsletter” named “Receive Emails” you can check.

? Short Takes, Quick Takes, whatever?

Last Friday, I published a post with links to several news stories that I didn’t have time to write-up individually, and though I wasn’t sure what to call it, I eventually settled on the name “Friday Quick Takes.” This inevitably led to some requests that I bring back Short Takes, which was originally a Friday installment of my old WinInfo newsletter that dated back to the late 1990s. I probably should have predicted that, but there’s a bit of history there.

The short (ahem) version is that I write Ask Paul on Fridays now, for Premium members, and it’s a mammoth undertaking that almost always takes me several hours to write and is routinely 4,000 to 5,000 words in length, sometimes longer. This is why I stopped writing Short Takes, though I have repeatedly considered doing something like it, if only because some stories and events are worth sharing but don’t necessarily warrant an individual post.

So I will consider this again. No promises, but I suppose one solution would be to collect the blurbs over the course of a week and then just publish it (on Friday or some other day) in a way that wouldn’t interrupt Ask Paul or whatever other work. But … we’ll see. Perhaps it’s just an occasional thing.

? Coming soon: Membership changes

I don’t want to get too far ahead of things here, but we’re going to be introducing some changes to Thurrott.com memberships soon, possibly very soon. I’ve resisted this for a long time, but one of the side effects of the infrastructure I adopted when I took over Thurrott.com is that the membership/subscriber system we originally built over 10 years ago is convoluted and complicated. And in the past year or two, it’s become a huge problem, with an escalating series of billing issues that no one can permanently fix.

So we’re going to replace it all with a new system that’s simpler and self-service and should just work. This will require a transition for existing Thurrott Premium members, but it will be worth it.

I’ll have additional information about the membership changes soon. There’s a lot going on there, and we’re still working through some details. But it should be a net win for the site, for readers, and for Laurent, me, and anyone else who tries to troubleshoot account-related support tickets.

?️ Coming soon: Other site changes

Tied to all this, I will be making a few changes to the Thurrott.com website as well. I’m going to completely revamp the top menu to make it simpler and less topic-focused. I need to replace the Windows Intelligence icon in the header with a new Newsletters icon that will point to a new Newsletters hub on this site with links to The Windows Readme and Thurrott Premium newsletters. And I have to update related UIs throughout the site, in the footer, in articles, and in the sidebar, to address the newsletter changes.

More soon.