Hands-On Windows 187 transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Paul Thurrott [00:00:00]:
Coming up next on Hands on Windows, we're going to look at the things Microsoft didn't say when it said it would promise to fix Windows 11 in 2026. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. Hello everybody, and welcome back to Hands on Windows. I'm Paul Thurat and we're in the middle of a series of episodes concerning Microsoft's efforts to fix Windows 11 in 2026, which is fantastic. So we looked at some issues a couple of episodes ago. Last episode I looked at the things Microsoft explicitly said it was going to do. But as I went through that list originally, I realized they haven't said some things they haven't promised to fix, some things that I think are major problems in Windows 11.

Paul Thurrott [00:00:52]:
So I thought we should go through that list this week. There is some good stuff happening. I want to be super clear about that. And we talked about some of that good stuff before and Microsoft still hasn't discussed, for example, the changes it's made to OneDrive, where folder backup automatically enabling on you when you say no is less problematic than it was before. And if it does do that, or if you want to make a configuration change, there's some good UI in there to determine where those files are going to go. It's not perfect, but it is definitely a step forward. So as I read the Microsoft post about all the things they were going to fix, I was thinking to myself, wait a minute, I made a list. I made something I called the Windows 11 insured ification checklist two years ago.

Paul Thurrott [00:01:40]:
And in this blog post I stepped through all of the areas where I felt that Windows 11 was insuredified. I'll use the G rated version for this podcast. So does Microsoft promise to fix any of those issues? Right. So let's go through them one by one. If you're familiar with Windows 11, and probably the biggest single complaint, if there is such a thing, it has to do with diagnostics and feedback or what we call telemetry data. And Starting in Windows 8, Microsoft started enabling this capability where it could automatically look into your PC and determine what the problems were, compare it to a database that they have up in the cloud, essentially. And then when they see the same problem across a lot of computers, they can fix those problems. Starting Windows 10, they enabled that automatically when you first sign into Windows.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:30]:
And there were some changes back and forth, but Windows 11 continues forward with that system. And so diagnostic data or telemetry is required in Windows 11. There's nothing you can do in the UI to turn that off. You can send them more information if you want. I don't know why anyone would do that, but you could. But what you can't do, what you don't see here is a switch. I don't want to send more data. Microsoft has said nothing about telemetry.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:58]:
So if we're keeping a scorecard here, I think we're 0 and 1 right now. So on my list of unsuretified elements of Windows 11, number one, without a doubt is telemetry. And they have never addressed that. So that's not changing the start menu, which we talked about in the last episode, how they're working on fixing the performance. They also talked about kind of the relevancy or the how they can recommend things in here that are typically apps or whatever. They're going to try to make that better for people somehow. I'm not really sure it's just an advertisement, but you can at least turn that off. But, you know, one of the things we used to complain about back in the day with Windows, which is still a problem today, is that PC makers often bundle tons and tons of crapware on their computers, starting in Windows 10.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:44]:
Microsoft started doing it, and I've already cleaned this up, but usually there's stuff in here like a LinkedIn stub which you can kind of click on. It runs a, you know, installs a LinkedIn app. There'll be junk down here in the recommendation. I've already done what I can to clean this up, but Microsoft never addressed that in their prom, you know, their announcement promise. So now we're over two. Okay, great. So surely this is going to get better. We'll see.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:14]:
The next issue is actually one finally that they have addressed, and that's that Windows Update, the chaotic constant updates. You know, I talked about how they're going to let you pause updates for a longer period of time than five weeks, etc. So they are not providing a lot of details about how this is going to work. But to me, the chaos of Windows Update is at least twofold. There is the constant series of updates that have new features, right? So they've renamed these things, but every month we get new features. Now, it has been calmer this year than it was the past at least two years. But we still have this weird situation where we have security updates bundled with new features, and you just have to accept them. The other side of that coin is that you may want some new feature, and those new features, by and large are delivered as CFRs or controlled feature releases.

Paul Thurrott [00:05:07]:
And what that means is that they will be enabled randomly on your computer. There's no UI in here to say, no, I want the new feature right now. They've never addressed that, at least not for the stable version of Windows 11. Insiders are going to get some kind of a fix along those lines, so we'll see how that goes. So I'm going to put this one in the win column for Microsoft. So we're one and two now, I think, is the way to look at that. One of the other big issues, at least for enthusiasts, I don't think this is a big deal for most mainstream consumers, is that they force you to sign in with an online account when you first set up a new computer. Right now, for most individuals, that will be a Microsoft account, an msa.

Paul Thurrott [00:05:46]:
If you are part of a school or part of a managed organization, some kind of a business, government, whatever, you might have an account that they've provided for you. It's still a managed account, an online account. What they have removed from the UI is the ability to sign in as a local account and not have any connection to these online services. Now you can in here go and convert this MSA sign into a local account. So that's there. That's a workaround. If you install Windows 11 using a tool like Rufus or some other third party tools. We've talked about different kind of fixes you can make during setup.

Paul Thurrott [00:06:23]:
You know, you run a command line, reboot the system, etc. You can sign up with a local account that way. But they never discussed this. And I will say after the announcement went out, there have been some people at Microsoft who've been tweeting and at least one of them has said, yeah, this is something we kind of want to work on. We're going to see if we can get that in there. But Microsoft has made no commitment for that to happen in 2026. So I'm going to call that one a loss. This is going to be one and three on the.

Paul Thurrott [00:06:50]:
Let's bring up a empty page here. Microsoft Edge obviously is a huge problem in Windows 11, and it's for multiple reasons. They try to. Microsoft tries to coerce you to use Edge if you're not using it. They try to coerce you to use their preferred configuration, which sends them more data which they can use to track you online and sell that information to advertisers. Even if you do use Edge, if you configure another web browser to be the default web browser, it will still run Edge when you click on a story here in Widgets, if you click on a search result in a couple of other places. So there are workarounds and utilities you can install. But the default behavior in Windows 11 is to ignore your default browser choice in certain situations because it's better for Microsoft that it do so.

Paul Thurrott [00:07:40]:
And they have never mentioned Microsoft Edge, so they've never said anything about that. And if I get the score correct in my head, I believe we're 11 in four now. So we've only got the one minor victory there. I don't have anything to show you for this one, but when Windows 11 first came out, one of the controversies was that it had what people would say were arbitrary hardware requirements. People saw it as a way to force customers to buy a new computer. And there was some validity to that when Windows 11 first shipped. But the thing we've seen since then are a bunch of new security features built into the system. They're actually very good that do require a TPM security chip 2.0 or higher, or Microsoft Proton Pluton, sorry, security chip.

Paul Thurrott [00:08:27]:
And I feel like this one doesn't mean mean as much anymore. Microsoft also introduced something called Copilot plus PC, which is much more stringent. Hardware requirements, there's all kinds of reasons for that, but 16 gigs of RAM, 512 gigs of storage, an MPU that can do 40 tops of hardware, accelerated AI performance, et cetera, et cetera. Those are special premium computers, so that's not a big deal. But the end result to me is that the hardware requirements that to me were a problem a couple years ago, not really a problem. I'm going to call this one a wash. I'm not going to score this either way. I won't hold this against Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:03]:
I think they've done pretty well there. Now, I mentioned that the OneDrive thing, and we did an episode probably a month or two ago about this and it's odd to me that they have never addressed this publicly to this day. But when you first set up a computer, I showed you how there could be a little yellow info bar up here that will allow you to actually prevent it from ever turning on folder backup in the first place, which is great. I also talked a little bit about. Let me just make sure there's nothing in this folder before I do this. Yeah, there's a little bit there. That's okay. You know, if you, if you turn this thing, if you turn on or it turns on for you somehow some notion of folder backup and then you go in and say, well, actually I don't want that on.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:51]:
You get this UI and with this UI you can choose what to do, right? You've got some files or folders or both that were in your local folder. In this case Documents, you've got some that are up in OneDrive. And in the past if you turn this off, it would just keep everything in OneDrive. Now it's giving you the option right now. I'm going to actually leave this alone for right now and I'll show you why, because I've got stuff. If I go into my OneDrive and I go into the documents, you can see there's other stuff in there. So I'm going to have to figure out how to fix that. But this is kind of the problem because I don't get an option that is only bring back the stuff that used to be on the computer, right? You can either have all of it in OneDrive or all of it in on the PC.

Paul Thurrott [00:10:37]:
So it's, it's a step forward, but it's also not a perfect fix. I'm going to give this one kind of a tie, right? And so in this sense, I guess we're at one, I think it's one, four and one, if that makes sense. So we got one win, four losses and this one's kind of a tie because this is an improvement. But it's not a total solving of the problem if you're not paying attention and don't know what you're doing. OneDrive could still automatically enable folder backup without even telling you, which to me is absolutely crazy. So there's a little bit of good and bad in there. So we'll see what actually happens. Microsoft, like I said, Microsoft employees who were working on this have been tweeting lately.

Paul Thurrott [00:11:17]:
They're on social media, they're talking about stuff, they're giving feedback, they're providing more information about some of the stuff they're doing. By the time you see this video, we'll probably have seen some of the first changes in Windows. Although that will only be in the Insider program. I don't expect any of these things to occur or not. But the thing is, you know, last episode I talked about the stuff they are doing. By and large, most of what I talked about here is what they're not doing. And so to go through that list again, the things that are not being fixed or haven't been addressed in any way are the forced telemetry, the pre installed crapware and just recommendations in general. The forced Microsoft account sign ins, the forced edge usage which is true whether you use it or not.

Paul Thurrott [00:11:58]:
And then the OneDrive thing is kind of a half, you know, one good, one bad, one improvement, one not so good. So it's, it's not as great as it could be, I guess. But, you know, again, we'll see. Because as I record this, we probably have about five to six months before we actually see the next version, the next major version of Windows 11. And things can change between now and then, too. So it's not all bad. But we just need to be honest about, you know, we had identified myself and others, you know, what we think of as serious problems with Windows. And it's odd to me that they just made a big promise to fix the thing and didn't address most of those things, which is unfortunate.

Paul Thurrott [00:12:41]:
Anywho, thank you for watching. We will have a new episode every Thursday. You can find out more@Twit TV. HRW. Thank you so much. Thank you especially to our Club Twit members. We love you. If you're not a Club Twit member, you can learn more@Twit TV Club Twitter, Twit.

Paul Thurrott [00:12:57]:
Thank you. I'll see you next week.