Windows Weekly 385 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: Time for Windows Weekly. Mary Jo Foley has the week off as she travels to Barcelona for Tech Ed next week. Paul Thurrott is here. We’ll talk about the latest updates to Windows 10, the technical preview. Stuff Satya says and a look at believe it or not at a version of cloud, a version for your very own home. Well if you’ve got a little bit to spend. It’s all coming up next on Windows Weekly.

Net casts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by Cache Fly, at cachefly.com.

Leo: This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. Episode 385, recorded October 22, 2014

President Spacey

Windows Weekly is brought to you by Square Space. The all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free two-week trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the off code WINDOWS. And by Citrix Share File. Enhance your workflow, send files of almost any size easily and securely with Citrix Share File. Try Share File today for a 30-day free trial, go to sharefile.com. Click the microphone and enter WINDOWS. And by lynda.com. Lynda.com is an easy and affordable way to help you learn. Instantly stream thousands of courses created by experts on business, software, web developing, graphic design, photography, and more. For a free trial visit lynda.com/windows. That’s lynda.com/windows. It’s time for Windows Weekly, yes sir! The show where we cover Microsoft and its amazing story of growth, rebirth, and flight. The phoenix of the technology world here to cover it, Mr. Paul Thurrott from the supersite for Windows, winsupersite.com. Mary Jo Foley has the week off. This is like old times; we did this show just you and me for many years. And I like it.

Paul Thurrott: Yep. I should get my brandy sipper out.

Leo: Hello, Paul.

Paul: Hello, Leo.

Leo: How are you today? I’ve got a crawler and a cup of coffee. So yep, it’s a morning show for me. You have an afternoon show, you can drink. Don’t let me stop you. So we have had a busy week. Much to talk about.

Paul: Yea, it’s actually I’d say the past couple weeks have been crazy. Its seems like it started with that San Francisco trip and it hasn’t let up.

Leo: Wasn’t there an event this week in San Francisco? That cloud event, right?

Paul: Yea. If you thought I was unhappy with going to San Francisco for that Windows thing, you can’t even imagine what I would have been like after this thing.

Leo: So you hunted, was there any important news out of that?

Paul: Yea, but it was all enterprise-related. I have part of this as my enterprise pick for later.

Leo: Alright, we can save that. Normally Mary Jo likes to cover it. We let her cover it.

Paul: I thought I would throw in a couple of Mary Jo type things.

Leo: When she’s not here, we really like to stick to things like Call of Duty.

Paul: Yep. We are going to discuss Call of Duty.

Leo: I can’t wait. But let’s start off with the Windows 10 technical preview. There was an update that got pushed out.

Paul: Yea. Added…

Leo: For one of those features they were pushing.

Paul: I had heard this was coming late in the week which would have been great timing for me. And then all of a sudden it just kind of happened yesterday. It was really bad timing. So whatever. I started downloading it on my PCs and everything. They pretty much telegraph the main features that are in there. Although all of them are in some way incomplete in their current form. So the notification center; actually I just noticed my notification center has notifications finally.

Leo: So that was one of the things they really touted in Windows 10.

Paul: We knew this first coming. Because of the way the Windows releases were staggered before the Action Center notification center debuted first on Windows Phone, and Windows 8.1. So the version we see in this build is an early version. It only has application and system notifications. So there’s more stuff coming later. It’s really basic looking when you see it, it’s just a plain white panel with not much going on. You can clear all the notifications now that I’m looking at it. I am curious if I click on an actual email if it goes to that email. It does not. So you can see it’s not fully…

Leo: It’s not fully wired up yet.

Paul: Shocker. Whatever. I would say that’s the one actual major new feature that’s in there. I think there’s some other things; animations of the windows which I find annoying quite frankly. There is the start of some other Windows Phone features: battery saver, data sense, storage sense would be in there, another Windows Phone feature. In some ways the most interesting thing that’s going on with this build is how this changes the way we’ll be updated going forward. And they provided some details about how that process works. And how it can work in the future. I actually don’t know if I linked this in an intelligent way. But in the article that I have, that is about Microsoft Delivers First Update to the Windows Technical Preview, there’s a couple of graphics in there about what they call rings. It kind of works the way Chrome does where there’s kind of a canary branch or ring as they call it. They have an operating system group ring which is the next set of users that gets build internally to Microsoft. Then they have all of Microsoft. So these three rings that are internal to Microsoft that determine how quickly the people within those rings get builds. Then outside of Microsoft, at least from the consumer/client version of Windows, they’re going to have… right now they have a Windows insiders ring. But there’s going to be a fast ring and a slow ring. So by default, everybody’s on slow. If you want to get the updates as they’re released. And it’s not clear if this is individual features or rather completely new builds, but you can switch that too fast and you’ll be on a slightly faster track than you would be otherwise. So I think this is a look at how they’re going to service people in the public when this thing goes live in non-preview form. Obviously some businesses are not going to want to play Windows updates immediately. Maybe this is a little clue at how that will work.

Leo: What else? What else is new?

Paul: Yea, I mean honestly it’s funny. That’s kind of most of it. Microsoft mentioned there were over 7,000 improvements in this build. I call that kind of Apple math. This new version of Apple’s whatever operating system…

Leo: Eight million new features!

Paul: So this is a new fun thing, whatever. Honestly there isn’t really much more. I’ve installed this on a touch device-I haven’t done much with touch-my understanding is there’s a few touch features that I haven’t really gotten to. If you’re familiar with how Windows works on a tablet today-Windows 8-you know that if you swipe down from the top of the screen or swipe up from the bottom of the screen, it activates the app bars. You can have a command bar at the bottom. You can have a navigation bar at the top. Or you can have one or the other. You don’t have to have both. In the new build, apparently when you swipe down from the top, it brings up the new title bar on the window that has the close and minimize and all that kind of stuff. And that’s nice because before that, user interface was not available in touch. You had to have a mouse to access those controls. You can see how the beginnings of how they’re going to support that kind of UI on touch. I’ll have to, you know, find the time somehow.

Leo: Are you jaded? Are you burned out on Windows, Paul? Are you not… most people say let’s get in there and see what’s new.

Paul: No, I’m actually really excited about this. This kind of thing is very energizing to me because I would say over the past couple of years, I’ve had this kind of troubling feeling about Windows and the whole touch thing. And these devices. I think a lot of people have misunderstood my perspective on this. Because I’ve pragmatically said to people look they’ve really telegraphed that this is the future. Mobile device is the future. PCs are kind of going away. The desktop is going to go away on these devices. And I think people have heard that and have said oh Paul likes devices and he wants PCs to go away. That’s not the case at all. In fact, I’ve really struggled with it. From Windows 8.1 especially, I prefer to use it on a laptop that doesn’t have a touch screen or doesn’t have a screen that pops off. I use that stuff and I get it. But honestly when I’m working, it’s a screen and a keyboard and I want to type. I don’t want to swipe and do that stuff. I don’t mind that it’s there. Windows 10, re-embracing that environment to me is a hugely positive step. Because I really do fall into that crowd and it’s a big crowd. I would say out of the 1.5 billion people using Windows, it’s like 1.4 something billion. It’s a big, big crowd of people and I’m part of it. So I look at stuff and I think great. Even now in this rough forum, I prefer this to Windows 8.1.

Leo: Wow. That’s saying a lot.

Paul: Yea, because it’s like Windows 8-whatever, version whatever was so scatter-brained. It was like two personalities fighting with each other. And like a lot of people, I was really aggravated by the fact that these kind of metro UIs would get in the way on top of the desktop where I was trying to do other things. And being able to run those apps on the desktop. Honestly I could not care less how it works technically. People: well Paul, they’re not technically running on the desktop.

Leo: Whatever behind the scenes is irrelevant.

Paul: It could be gnomes on treadmills. I don’t care.

Leo: It’s made by elves.

Paul: Yea. Look, these things that run in Windows side by side with desktop applications. Side by side with Adobe Air applications, web applications. Whatever kind of applications.

Leo: Beautiful.

Paul: I like it.

Leo: And it’s stable enough and productive enough to use as your desktop.

Paul: I always have to give that caveat: if you are out there in the world and wonder if this is good enough and should I do it. If you’re asking that question, maybe not. It is for me and I haven’t seen any major wearnesses. Even in this build which has a few other issues, to me it’s fine. If you’re really worried about this stuff though. One of the big questions, right now I would say it’s the number one question is: if I install this build now or some preview build now, will I then and be able to go and update at some point to the final release. Or will I have to blow away that system and start over from scratch? The answer is we don’t know because Microsoft refuses to discuss that. I don’t think they know. I think they would prefer for people to do the start over from scratch thing. But I also think that it’s probably going to work just fine.

Leo: In the past, they have made people do that, haven’t they?

Paul: In the past, they’ve said they don’t support it. But it’s always seemed to work. I know many people and I have many machines where you kind of upgraded, upgraded, upgraded. And suddenly you were on the live, public version and everything is fine. But you can’t make promises like that. And I have to go back to the same thing which is if you’re asking this question… if this is seriously a concern for you, then just don’t do it.

Leo: They probably don’t want to be committed to this technical solution that they might not want to support.

Paul: Personally, I don’t care. I blow these things away all the time. I do it for fun, Leo.

Leo: I do, too!

Paul: Sometimes during commercials.

Leo: Or when I’m doing a show, as you may remember. No problem! Let’s just erase the whole thing and start over. In fact I wish people were more inclined to do that because it fixes a multitude of problems and it’s not a bad thing. Once you’ve done it a few times, you don’t get freaked about it. Of course you have to have good backups and that kind of thing.

Paul: Unfortunately, it is very strange because this coincides with another thing that I see a lot of. And I sort of equate this with the enterprise business clients. There are obviously many people out in the world who also have this mindset which is: people don’t trust and/or understand cloud computing. And there’s a lot of technologies in Windows particularly where you can have all of your documents, pictures, data of any kind in one drive. You assign those OneDrive folders to libraries in Windows and use them seamlessly. They sync to the cloud, etcetera. OneDrive has amazing sync capabilities. Is the thing through which you buy apps and games and subscribe to Xbox Music pass and do all this stuff in Windows; to me using a Microsoft account in Windows 8 is not just natural. But it is the only way you should interact with that system. I don’t understand people who are against that kind of thing. But there are the people that aren’t doing that sync stuff that I’m talking about. I think that by putting stuff in the cloud, it’s only available in the cloud or maybe I need to be online to access my data. And that is unacceptable. It has to be on some hard drive. Those types of people are going to have trouble blowing away their system because the truth is you have this finite thing inside your computer. It is everything that is important to you on it. And if you blow that thing away and make a mistake it’s gone. And so they’re less likely to do it. But when you’re putting everything in the cloud, none of that matters. It’s all synced. It’s everywhere you want it to be. So I have the data that’s important to me is in the cloud-the master part of it. But parts of it are on this laptop. Parts of it on the Surface Pro 3. A lot of it’s on this desktop computer. But if the hard drive here dies, I’m not losing anything. I’m all synced. It doesn’t matter.

Leo: That’s I think the modern.

Paul: Cloud please, anybody?

Leo: Somebody in the chat room said, a reluctant WP user I think, said… let’s not take that too personally. I was reluctant to say his name. But reluctant WP guy said that Windows 8 was that, as you said, that hybrid between touch and desktop. Then Windows 8.1 was kind of this reluctant concession to kind of make it a little easier to use. But Windows 10 is basically desktop. Is that fair? No, there’s still touch in there.

Paul: You’re right. We’re mostly seeing the desktop stuff. I think it’s a fairer thing to say that they’ve taken the next logical step. So if you think about Windows 8.1, Windows 8, update 1, they added the title bars to the metro Windows. Made it a little more usable with the mouse; they made concessions on the start screen as well. But Windows 10 you can run those things in windows. Now they have a title bar and the window frame makes more sense because it’s a floating window. And you’re going to access it like other apps. I don’t think that’s a complete turnaround. I think they were clearly heading in this direction. But this is the culmination of bringing the sanity back to Windows. Because Windows 8 was this crazy Frankenstein.

Leo: So people should update? You recommend it. And how do they update?

Paul: There’s a new interface for updating. If you were on the technical preview already or if you got it today, you still go back and get the initial build. You actually get the update through a different interface. It’s not Windows Update although you can find it in the same place, PC Settings. If you go into Update and Recovery, instead of going to Windows Update, there is a Preview Builds interface. You click the check now button. It tells you there’s a new build. You install it. There’s not a lot of information about how long the download’s going to take, how big it is. It’s actually about two to 2.7 gigs depending on the version, depending on x64 versus x86 and so forth. I would say the install was fairly slow. It could take up to an hour. And it reboots your system, it does most of it offline. You know meaning not while the OS is running obviously. And you boot back in, sign in, and you’re pretty much up and running. I don’t want to get too far into the woods here, but technically speaking, I think this is really a migration. Not an in-place upgrade because a lot of settings are reset to their original values. I think that might explain part of the time element too. Because when you do a migration behind the scenes Windows is actually moving your settings, apps, and data over to a new temporary partition. Clean installing the OS and blowing everything back. That takes a little bit of time. It doesn’t really matter. You may find if you’ve made some certain custom settings, but not all of them, probably the ones that aren’t synced frankly, that you might have to go back and change some settings. I noticed the sites I had in compatibility mode in IE were reset. Things like that.

Leo: That’s a little annoying.

Paul: But you’re testing software. Things aren’t going to work, it’s okay.

Leo: This is the deal you make.

Paul: That’s right. The other thing to do once you get back into the OS is go into Windows Update this time and you’ll see an update. It will say, I don’t remember the name of it, the name was something along the lines of Update Windows Technical Preview. Install that; you’re going to have to reboot. This one’s only going to take about 10 seconds. But this will solve a lot of reliability and stability issues that are apparently present in this build. Including in some cases-I haven’t seen this-but text on screen is missing every other character. If you see that problem and you’ll notice it right away, install that update, reboot, and come back. It will be fine.

Leo: Great. Let’s take, oh one more thing. This is kind of an interesting story. Microsoft plans to eliminate passwords.

Paul: Yea, and you know what, don’t do this now because you’ll fall right asleep. But if you’re ever in need of some kind of brain exercise, go read the initial of the original blog posting about this topic that Microsoft wrote. It is amazingly done. And it reads a lot like the type of thing the Windows 8 guys used to write when they had those crazy blog posts.

Leo: The Steven Sinofsky guest author.

Paul: I tried to reduce this down to plain English. The truth is this is a big topic. And they’re not providing a lot of details of how this stuff is implemented. And in some cases, I don’t think they do a good job at making it clear which of these features will only impact businesses, which will impact both businesses and consumers. That kind of thing. But the basic deal is that I think today most people with Microsoft accounts don’t have two-step authentication turned on and they should. It’s something I’ve talked about a lot in the past. If you think about the threat environment out there in the electronic world with all the phishing attacks, and social engineering attacks, and all the stuff going on in the world. The last thing you want is someone getting into your digital identity. In this case a Microsoft account. Although, you could think of your Gmail or Google account is the same thing. Your Apple ID is the same thing. If you have a work account your active directory domain account is the same thing. These are all digital identities. So there’s a bunch of stuff going on in Windows 10 where they’re going to try to seamlessly integrate multi-step authentication into the operating system. Today, I assume you use two-step at least at some places.

Leo: Everywhere I can, yea. Including outlook.com, my Live login has a second factor.

Paul: So a lot of times a second factor, you could get a text message or you could have an authenticator app on your phone. One of the things that might happen during this broadcast for example is I have a problem with Skype. Skype logs me out all the time. I have no idea… well I have some idea why. But it’s annoying. You would think it wouldn’t do it to the Skype client I’m actually using. But every once in a while. Well I’m using my Microsoft account with Skype so the problem with this whole Skype thing is I have to go in and type in my user name which is my email address. I have to type in my complex password. Then I have to go find my phone to get a security code. So it’s three things I have to type in. And so what they’re, just to really simplify this, because to be honest I can’t say I completely understand it. Because I can’t see it, I can only go on what they said. They’re going to try to turn the device you’re using into a second factor for multi-factor authentication. They’re going to use obviously TPM if it’s a PC. They’re going to do things like you’ve decided I want to use my phone as my second factor. It’s not about typing in codes, it’s just the system will know that your phone is nearby. Because your PC in this case will have a relationship with the phone and will understand that it is literally, physically here. Thus you typing in your code while your phone is here means that you’re here. That’s the type of thing they’re working on for Windows 10. I need to see more. I’m a little unsure of this. They’re going to go biometric as well. We already have biometric stuff in the PC world. If you use an iPhone 5S or newer, you know they have biometric on Apple devices. It works great. And that the combination of a fingerprint and your accounts, and sometimes you have to put in a code because it’s been awhile. That kind of thing is actually not horrible security. And you don’t have to remember passwords. So they’re talking PINs, biometric, and then second-factor with a device. So we’ll see how that works. But it’s just talking about it, my head hurts. Right now my head is actually…

Leo: I can see it. It’s kind of throbbing.

Paul: The other thing they talked about very vaguely; I had talked to some people about Microsoft in the past so I have a little bit of perspective on it. They’re working on this thing they call containers. And this is for information, data, documents, that kind of thing. Obviously if you think about a company, you may have private documents that you don’t want out in the world. So if you give an employee a private document, you could have all these policies in place on their computer. But today it would be pretty easy for a lot of people to take that private document and cut and paste it into a non-private application or other document and send it to other people. So Microsoft has had document protection technology for a long time. Windows Right Management and newer. They have Bitlocker for encryption on devices that keeps people who physically have access to that hard drive or information from getting it. They’re building this container technology which is not unique to Microsoft. Other people are working on this as well. That will basically be a self-contained file. So this container will contain the document but it will also contain an understanding of who can open it. So you as an employee with your credentials, you can get in. If you were fired and you’re taking off of the active directory account, you could try to open that file later and you can’t get it. They’re intelligent documents essentially. So this technology will be rolling out maybe alongside Windows 10, Windows Server 10, next version of Windows Azure, Office 365, and so forth. And Microsoft account too. I think we’re going to hear more about the container stuff tech in Barcelona. But very vague.

Leo: Is it Docker? It’s not Docker.

Paul: No, it’s not Docker. It’s their own thing. They haven’t really talked about it a lot. I know Brad Anderson doesn’t go into tech, but whoever is speaking for Brad and is part of Microsoft will be talking about it. This falls under the mobile device management stuff. It’s essentially a mobile… actually it’s not a mobile application. Excuse me. It’s more of document management. It’s not mobile anything. But it’s basically what Microsoft Azure, rights managements services is if you use the Office stuff, they have information rights management. It’s basically that technology kind of applied across the Microsoft stack.

Leo: It’s really something they can be interested in and handled better than passwords and second-factor. I think that companies like Microsoft and Google and Apple have to really put their best people on this.

Paul: If you were to make a science fiction movie of the past 10 or 20 years, one of the scenes that you would put in to drive the fact that this is the future is you would have an employee of the Space Marines or whatever walk up to an eye scanner. And it will be that lengthy scene that scans his eye and says yep, you’re you. And you know later that that guy’s going to get killed by somebody. But the truth is that kind of system is sort of what we’re talking about here. In other words, we’re sitting here like you can’t use ABC123 as your password, Paul. It has to have a letter, one of them has to be capitalized, you can’t have any special characters. You do all the stupid stuff and passwords are so terrible that you have the same password on every service. Obviously we have to get rid of that. If you have some biometric way of ensuring that you’re you-your eye or your fingerprint. That stuff actually works so why not do that.

Leo: Really interesting stuff.

Paul: Sort of.

Leo: Well yea the details are going to be technical. Eye-drooping but I think it needs to be solved. Bill Gates said that years ago. Microsoft’s been saying this for a long time: passwords are not the answer.

Paul: Right. And now more than ever. Everything we do is online.

Leo: So I immediately use a four-digit PIN to get into Windows. Because my Live login is ridiculously long as is yours. But then, I don’t know if that’s a good solution either. That seems to reduce security.

Paul: I think a lot of this is risk versus convenience. With a phone I have no problem logging in with a PIN on a phone. On an iPhone I would use the finger thing because it’s so awesome.

Leo: I have to say that might be one of the solutions. That is a form of biometric authentication.

Paul: It literally is. Apple is already doing it on iOS.

Leo: And Samsung is doing it. I’ve been using the Samsung Note 4. That works.

Paul: You’ll know better than I would on the new device. On my S5 I don’t find that to be very reliable.

Leo: Somebody told me that there’s an update. I don’t know if you have the update for the fingerprint reader. So now to log in, it’s not as good as Apple’s.

Paul: The problem with it is you have to swipe it. You have this very small surface and you have to swipe it. The Apple one you just press your finger lightly on it and you’re in.

Leo: No it doesn’t work as well. Apple obviously bought AuthenTec, the company who has the patents for the way they do it. So Samsung can’t. But look it works. It’s very much like the Novo. If you’ve ever used a fingerprint swipe on a laptop, it’s the same idea. You’re scanning your finger as you’re going over it. You can use three different fingers as opposed to I can’t remember if Apple is five or 10, a lot. So I have my left and right thumbs and my index finger.

Paul: You do the ones you’re going to naturally hit it with.

Leo: And software, some software uses it. Last Pass for instance says-which is great because that gives me a stronger feeling of security than a password does.

Paul: And to be fair, it’s not even a stronger feeling of security. It’s not like it’s Homeland Security or anything. It is literally stronger security. And it’s better.

Leo: I think we could trust Samsung. The NSA just announced that they can trust Samsung. So I think we can trust Samsung.

Paul: Hey Samsung, there’s a lot to make fun of there. Knox technology, and Knox is so good that Google’s integrated it into… they’re doing something right.

Leo: Yea, exactly. So I’ll have to look at the details of it or maybe get Steve Gibson to look at the details of it. We know that Apple’s doing a great job at securing the fingerprint and all of that.

Paul: It’s only a matter of time before that touch ID thing is on MacBooks. In fact I’m surprised they haven’t done that yet.

Leo: Well they just put it on iPads. And they own the company. They bought AuthenTec. This is something they can say hey look we’ve got the best. It’s fair to say.

Paul: They’re right there. It’s really smart. This stuff works great.

Leo: I’m very pleased to have it. It just shows you that once you get used to the idea of fingerprint reading, you do want it. And I’m very pleased to have it on the Note 4.

Paul: Windows 8, if you were to go back to Windows 7 and you had to type in your password, you would be aggravated by that. Once you use touch ID, typing in a four-digit PIN is aggravating.

Leo: It’s aggravating enough.

Paul: On an iPhone you have to type in your PIN the first time it comes back. And you’re like really!

Leo: Isn’t that funny how spoiled we get.

Paul: How dare you?! I know, right!

Leo: We get so spoiled.

Paul: That’s how wonderful it is.

Leo: I agree. I’m with you. Alright, let us take a break. When we come back Satya Nadella in the news again. More quotes from Satya. He’s becoming, rapidly becoming the Eric Schmidt of Microsoft. Right?

Paul: Wow. It’s hard to take that in a complimentary way.

Leo: Well it’s not. Schmidt was always great for a quote. We loved it because we could always mock it. But often Schmidt would put his foot in his mouth. In fact he continues to do so which is amazing. I think Satya is savvier than that. He has put his foot near his orifice a couple of times lately. We’ll talk about that in just a second. But first a word from our friends at Square Space, the place to go for… this is annoying by the way. My Samsung phone tells me I’ve been sitting for a long time. You should get up and move around.

Paul: Let’s both do it. I’ll walk around.

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Paul: Actually he spoke at length.

Leo: He did?

Paul: He was arguably the biggest part of it.

Leo: That’s interesting.

Paul: It is interesting. Of course he came up through that part of the company and his comfort level with this stuff is very high. You can tell. He was a major part of that.

Leo: And nobody asked him about raises or anything like that?

Paul: Actually somebody did ask him about raises.

Leo: You’re kidding?

Paul: Actually I’m not. Well I’m not sure it happened in the context of this thing. It’s not on the video and so it’s possible this happened somewhere else. I just read a thing where someone had in fact kind of joked and asked him about raises.

Leo: Should I ask for a raise, Satya? I work at Microsoft. I bet his new advice is oh yes. But don’t ask me. Ask your immediate supervisor.

Paul: He’s never going to put this one behind him.

Leo: We found out he doesn’t need a raise. $84M in salaries, bonus, and stock grants.

Paul: You know what the most interesting thing about this is to me? The money he was paid to stay at the company while they were looking for a CEO.

Leo: Oh what’s that?

Paul: $13.5M. Could you imagine this conversation? Somebody walks into your office and says hey Satya, we’re looking for a new CEO. And I’m not saying you’re the guy but you’re on the short list. We just want to make sure you don’t go to Google or some place while this is happening. So, we give you $13.5M. You just continue doing your job for the next six months.

Leo: Yes. Let me think about that, yes! Six months! Now his base salary is a little less than a million dollars. It’s not that great.

Paul: Starting next year it goes up to $1.2M. He gets an annual cash incentive based on performance of up to $3.6M. Then an annual equity share of $13M. It’s not the $1 thing that Steve Jobs was doing.

Leo: That was always a lie anyway. As you can see, that $919,000 that he made this year, that’s pennies, chicken feed. Like 1% of his total. And that’s the token amount. It’s always the stock you’re interested in.

Paul: And the biggest part of the outlay of Satya Nadella is $59M-more than $59M-as part of a one-time stock grant. But he has to hold onto that until at least 2019. So five years.

Leo: Do you think he asked for that raise?

Paul: No, I think he let karma take its course.

Leo: Karma? Did karma do it? Now we know why he says you should all do what I did. Maybe you’ll get $84M.

Paul: I will never have $84M, Leo.

Leo: I’ll never see. But that’s okay. Let me tell you something, he’s the CEO of Microsoft.

Paul: In my article, I tried to drive that home. I think we talked about this a little bit. Satya Nadella just uttering something in public in front of TV cameras or microphones can change the stock price of Microsoft and thus the fortunes of millions of people. In 10 seconds, you know? There’s an awesome responsibility there. Slightly more long-term of course. He’s running a company with over 100,000 employees, all of whom are looking to him for direction and leadership. And to make the right decisions for the company and thus for their futures and their family’s futures as well. There’s an industry out there that is built around Microsoft as well. This guy is as powerful and has as much responsibility as many world leaders. More than many of them, right? So this is not… can you work to drive this weekend Mr. Nadella? It’s a little more serious than that. Something to put into perspective. The other thing-and I got this from Business Insider-if you think that’s a lot of money, Tim Cook and his first year at Apple, over $300M. Are you serious?

Leo: You can’t blame Microsoft’s board when CEO’s salaries are so crazy and out of control. They’re just keeping parody. You can though, I think. And probably we should as a nation and as shareholders start really questioning these enormous CEO salaries. This is something relatively new.

Paul: By the way, I would put the amount of money that sports players make into this same category. I feel like it’s outsized based on what is happening here. The other thing by the way is-I didn’t actually write about this-but if you look at the SEC filing, Satya Nadella was given that $13.2M I think it was or $13.5M just to stick around just in case he became CEO. They gave that kind of money to other people too for the same reason. They also gave that kind of money, and it’s not always exactly 13, sometimes it was 8, sometimes it was 9 depending on the person; they actually paid a lot of people to stick around during this CEO transition specifically because them not doing so would have suggested to the outside world, to investors, that something was wrong at Microsoft. So if you’re like Amy Hood, the CFO of Microsoft, or any of the other people on the executive team, you were handed in the single digits or tens of millions of dollars to stick it out for the year. Just to put on appearances. And they justified it by saying there’s obviously intense competition out there for these people. This is the market value for these employees.

Leo: What do you think that conversation is, though, how much do we have to give Satya? 13.5 million. How much do we have to give Steven Heloff? Oh, Steven’s cheap, we’ll give him 8.

Paul: Imagine that little executive board meeting.

Leo: Where did they get these numbers?

Paul: They gave you $9M, they only gave me 7. What the hell?

Leo: What is the number and where do they get it? Like oh yea, you know, I’m thinking that Tony Bates. We don’t really care if he leaves, do we? Oh, a little bit. Give him a couple million. See what happens.

Paul: Tony, can you go grab some coffee while the big boys talk?

Leo: And it’s not something that is part of the normal life of any other humans in the world.

Paul: It’s nuts.

Leo: We only pay the President of the United States arguably the most powerful person in the world half a million a year. Now admittedly there’s a good upside when you’re President. Eight years… there’s some downsides too.

Paul: The whole thing is insane to me.

Leo: Don’t you think you can get someone to run Microsoft for let’s say a million?

Paul: Yea.

Leo: Could you get the best person is the question.

Paul: That’s a good question. I don’t know.

Leo: I think you could have gotten Satya for a million. I mean really. The guy’s a lifer, a Microsoft lifer for all intents and purposes. So he gave an interview on CNBC on Monday. I don’t know if you saw this. He addressed the karma question. Should women ask for a raise? He said no they should trust karma. He said I was completely wrong in the answer I gave. Because I basically took my own approach to how I’ve approached my career and I sprung it on half the humanity. And that was insensitive. I gave a generic answer based on quite frankly what I believed and how I’ve practiced and lived my life. In other words, he’s saying I never asked for a raise. I trusted karma and I thought, well if you’re faced with bias in your career what should you do. He said though, and I think he’s sensitized, because he said how would they feel by sort of getting the advice that says be passive. In the face of bias, the last thing I want anybody to be is passive. He says I was naïve, thinking of my own personal experience versus understanding I’m speaking to women who really want to make sure that people like me are making it easy for them to participate in the workforce folly. So I think that’s a good answer. He does say something that, you know he’s talking about the cloud. Because I guess he was there for the cloud event and that’s why he’s on CNBC. He said something towards the end, I don’t know if you saw the end there, he says we want you to use us when you just want to save any file or any document, any artifact of yours-I guess he’s talking about the cloud-and then have a natural way to monetize as you use more of it in the commercial context. CNBC’s John Ford said kind of the fremium model which a lot of startups in Silicon Valley have latched onto? But Microsoft has always been fond of being paid for the software it spent so much time and money developing. Nadella responds: oh, well we’ve always had fremium. Sometimes our fremium was called piracy.

Paul: By the way, the use of the word commercial is interesting. This is something that Mary Jo and I have talked about on this podcast. This is a recent addition to the Microsoft. When someone from Microsoft uses the word commercial what they’re really saying is business. What they mean is business software and if I’m parsing that sentence correctly it almost sounded to me like what he was saying was we’re okay with individuals or consumers using our free services. But what we’re hoping is that when they use them in businesses that those will be paid. It seemed like that is almost what he just said there. So in other words, you as an individual, please use outlook.com. It’s free. Use OneDrive, it’s free. Use Internet Explorer and Bing, and MSN, and office.com. It’s all free. But when you’re at work use Office 365, that costs something. Use Windows, pay for Windows at work. It sounds sort of like that’s what he’s saying.

Leo: I think it is what he’s saying. Use it at home and when you get to work you’ll pay for it.

Paul: I don’t mean to read too much into it but a lot of the Microsoft mobile first cloud is somewhat controversial in certain circles. And I guess the thought here is that people want to use what they’re comfortable with. So if people get used to using Microsoft stuff on their, even if it’s on an iPad or an Android phone or something, when they get to work, they’re going to say hey I used this thing. I’m used to it, do we have this thing? And maybe it will be on a Windows PC or a Windows tablet or something. But they’ll stick with Microsoft solution and they’d be paying for it. Or, you know their workplace will be paying for it. I sort of wonder if that’s what he was getting at there.

Leo: What’s interesting to me is that a lot of pirates-let’s face it-have said well companies like Adobe and Microsoft shouldn’t worry so much about piracy. Because the alternative would be perhaps to use a competitor’s product. This way we get to use Photoshop or Word.

Paul: Actually the best argument is I’m not buying this anyway. So if you actually make it possible for me to pirate this, I’m just going to use something else.

Leo: Right. And people have often said hey this excessive-let’s say Photoshop for example-is in a good part due to the fact that so many people got it or free. Then liked it and wanted to use it professionally and wanted manuals, support, and updates. So they bought it! Or they got their company to buy it. So in a way I think it’s Nadella acknowledging the fremium, AKA piracy has always been a part of Microsoft’s success. And that’s what pirates have said for a long time. It’s a little self-justifying what pirates say.

Paul: I have a friend from Microsoft that I’m embarrassed. He might be listening and will correct me. I don’t remember which one it was and I don’t know if this is public knowledge or not. I’ll say it vaguely. He had basically gone to China for work-related reasons and came home with a duffel bag full of pirated Microsoft software just to show people like this is what’s happening on the streets of wherever it was. This was some time ago.

Leo: Dvorak told me when I went to China a couple years ago, he gave me the name of a very well-known department store in downtown Beijing. He said go to the basement and you can get any movie ever on a DVD, beautifully produced as if it’s a commercial venture. It’s a pirated version. Similar with software, that’s the next floor up. And it’s always been the case in China.

Paul: Floor two, pirated software. Lingerie.

Leo: And it doesn’t look cheesy! It looks real. Probably because they make all that stuff anyway. At night when the presses are silent, let’s print a few more.

Paul: Oh yea, the press keeps going.

Leo: They’ve always said that with flash memory, that they would keep the factories running at night and sell it under the table.

Paul: Wow.

Leo: We don’t know. Did you see that Tim Cook actually flew to China today to talk to the vice premier? Well both Microsoft and Apple are getting bit by the great firewall of China. The Chinese government says it’s not us. But it is the after all the great firewall of China.

Paul: Oh the Chinese government that is right now engaged in hacking iCloud? Those guys?

Leo: Yea, that’s it.

Paul: No, but do you understand that’s seriously happening right now?

Leo: Right now. That’s actually why Cook’s there. They did the same to live.com. If you go to live.com or Apple’s icloud.com in China, at least through Monday-and this was kind of coincided with the release of the iPhone, so they figured a lot of people are going to get iPhones and sign up for iCloud. You go to a page that looks just like an iCloud page or a live.com page, you’d enter your credentials just as you would normally. They would then forward you on to iCloud or live.com.

Paul: But then behind the scenes they…

Leo: They’d save the password.

Paul: That’s actually…

Leo: Clever.

Paul: I’d hate to say it like that but, clever, yea. That is actually pretty clever I would say.

Leo: So Tim Cook goes to China today. Apple release, it’s just hysterical. Just like Microsoft and everybody else, they really don’t want to piss off the Chinese; it’s a big market. So Apple release is a page that doesn’t mention China in any way but shows how you can check the certificates when you log in. And make sure you’re using a real log in page. And we’ve heard that people might be hijacking iCloud. No word of China. Here’s how you avoid that.

Paul: By the way Microsoft is working to fix this kind of problem.

Leo: They redirect now. That’s what Apple’s doing. And I think Microsoft will do the same thing. Tim Cook flies to China and meets with the vice premier.

Paul: The Chinese government is engaging in something that I get these emails every day: hey Paul your PayPal account is not up to date. Could you please enter your credentials? It’s like guys, seriously, I mean! But people must fall for this so regularly.

Leo: And not know it!

Paul: I think what he should do is say I know what you want is the Jennifer Lawrence photos. And if we give you those will you stop the whole thing? Is that what it’s going to take? What is this conversation like? Could you please stop hacking us? Seriously!

Leo: The story comes from the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua. And here’s the quote from Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, here’s a picture by the way that’s tweeted; this looks just like Nixon in China. See the armchairs.

Paul: That’s the same place.

Leo: They had tea and they pose for photos. That’s from the Chinese TV news service.

Paul: That’s incredible.

Leo: And the tweet from Chinese news services: Vice premier Ma Kai meets with Apple CEO Tim Cook on user data protection.

Paul: Right. Would you please protect our users’ data since you clearly have half of it now?

Leo: I would love to be a fly on the wall. Because Cook’s got to come in guns blazing.

Paul: They have proven that this is coming from Chinese governmental servers. This is…

Leo: Greatfire.org showed the trace routes. It seems pretty conclusive. China heatedly denied it.

Paul: Sure.

Leo: Here’s the news release from Xinhua…

Paul: Well of course they did.

Leo: They exchanged views on quote protection of users’ information during their meeting. They also exchanged views on strengthening cooperation in information and communication fields.

Paul: Okay.

Leo: Damn you Ma Kai! I just see Tim Cook going in there guns blazing.

Paul: China’s been a problem for a long time.

Leo: This is beyond the payload to hijack… look at Tim’s cheeks. They do look a little red.

Paul: Yea, well he’s always got that going.

Leo: Maybe he’s been yelling.

Paul: Looks like someone who lives in Newfoundland or something. You know what I mean? It’s really strange.

Leo: Do you think he went with a bag of cash?

Paul: Right, you have to give the type of gift that your host expects. Don’t worry, they’re Euros. They’re actually worth something. I’ll bring money overseas, what do you want? What currency would you prefer?

Leo: Tax breaks anyone?

Alright, Microsoft Office which is now really as much iPad Office and Android Office as Windows Office.

Paul: I’m not going to be able to spend enough time on this. This is actually a big topic. Basically there’s a Microsoft distinguished engineer that appeared at a Facebook conference, or I think it was. And he talked about how Microsoft develops cross-platform Office solutions. He talked about Office for iPad, Office for Android, Office for Windows RIT, Office for phones; it was fascinating. And he did a nice little history bit where he went back, this is something you remember when Microsoft was coming up with Word 6.0 for Mac and Windows. And I think Excel 5.0 at the time for Mac and Windows. They tried to make a common engine for both applications. And all they ended up doing was creating terrible versions, actually word search was pretty good. The Macintosh version where they put, it sounds terrible and everyone hated it; it wasn’t until 1998 when they did Office 98 for the Mac. They finally set things right with the Mac community. But you know they are literally learning from that event. That’s like 20 years ago now almost. Saying, look you can’t come up with some kind of huge abstraction layer and just put the same app-set everywhere. We have to make sure the apps all have the right feature for the platform that they use, platform-specific user experiences that the people who use those things will expect. But we also have to ensure fidelity for the documents and the data that goes through these apps. So when you bring it up on a phone, tablet, computer, on the web, whatever, and edit it, you don’t destroy it in the end and have the data look wrong. And this was just a fascinating, open kind of thing and this guy also had this really neat way of being very complimentary to the audience. Which were developers, cross-platform developers. And to other platforms, it was just so… if there are still people out there that have this lingering Microsoft hatred thing, please watch this video. You will be blown away. There’s a lot of developer stuff that you may not understand but it is the most wonderful open Microsoft thing I’ve ever seen. And it is also fascinating if you’re curious on how they intend to support all these different platforms. Of course now Microsoft is committed to doing that. It’s really neat! And I think I would have spent a lot more time on it if we hadn’t had this Windows technical preview stuff.

Leo: I think it really is the new Microsoft. This is very clearly, and it’s maybe Steve Ballmer that started it, but this is Nadella’s initiative.

Paul: A lot of people are like Microsoft, no one wants to buy Office. Watch the video. You’ll come away with the feeling that these guys are competent and get it. And understand the world of which they operate in and are doing an amazing job. It really, it’s just a neat thing.

Leo: I almost feel like someone just needed to give him permission.

Paul: Yea, you got to think in a technical company where there are a lot of developers and engineers, a lot of those guys came up through whatever education system. This is what they want.

Leo: They want to do this. But they have to be given permission if it’s not the company’s initiative.

Paul: I think the shackles are off and it’s open season. Very, very different.

Leo: This is very Google-y. What is this thing? Click to launch; it looks just like the Google apps launcher.

Paul: Someone else told me that. I guess it does, that’s true. I actually think they should have used the hamburger menu thing first.

Leo: No, don’t you know the hamburger is dead.

Paul: Oh is it?

Leo: Oh yea, you’re just way out there.

Paul: I like the hamburger.

Leo: Oh no. I like the hamburger too, and the reason I know this is we suggest it to our web designers, hamburgers. And they said oh no, no, no.

Paul: Clever.

Leo: That is so 2013. The hamburger is over. And they said the reason is nobody looks under the hamburger. Nobody clicks it; it just looks like lines to them. So this is the new hamburger which is a grid of squares. And it is exactly, if you go to Google, or Gmail, it’s exactly. Look at this, this is it on Google right now. Grid of squares, it’s 3x3. You click it and all your apps come out.

Paul: Yea, but there’s a huge difference, Leo. When you click the one on Microsoft site, it opens Microsoft, not iCloud.

Leo: Yea, there’s a difference. And this is Office Live, is that what it is?

Paul: This is all the consumer services, so office.com, onedrive.com, and outlook.com. And so before the way this used to work was there wasn’t a box there. If you clicked the thing that says Word Online…

Leo: You would have a drop down.

Paul: You would get a drop down it wouldn’t be one line. It was two lines. I think the problem with that is no one saw that. I think this thing makes it a little more obvious there’s more going on. And you’ll get more click throughs.

Leo: I think this is the new hamburger. I think Apple uses it too. I think this is the new thing.

Paul: I like it! The anal-retentive part of me; if you go back to that screenshot, you’ll notice that I wouldn’t prefer for the Word Online to be down with the other Office Online apps.

Leo: Oh yea, it’s OneDrive, Calendar.

Paul: I don’t know.

Leo: I agree with you.

Paul: But yea, whatever. Yea, jerks! I think it looks nice.

Leo: So basically they replaced the down arrow with squares. It still kind of drops down.

Paul: It still requires a 1,000-word blog post. But yes, that’s basically.

Leo: It did! With screenshots! I think this is funny because I really think it points to the difficult of doing UI design online. And when our designers say no hamburgers, they’re sincere.

Paul: And they’re the device-type. When you’re on a PC you may be more or less apt to click on things. When you’re on an iPad and you’re touching the screen, likewise you may be more or less inclined to tap different things. So maybe this, I’m sure there’s a lot of answers but I hope this solves the problem.

Leo: Let’s take a break. Windows Phone news coming up in just a second. Paul Thurrott is here. Mary Jo Foley has the week off. Boy is she missing a great show.

Paul:  Well the spirit of Mary Jo will be with us.  I will do a beer pick.

Leo:  She's going to Barcelona for some event.  Is there an event?  Is it TechED?

Paul:  TechED Europe in Barcelona, yep.

Leo:  Man she's got an exciting life.  Our show today is brought to you by a good company that does so many products in business that we use, Citrix, and their product today is Citrix ShareFile.  This may be the single Citrix product that I use more than any other.  ShareFile lets me share files with others.  You might say, well what about email attachments?  We don't do email attachments.  We tell you not to do email attachments, it's a bad idea.  They are not secure, people can see what's going back and forth between you and your recipient, of course it's a great way to spread viruses.  So we tell people don't open attachments.  What's going to happen with your attachment in that case?  Yet in business you've got contracts, presentations, spreadsheets, we've got to share stuff.  So how do you do it?  ShareFile, Citrix ShareFile, I love it, you don't lose control of the file as you do when you press that send button on the email that's it, there is no turning back.  With ShareFile you can always turn back.  ShareFile sends secure links with your branding so it's clear that it came from you and your company.  You can send files of almost any size.  There is no more bounce backs.  Easily, securely, you can control who opens the file, how long they can access it, and how many times they can download it.  It's easy for them too, they get a big button that says download.  They don't have to sign up, login, or anything like that.  It makes it so straightforward plus you get password protect files for optimal security.  HIPAA compliant, compliant with regulations in many industries including financial services.  Here's what you do, visit Citrix ShareFile, the website is sharefile.com.  Up at the top there is a link that says "Podcast Listeners Click Here".  Click that link right at the top there with the microphone and use the offer code WINDOWS, you get 30 days free.  Do select your industry because they will customize it to fit the needs and the usage of your industry.  Pretty much every industry by the way.  One of the nice things about ShareFile is that you can request files too.  It's a secure way to exchange files whether sending or receiving.  It is really easy for your clients to use for requesting files too.  I love ShareFile, I use it every week sending audio files to the radio stations.  You can try it for the next 4 weeks.  Visit sharefile.com, click the microphone at the top of the page where it says "Podcast Listeners", and enter the offer code WINDOWS for 30 days free, Citrix ShareFile.

Paul Thurrott, Leo Leporte, talking Windows, Microsoft, and Windows Phone.  If you listen to this show you are so far ahead of the rest of the world.  

Paul:  Yeah, I know.

Leo:  So we have been saying for probably months that Microsoft was going to drop the Nokia name and just be Microsoft on the phones and it's a big news story this week.  I didn't even do it, I've been filling in for Mike Elgan on Tech News Today.  I figured everybody who watches TWiT knows this.

Paul:  Yeah, it's tough because you have got to kind of cover it.  Just to be clear they are going to continue to call the smartphones Lumia and yes, they are going to drop the Nokia name.  It will be Microsoft Lumia, so there you go.

Leo:  But we knew that was going to happen, although they have the right to use the name.  That was part of the agreement.

Paul:  For years and years, for some crazy amount of time.  But of course they need to go with their own brand.  They can't keep using the Nokia name.  We've already seen it, all of the apps are turning into Lumia apps.  It's already happening so that's good.

Leo:  We just reviewed the $79 was it, the 530?  I can't remember.  It's really kind of cheap, and its colorful back, it's great for kids.

Paul:  It's a hockey puck.

Leo:  But it still says Nokia on it, the one we had from Cricket.

Paul:  The current generation, the 830, the 730, the 735, and the 530 are going to be it I think for the Nokia branded phones.  This is the end.

Leo:  This is the end.  What is replacing the Lumia 1520?

Paul:  Oh God Leo, I don't know.  There have been so many rumors about it.  First of all, the 1030, a 40 something megapixel, the replacement for the 1020, which I would love to own.  A 1525, 1530 type device I'm sure.   The thing about the 1520, though, was honestly today that thing is still very modern from the hardware perspective.

Leo:  Absolutely.  Everybody else is just now releasing their phones with that software, right?

Paul:  I don't think there is any reason to replace that one yet.  I actually have a bigger issue with the 1020 because the 1020 is underpowered especially for the size of the camera sensor it has.

Leo:  That's almost 2 years old, that one, isn't it?  I mean, it's pretty old.

Paul:  It's about a year and a half.  Not quite a year and a half, but its mid-2013.

Leo:  But that's the first pure view, the 41 megapixel phone.

Paul:  The only one that they have ever made with that kind of camera.  It's just getting long in the tooth, really slow performance. 

Leo:  Can they go to Cyan or Black?  Is it up to date?

Paul:  Yeah, actually the one I had is on Cyan, yeah, right now.

Leo:  On 8.1.

Paul:  Yep.

Leo:  Will they replace, so right now the Nokia brand name is on the phone, so you've got the company Nokia, you've got the kind of phone, the Lumia, and then you have the number.  Are they going to put Microsoft where it says Nokia, or are they just going to call it a Lumia?

Paul:  They haven't discussed that yet.  I think that announcement is actually going to be very soon, but I suspect what they are going to do is literally have the word Microsoft be there.  Hopefully not Microsoft Mobile.

Leo:  There is not that much room on the back of these.

Paul:  Somebody made this comment to me, I don't know if it was in comments or on Twitter, but there were some actually pretty decent comments about the state of Windows Phone, which was just that you walk around the world with a Lumia, and somebody sees it and says, oh, what is that?  I've often had people say, oh, is that the new iPhone?  I ended up having that a couple of times.  You say, no, that hurt, right, because it's a Lumia.  I don't think people understand Nokia here in the United States, they don't understand the term Lumia, but I think if you say, oh, no, this is a Windows Phone they would go okay.

Leo:  They would get that.

Paul:  I don't necessarily know what one looks like, but that makes sense to them I think.

Leo:  Now I know why it looks so weird.

Paul:  Yeah, I almost wish they would put Windows Phone on it.  I don't know, Microsoft is trying to push the brand.  The Surface is Surface.  Lumia is Lumia, maybe it just says Lumia.

Leo:  Reluctantwpguy again in the chat room makes a good point.

Paul:  Get him on the show, you could replace Mary Jo.

Leo:  Well in the US the Nokia brand doesn't carry a lot of weight, but it sure does in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.  That is a huge brand.  Is this a mistake for Microsoft to drop that?

Paul:  Well I don't know.  I understand that question.  They are going to continue using the Nokia brand on the candy bar phones, the kind of dumb phones, but I think with the Lumia lineup they need to go with more.

Leo:  Maybe it's a Microsoft thing.

Paul:  Yeah, for better or worse it's theirs now, they are going to have to make their own room with it.

Leo:  So Surface Pro 2 no longer on the market.

Paul:  Yeah, Brad Sam sent us this one.  If you go to the Surface website and you click on Surface Pro 2 it's still there.  When you try to buy it it comes up with this awful page.  It's like this product that you are looking for no longer exists, so he confirmed with Microsoft that stock has ran out.  I don't know why people are surprised by this.  I think the real story here is that if you remember Microsoft's strategy for Surface did not work out the way that they originally intended.  They were going to release the Surface Mini to replace Surface 2, and they were going to release the Surface Pro 3 to replace Surface Pro 2.  Surface Mini got cancelled, or at least temporarily halted, so now they have this kind of line into the Surface 2, which you can still buy, but Surface Pro 2 obviously they were just going to sell that until there weren't any left.  So that's what's happened.  The one that you are looking at now by the way is not the right machine, that's the Surface 2.  That one you can still buy.  

Leo:  Okay, I'm confused.

Paul:  That's RT.

Leo:  That's RT.

Paul:  When you go to...

Leo:  So products don't even have them. 

Paul:  So maybe they have now removed them.

Leo:  They have actually now removed them, yeah.

Paul:  I haven't looked recently.

Leo:  Surface, Surface 2, Surface Pro 3, that's it.  They have removed Surface Pro 2.

Paul:  If you go to surface.com, like the top of the site.  There used to be, it's different.  Oh no, to products.  Oh, you don't see it on yours.  Just go to surface.com.

Leo:  Yep, yep, yep, products.

Paul:  Now click on products, now you will see Surface Pro 2 in there.

Leo:  Oh, there it is, whoops.

Paul:  So if you click on "Buy Now" it just goes to "This Product is Currently Unavailable".  

Leo:  Wow.

Paul:  That's kind of a tough way to do that.

Leo:  You know what, how hard is it to remove that from the menu?

Paul:  I know.

Leo:  Wow.

Paul:  Well anyway, this is very natural. Over the course of the summer they reduced the price of it just like with previous gens.

Leo:  It's $799, who is going to pay $799 for it?  Nobody, it makes no sense.

Paul:  You are going to be able to buy those on eBay soon for like $300 or something.

Leo:  There is competition, though, at the low end, a sub $200 Nextbook is what it's called.

Paul:  Well, like you Leo, I am a big fan of the eFund appropriation.

Leo:  I love eFund.  

Paul:  I wrote something, if you look at the first print of my article, I wrote that eFund, which amusingly bill itself as the 5th largest tablet supplier in the US, they actually called me on that, they say that they are in fact the 5th largest.

Leo:  I believe it.  It just drops off really fast after that.

Paul:  It must be ODM or that kind of thing, I don't know.  You know that in the PC space we have zero cost and low cost Windows licenses now, phone, PC, and tablet.  So we have $99, and actually by the way sub $99 tablets which are terrible like many tablets.  We have I would say $250 not counting sale price is the typical low end Windows laptop today, although this holiday season there is a HP Stream coming for $199.  Now we've got this little guy.  This is the first sub $200 2 in 1.  Actually WinBook sells something very similar to this too.  $179, you know, low end specs; 12 inch screen, 1280 X 800 ips, quad core Intel Adam Processor, it's only got 1GB of RAM, that's the one maybe big weak link in the whole thing.  It's got 32GB of storage, which is actually pretty good for this price.

Leo:  But then an alien weird deal pops up on their YouTube video.  You might want to turn of modernization guys, yeah.

Paul:  The other end of the spectrum.  But here is the thing, and this really blows me away, these low cost machines which are arguably not necessarily great for productivity per say, they always come with a 1 year free subscription to Office 365 Personal which includes 1TB of OneDrive storage, right?  I think that it's $69.  That's crazy.

Leo:  Microsoft must be giving them away.

Paul:  They are giving them away.

Leo:  So at this point you are getting a computer for $100.

Paul:  So back in the day, 10 years ago when my kids were really young, I don't know if it was 10 years ago, 8 years ago, whatever, I bought then both these Toshiba Netbooks, you know, small.  They used these things for years.  They used them for everything, they put movies on them, then used them on planes and stuff.  I would buy this.

Leo:  Absolutely, and who cares?  They could lose it, who cares?

Paul:  Yep.

Leo:  Well, not right away kids.  Could you wait a few months anyway?  Is that a common term for this kind of detachable keyboard, a Pogo Keyboard?

Paul:  I looked that one up too.  So the term Pogo, I think it is a type of keyboard.

Leo:  Well it comes from Pogo Pins, right, which are how those connections are.  I know that and you know that because that's our business, but I wonder if real people know what a Pogo keyboard is.

Paul:  Right, and I looked at it because I was like am I misunderstanding what this is?  They are talking about the type of, I guess they are trying to differentiate between from like a Chiclet kind of keyboard?  

Leo:  I don't know what they are trying to, it clicks.  

Paul:  It moves Leo.  There is, what I call a throw, the keystroke when you hit it.

Leo:  It sounds more like they are talking about how it attaches.  I don't know if this is common parlance.  

Paul:  I thought Pogo Pin was on the actual keys.

Leo:  No, Pogo Pins are those actual connectors, those 4 or 5 copper dots.

Paul:  Oh, that connect it to the...

Leo:  That connect it to the bottom.

Paul:  Oh, I misunderstood that completely.

Leo:  Well, there you go, that proves that this is not common parlance.

Paul:  I had to look it up, I didn't understand what it was.

Leo:  That's a Pogo Keyboard.  I think that really means that it is detachable.

Paul:  Okay, so I've used a lot of these types of devices where you pull the screen off.  I have to say that that latch can absolutely be the weak link you know.  The first gen Windows 8 HP devices, they had a consumer version and a higher end business version that were both actually pretty lousy.  Maintaining the connections, you would be typing, and then all of the sudden you wouldn't be typing because the connection died and you didn't know why.  That kind of thing can be the weak link.  

Leo:  Somebody in the chat room is pointing out that a MSDN subscription renewal now is $800 and it does not include the free Office 365.  So Microsoft, you are throwing it in for the $200 Pogo Pin, could you throw it in for the MSDN subscription please?

Paul:  Well, this kind of goes back to the historic way that everybody acquired Windows and Office, you got it with a PC.

Leo:  Right, you didn't need to have it with your MSDN.  

Paul:  But, you know the neat thing about Office 365 from Microsoft's perspective is that if you buy a machine and keep it more than a year, and you get used to Office 365 then you are going to throw them $69 extra.

Leo:  Yeah, give it away for the first year, that's freemium.

Paul:  Before you would give it away and people would use up whatever the free version was on the machine because it lasts forever.

Leo:  Alright, let’s talk about the thing that we really want to talk about.

Paul:  Finally.

Leo:  I'm really tempted to order this Master Chief Collection of Halo.  It's every map ever.

Paul:  I don't know if you are paying attention to this story.  Did you look at the specs on this thing?

Leo:  No.

Paul:  This is a 45GB download.

Leo:  I did see that, yeah.

Paul:  But, here is the kicker, on day 1, which is November 11 in the United States you will need to download another 20GB of additional content.  

Leo:  Whoa.

Paul:  Now the way that they described it is that you will be able to start playing the campaign immediately, you don't have to worry or whatever.  I think that some of this online stuff is actually going to require the day 1 update.  Then 65GB of stuff.

Leo:  So know you know why I put a 2TB drive in my USB port.  I don't worry about that.

Paul:  I really wish they had had the forethought to make the hard drive something that you could just unplug and replace with a bigger unit.

Leo:  You can't, that's right.

Paul:  I don't understand.  This thing is the size of my Volkswagen, why isn't there a drawer that pops out?  I should be able to say "Xbox, hard drive out."  No?

Leo:  But think about it, you are getting every version of Halo, right?

Paul:  Well, all of the versions that had Master Chief, so 1, 2, 3, and 4.  All of the multiplayer maps across those releases including the PC version.  

Leo:  That's got to be a whole lot of maps, there's hundreds of maps, right?

Paul:  And then there is something called Spartan Ops.

Leo:  That's a top down.  Oh, it's co-op?

Paul:  This was part of Halo 4, I didn't actually play it.  I don't recognize the name either.  I don't know what this is exactly, but it's a co-op thing like 10 episodes or whatever I think.  That's not even coming, that will be another download in December.  This is like some massive historical document.

Leo:  You said historical document.  It's exactly what it is.  I will be playing versions of Halo that I played on Tech TV, right?

Paul:  I knee jerk, but there is now way I'm not going to buy it.

Leo:  $69, come on, it's like a buck a GB.  It's a good deal.

Paul:  Yeah, but now I'm out of space, so now that I've done this I am literally out of space so I have to make a decision if I'm going to attach a hard drive to this stupid thing.

Leo:  Yeah, you've got Modern Warfare coming too.

Paul:  Right, so that's the other one.  Modern Warfare, I have to look it up.

Leo:  Just the Kevin Spacey files alone are going to be GB.

Paul:  Yeah, 25GB of Kevin Spacey skins.  This one is funny because there is so many different versions of this game.  It's not as bad on digital, but if you were to go into a store and actually look at the versions it's like this crazy number of additions that you can buy and they all come with these crazy weapon packages and you know, brass...

Leo:  Advanced Warfare bundle the Warfare Day Zero Edition.

Paul:  But the one that you want unless you don't have Xbox One yet...

Leo:  Which one do I want?  There's Atlas Pro, there's Atlas Limited; you could spend $130 on this game.  

Paul:  They go all the way down to the bottom.  Digitally there are two versions; there is a $100 version which is the one that I get because the truth is for me, I do go through the single player campaign, I like that, but I then spend the next year playing this game online and that's the way that they do it.

Leo:  This is your game.

Paul:  Yeah, so in the past, the past 2 or 3 years, you would buy this season pass, and it was $60, so it was kind of like buying the game again.  It got you 4 drops of DLC content, multiplayer maps, there was like an extinction thing that they did this time around, they did zombies in some of the games.  This is basically a way to pay for all of that stuff up front in one package.  It's the game, it's all the digital stuff you get in the higher end physical packages, and then the DLC content over the next year.  So basically what I've done is committed myself for the rest of 2015 to what I am going to be doing with Xbox One.  

Leo:  So forget Halo, you are never going to play Halo.  I love that this has got Kevin Spacey in it which is just bizarre.  

Paul:  It's like a futuristic top gun.

Leo:  Is it a movie?  Is it a game?

Paul:  I think that this is one of the canned in between...

Leo:  This is a cut scene, I know, but still.  Let's see if we can get going.  There's the Golden Gate Bridge.  

Paul:  You know, there are elements of other games in this like Titanfall.

Leo:  I love that, that is the House of Cards version of Kevin Spacey.  That's the, I can't wait.  This is clearly going after people who are House of Cards fans.  It's a whole new demographic for Call of Duty.

Paul:  I don't know what the crossover is there, but it's like me and you.

Leo:  Me and you.  So it's still going to be a shoot em up, but Kevin Spacey will show up every once in a while?  I don't understand.  

Paul:  Well, he will be part of the single player campaign.  He is the bad guy.  

Leo:  Is he a good guy or a bad guy?  We don't know.

Paul:  I think he is probably the bad guy.

Leo:  I would be fun to play Kevin like you played the dog says Bill Murray.

Paul:  Kevin, get over here.

Leo:  I want to play Kevin.  Come get them Kevin.  Neat, really neat.  That's exciting.  We are not going to see gamers for another 6 months now, you are going to go back down into your hole.

Paul:  What do we got now?  We've got about 2 1/2 weeks, 3 weeks almost. 

Leo:  Cards of Duty somebody said.  House of Cards of Duty.

Paul:  When does Call of Duty come out, though?  The other thing is Call of Duty, if you preorder digitally you can play it the day before it comes out physically.

Leo:  Right.

Paul:  You get 24 hours of double experience points.

Leo:  They want to push people towards digital, doesn't they?  If I was GameStop I would be pissed.

Paul:  Yes, obviously the one problem in digital is if you don't like the game you are kind of screwed.  It's really hard or impossible to sell.  

Leo:  But that's why they want to do it.

Paul:  But oh my god, not having to put a disk in this thing.

Leo:  I don't buy disks anymore, I realized in fact that it was such a pain in the butt.  The last time I bought a game, I can't remember what it was, it was a disk.  It was the first round of games or second round of games and I realized that I could download it.  Even though I already had the disk coming I bought the download.

Paul:  You bought it yeah, and you sent it back.

Leo:  And that was the last disk I will ever buy.

Paul:  The only disk that has ever been in my Xbox One is a Blue-ray movie and I just put it in to test Blue-ray movie playback.  

Leo:  I have Blue-ray movies but I don't think I have ever put one in my Xbox.

Paul:  No, I actually never watch Blue-rays.  It's important to me that I buy every version of the Star Wars movies that have ever been made, so I do have the Blue-ray versions.

Leo:  Yeah, but do you watch them?

Paul:  No, I do not.

Leo:  You just look at them on the shelf?  Somebody is pointing out, actually a very good point, that Frank Underwood in House of Cards unwinds, and there are several times that he does this on the show, he plays Call of Duty.

Paul:  He plays Call of Duty.  That's right, that's true.

Leo:  So that explains it.

Paul:  Maybe that's why they reached out to him.  For all we know there was an interview where he was like this is what I do in real life so I threw it in the TV show so it would be easy. 

Leo:  He might be.

Paul:  That's interesting.  I've never made that connection.

Leo:  I've been meaning to get Kevin back on the show and interview him.  This would be a good excuse.  The release of Call of Duty.

Paul:  Hopefully he does like his imitations as well.

Leo:  Frank Underwood.  The game of politics is always been lonesome.  I love him.

Paul:  He actually, speaking of Star Wars, he did the great SNL Star Wars thing where it was like Walter Matthau as Obi Wan Kenobi I think.

Leo:  Walter Matthau, we only do there is no try.

Paul:  It's a Wookiee.  What's a Chewbacca?  What's a Chewbacca.  It's so awesome.  He's just so great.

Leo:  It's clear that Microsoft is pushing you towards digital content.  You get 24 hours of advanced play.

Paul:  Microsoft does certain things around digital stuff, you know Office 365 is another version where it just becomes a no brainer.  Obviously there are always people who just refuse to do that kind of thing I guess.

Leo:  Well, for various reasons, resale value, I don't have a fast enough internet connection, etc., etc.  Do you have to load a certain amount of content on your hard drive if you have the disk?  Yes, it still has to copy to your hard drive.  The disk just becomes a key.

Paul:  I don't know.   Xbox 360 was optional so you could just play off of the disk.  So the performance would be a little slower, remember?

Leo:  I don't think that you can.

Paul:  I don't know about Xbox One.

Leo:  I'm pretty sure.  It never gave me an option.

Paul:  Okay, all I know is now I'm going to have to.  I've never used the disk.  I have no idea how it works for the disk.  If life goes right I never will.

Leo: I'm telling you it's the end of physical media.  Nobody believes me but it's true.

Paul:  Yep.  You will never stream a movie that looks as good as a Blue-ray.  It will never happen.

Leo:  So who cares?

Paul:  Yeah, who cares.  Exactly, right?  I wasn't in the recording studio with The Who either, but I still enjoy their music, so whatever.  It's like whatever.

Leo:  Whatevs, back of the book coming up, Paul is going to attempt and Enterprise pick and a beer pick in memory of Mary Jo Foley.

Paul:  In honor we will say.

Leo:  In honor of her.

Paul:  Out of respect.

Leo:  Out of respect.  Our show today is brought to you by lynda.com, the place to go to learn how to use software of all stripes, Office of course, Windows of course, they had a Windows 8.1 training video up almost immediately.  L-y-n-d-a.com, just visit and browse around and you will get a sense of the huge variety of training courses that they have here.  These aren't just, you know, YouTube style home made videos, these are produced beautifully in their own studios.  Look at this, I want to do this one, Shooting Aerial Panaoramas With a Quad Copter.  That's a new course.  Screen Casting Fundamentals, Arc GIS Training, I mean this is fun but high end stuff and all sorts of stuff.  L-y-n-d-a-.com, and by the way, Microsoft is completely covered by lynda.com.  All of the Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Azure, even Developing Apps for Windows devices.  You could start learning right now at lynda.com.  Not only are the courses high quality, they are broken up into pieces so that you can easily learn what you want at your own pace.  You could start to finish it or you could just use the searchable transcripts and jump to the part that you want.  There are Certificates of Course Completion that you can publish to your LinkedIn profile.  Whether you are a beginner or advanced there are courses for you at lynda.com.  Of course their apps for IOS and Android mean that you can learn on the go too.  The way it works, one low $25 fee gives you access to the entire library.  They just launched an IT training category with 140 courses there.  This is really impressive.  But if you want to get the Pro version you can also download courses to watch them offline and project files so that you can practice along with the instructor.  Here is what we are going to do, 7 days free, just a run of the place so that you can get a real sense of what you can learn from lynda.com.  Here is a Code Clinic on C Sharp if you want to update your programming skills.  Some of the best instructors, many of whom I know like my good friend Burt Monroy, he teaches a great course called Dreamscapes which is about using Photoshop to paint fine art.  L-y-n-d-a.com/windows, 7 days free, you can do anything you want, watch as many videos as you can.  Do not sleep during those 7 days, just eat it up my friend.  7 days free, l-y-n-d-a.com/windows.  I think it is a great way to learn, lynda.com.  Just take a look at the vast number of courses in their library.  Even business skills, negotiation, resume building, things like that, it's just great.  Paul Thurrott, Leo Laporte, Mary Jo Foley has the week off.  We are continuing on with what we call the back of the book.  That's the best part, that's the part of the magazine that I always read first.  The juicy stuff, the tips, the picks.  our tip of the week starts us off, Paul.

Paul:  This is a little bit of a non-sequitar.   I think I'm going to build a PC.

Leo:  Why?

Paul:  I haven't done it in a long time.

Leo:  I know it’s fun, but...

Paul:  I don't know if you remember, last summer I think it was, the PC I am using now started to die and then eventually did die.  HP replaced the motherboard under warranty, it's still under warranty I think actually, it was a 2 year warranty, but it's starting to exhibit the traits that led to the problem before.  I think I might build my next PC.  

Leo:  So just a recommendation?  And they are not an advertiser, I wish they were, we've been trying to get them for years; newegg.com, you just start it there.  They've got all of the components.

Paul:  Yeah, I think that I'm going to go with a shuttle kind of case.

Leo:  They've got all of those crazy cases.  You can go big or small.  I like the shuttle cases.

Paul:  Yeah, I think that I'm going to do this.

Leo:  They have all of the components that you would want and it's really easy.

Paul:  It's important that I be bleeding by the time that this thing is over.  

Leo:  I think that you will.  Get that nice stamped metal case with the sharp, sharp edges.

Paul:  I want to inhale that adhesive paste that you put on the CPU.

Leo:  Oh yeah, I love those volatile organic compounds.  They open up the slouses at both ends.

Paul:  Right, right.

Leo:  Yeah.

Paul:  Anyway, sorry.

Leo:  I think that if you do that we should do a little show around it.

Paul:  Oh yeah, sure.  I mean this is, you know, it's been a while Leo.

Leo:  Many others would follow along with you, and I think that some of the most interesting parts of this would be the research up front of what you are going to put in.

Paul:  Yeah, yeah, exactly right.  I can tell you that whatever PC I get the next time I am getting a desktop, I really do rely on this kind of thing.  I do a lot of virtualization, I bet, I shouldn't let it slip before I say something stupid, but, my computer only has 8GB of RAM in it, right?

Leo:  Come on!

Paul:  Yeah, the next one is going to have like 32GB of RAM.

Leo:  Yeah.

Paul:  That's just stupid.

Leo:  Yeah.

Paul:  Okay, will this is how bad it is.  I will try to run a virtual machine now, and it will actually say you don't have enough RAM.

Leo:  Yeah, you need more.

Paul:  This is how I fix that problem, I close Chrome.  That literally fixes the problem.

Leo:  That's it, just that, yep.

Paul:  So I need like 16GB of RAM just to run Chrome.  

Leo:  Yeah, that's true.

Paul:  Sorry.

Leo:  No, I like that.  Seriously, we could make that a really fun special edition series.

Paul:  Yeah, it would be like one of those reality shows where this hick lives up in the woods and he is introduced to technology for the first time.

Leo:  What's a computer?  We would like to show you.

Paul:  Hey, the TV man is here.  We are going to build a computer.  I don't know what it is even.  As long as it has the internet on it I'm in.  Is it like Prodigy?  Yeah, it is like Prodigy.

Leo:  I think that you should do that.  At least you will do a series of posts on it, I'm sure.

Paul:  Oh yeah, yeah.

Leo:  So tip of the week.

Paul:  You just ground that to a halt.

Leo:  You are just kind of thinking out loud.  

Paul:  Yeah, so tip of the week is that Microsoft has a new app for Windows and Windows Phone, meaning Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8+, called Music Deals.  It's a way to get a $.99 album a week and then a bunch of albums for $1.99. If you are still buying music or even if you have a subscription service this is just cheap enough that you know, what the heck, add it to your collection.  It obviously is no DRM these days, you can use this on any service that you want and new device that you want.  They have this new app, and it's kind of a cool app, and it works pretty well.  I actually did buy a couple of albums with this.  Someone had said, as we do in the Microsoft space, you get these people who are always burned by everything that Microsoft does.  Why isn't this just part of Xbox Music?  Why would they have a separate app, because when you buy music you actually buy it direct from Xbox Music.  I think that I have the answer.  It's a theory, but I think this is the answer; if they put this on Xbox Music no one will ever see it, you know?  I don't think Xbox Music has a very good brand or a very good recognition, they are aren't recognized by the public very well.  I think this is just, what the hell, it's called Music Deals, and it's something, who knows, this may become part of Windows next time.  I think that is why.  Anyway, it's a good deal.  I bought like this Fleetwood Mac album that has 32 songs on it for like $2.

Leo:  That is good, yeah.  So it's on the store for both Windows Phone and Windows?

Paul:  Yep.

Leo:  Music Deals.

Paul:  Yeah.  You know, whatever.  So, software pick I guess I have a couple.  One of them is that Office Mix is updated.  Office Mix is that awesome online utility that lets you take a presentation and then basically make a movie of it.  People can watch these things from afar over the internet, but also interact with them because there are interactive elements.  You can add these presentations.  So this week they added three capabilities that are really interesting.   One of them is not a big deal; Gala Research, there is a galleria of pre-made presentations that you can search by different genres and so forth.  The other two are actually fairly profound.  The first one is Live Mixing, which is the ability to provide a live presentation through Office Mix online.  It's completely free to anybody who want to do this.  This is kind of an amazing capability using things like write on the screen if you have a pen based system and it will transmit across the internet to the people watching it and so forth, and obviously with  slides and all of that, so that's cool.  There is also an improved editing functionality.  The way that it worked before is that you would just give the presentation once and then you would just kind of rifle through it.  Now what you can do is you can pause and resume as you are recording, you can go back in time, get rid of a part if you borked it too badly or whatever, and you can also write on the screen during the presentation and then erase it so that the screen becomes clear if you are looking at a slide or whatever, then you can write some more and that kind of thing.  Again, this is a totally free tool that is hosted by Microsoft.  There is some amazing presentations up there.  It's just a really cool too, so that is kind of a nice update there.  The other one, I just saw this as we were starting the show and I haven't had a chance to look at it, but you may know that Nokia, the actual part of Nokia that is left as Nokia, is targeting IOS and Android now with their map solutions.  The initial version of HERE Maps for Android was released only on Samsung devices recently.  I believe today, if I am reading this correctly, because again we were just starting the show, but I believe that they have now released it for Android generally.  If you have any Android device I think that you can get HERE Maps for Android as well.  So you can check that out, I haven't seen it yet.

Leo:  I am looking.  Does it say Microsoft or Nokia?

Paul:  No, this is not Microsoft, this is literally HERE, so how would you find this?  I have a link to the Nokia Blogpost.

Leo:  Yeah, because I'm not, I'm searching Google's Store and I'm not seeing it.

Paul:  Actually what it says is that you have to go to here.com/beta/android. 

Leo:  Oh, it's a beta thing.

Paul:  Yeah.  Does it go?  Let me see what it does.  This is actually a site load.

Leo:  So you are allowed to do that on Android, but you have to check a box that says allow third party.  Obviously this would be a safe one.  It doesn't say any limitation like Samsung only.

Paul:  So one of the big deals with the HERE Mapping applications by the way, because a lot of people use Google Mapping and that kind of thing; and they are fine.  Obviously the Google one is awesome.

Leo:  That's the problem though.  Do I need this?

Paul:  Here's the big deal.  This is something that we have been enjoying on Windows Phone for a couple of years now; full offline maps.  It's a little hokey, you can kind of do it in Google, but you have to be very specific about how you do it.  In HERE Maps you just say I want all of Massachusetts downloaded to my phone, I want all of Spain downloaded to my phone, or whatever.  Then when you are offline if you don't have an internet connect, or even if you do you aren't using your internet connection for the maps, its offline.  

Leo:  That's for 100 different countries and they also do traffic info.  In your experience the public transport stuff is pretty good too?

Paul:  In my experience the public transport stuff is great.  That depends kind of where you are too.  Live traffic, they seem a little behind on live traffic, but that is something that has gotten a lot better over time. 

Leo:  I will have to try it.  Google owns Waze, and I use Waze for the live traffic updates.  

Paul:  Yep.

Leo:  And then Google Maps of course has built in nav.

Paul:  The reason that HERE Maps and HERE Drive + were such a big deal, are still such a big deal on Windows Phone is that if you think about the way this market has gone we have a lot of really low end devices.  You can spend $99 or less and you can get a 520 and a 635 or something like that.  You could buy one of these things just as a secondary device.  Leave the SIM in, put it in airplane mode, turn on Wi-Fi; it's a media player, it's a game player, it's a GPS that's free and you can download offline apps.

Leo:  That's pretty neat, yeah.

Paul:  It's a neat thing.  Maybe the situation isn't quite the same thing on Android, but I think that the case for offline maps is a pretty good one.  I'm sure Google will just add that feature and that will be the end of that, but that is one of the primary reasons to get that.

Leo:  I gather that it is in the Samsung Store.

Paul:  I didn't really pay attention to it when they made it Samsung only.

Leo:  Samsung has its own store of course.

Paul:  Because, you know, the one that Google makes is too nice.

Leo:  It's so bad, yeah.  I've been looking for a Samsung.

Paul:  Samsung is like the guys that have the little grudge going.  They sort of begrudgingly, like we have to use Android, what we want to do is be the whole widget.  What they have to understand is that nobody wants Samsung OS.

Leo:  People want Android.

Paul:  Right, we are buying your phone because it's Android.

Leo:  So the Galaxy app is taking a while to load, once it loads I will, Opera Mini Browser, File Commander, iColor Studio.  So that is the three big staff pics.  Our internet is so slow, it's not doing very well.  Shoot, just by opening it I am installing something.  Milk Music, Galaxy Gifts...

Paul:  What would be funny is if they just had off brand versions of everything.

Leo:  They kind of do.  They kind of do.

Paul:  Like Kundle eBook Reader.  The Edible Audiobook Reader.

Leo:  They kind of do.  Let's just see here, oh well, anyway.

Paul:  HERE is such a terrible brand.

Leo:  You can't find it.  HERE Beta, but that is not the HERE, that is HERE Europe VV.

Paul:  That's it.

Leo:  So that's how you find it if you are on a Samsung.  I will install it right now.

Paul:  By the way, for whatever it is worth, I really like the presentation of the app, at least on Windows Phone.  There is actually multiple apps, there is a Maps app, there is a navigation app called Drive + which is fantastic, and then this one just for public transport.  It is really neat because it gives you multiple legs through a trip.  I'm in Dedham, I need to get to this part of Boston, what's the best way?  It's like you take the bus for this part, you take the train, you take this train.  They give you the whole route and how much time each leg is going to take, it's really well done.

Leo:  Yeah, I was using something called Citymapper in London, and it was awesome, it's really a great transit app.  I'm downloading it here, I will give it a shot on your recommendation.  You are going to channel Mary Jo Foley, aren't you, with an Enterprise pick now?

Paul:  Yeah, so this one is awesome because I was briefed about this before it happened.  This was part of the big announcement in San Francisco this part week from Satya Nadella and so forth.  Microsoft is offering a product through partners, like they used to do and probably still do through Windows Server Data Center, which is the really high end version of Windows Server.  At the time there was no way to buy Data Center in a box, you could only get it through a partner, and it was highly qualified systems and so forth.  This thing is called Microsoft Cloud Platform, and basically what it is is a way to bring Azure capabilities into your data center.  So you can either do this on PREM solely, which is not typically the way Enterprises do it, or in a hybrid environment, right?  People call it Azure in a box.  That's true if the box is the size of my house because these are massive racks with incredible hardware capabilities.  The one bit that I didn't know when I was briefed about this because they literally wouldn't say was the price.  Right now you can only buy a system from Dell.  It's Windows Server 2012 R2, the latest version of Windows Server, System Center 2012 R2, the Windows Azure Pack, which is the part that brings the Azure capabilities in.  These are systems like 32 CPU course, 450GB RAM, 6.5TB of local SSD storage, 32TB of total storage per virtual machine.  They are insane.  A basic rack, you can have up to 4 racks, is 512 CPU course, 32 service, 8TB of RAM, 32 GB per server, 282TB of usable storage, all kinds of connectivity, etc., etc.  Base price, $1.6 million.

Leo:  Okay, so I won't be buying that.

Paul:  You can talk to your local seller.

Leo:  I've got a big basement but not a big wallet.

Paul:  If you strap 4 of these things together you can launch a missile at Mars.  I don't know what you would, I don't know.

Leo:  That's great, thank you Microsoft.

Paul:  I thought that was kind of amazing.

Leo:  $1.6 million.  Starting price.  Code name of the week?

Paul:  So this is interesting, I wish I could find this.  It's killing me that I can't.  Sometime in the past week I came across a scan of something that I had written, you know in my own handwriting on a piece of paper, from 1994.

Leo:  Wow.

Paul:  And it was information about the Microsoft Betas that I was participating in at the time.  So my Microsoft Beta ID was at the top, and my password, and my CompuServe log in.  There were notes from a phone conversation that I had had from someone at Microsoft and they were talking about things that had become Windows 95, and MSN the online service, Office 95, and you know, all of this stuff.  Then there was this word, this word written there, and I thought oh my god, I remember this.  I asked Mary Jo if she remembered this and actually she did to her credit.  The word was frosting.

Leo:  That's a code name, frosting?

Paul:  It was a Microsoft code name in 1994-95.  Anyway she remembered it.  It's the code name for what because Plus for Windows 95 because Plus was the frosting on the Windows.

Leo:  Of course, I remember this too.  The frosting, that's the Plus pack for Windows 95.  

Paul:  So the thing that kills me, I meant to insert the photo of this in notes so that you could see it, but I don't remember where I put it.

Leo:  You can scan it from the back of a napkin he wrote the word frosting and 20 years 

Paul:  I had scanned a bunch of my notes to get rid of the paper at some point.  I came across it somewhere in my server, but I don't know where it is now.  I will find it.

Leo:  That's hysterical, frosting.

Paul:  Frosting.

Leo:  Finally, let's do some beer.

Paul:  Yes, let's do some decidedly non-hoppy beer.  

Leo:  Yeah, your chance.  

Paul:  Although, to be fair my favorite brewery is Blue Hills Brewery in Canton next to us here in Massachusetts.  They do a lot of IPAs, a lot of kind of hoppy beers, but they are not that kind of awful hoppiness that I hate.  They do a really good job with it.  In fact, they let us test a beer that they are not sure that they are going to sell.  It's basically a version of the beer that they already sell that is dry hopped.  When you bring it to your face you can smell hops, you know what I mean, if a beer is too hoppy you can smell it.  My first reaction was oh god, that's awful.  He said, no, drink it.  When you drink it it doesn't taste hoppy, in fact it's smoother than the normal beer that they sell.  I said I don't understand how this works.  He says that the hops have oils in them and that makes them smooth.

Leo:  You said this last week, I remember you mentioning it, yeah.

Paul:  Oh, I did, I'm sorry, so I have already told you this.  I was amazed by this.  I'm sorry.

Leo:  It's okay, you are getting old, Paul.  I do the same thing.

Paul:  You are right. 

Leo:  I was listening, I just want you to know I was listening.

Paul:  It wasn't just a story I made up.  The pick I'm having this week is another local beer.  This is a place called Pretty Things.  They are an interesting brewery because they don't actually have their own brewery facility.  What they do is they design their own beers, but they use other breweries around the area to actually make the beer.  

Leo:  Wow, it's kind of like Invidia.

Paul:  Yeah, yeah.

Leo:  Or Arm.  They are a fabulous brewery.

Paul:  Yeah, they make a lot of great beers, Jack D'Or is one of them, and a few others, but my favorite is Baby Tree.  Baby Tree is a kind of Belgium Abbey-style quadruple, which should mean to you that it's kind of fruity, kind of heavy, kind of wintery, really smooth, and really high in alcohol.  Actually it's not super high, it's probably 8% or 9%.

Leo:  It's 9% yeah.

Paul:  It's 9% yeah, some of them are much worse, but that's a fantastic Belgium style beer.

Leo:  I want this beer.  This looks great.

Paul:  Yeah, it's awesome.

Leo:  It's got pils, Vienna, chocolate malt, and oats.  Nice.

Paul:  This would go really well on pancakes for example.

Leo:  If you run out of maple syrup you've got Baby Tree.

Paul:  Put it on ice cream, it would be a good intermezzo with some sherbet or something.  

Leo:  So this is Belgium style, but they make it in Ohio?

Paul:  They are in Massachusetts.

Leo:  Massachusetts.

Paul:  Yep, yep.

Leo:  It doesn't rhyme, Massachusetts.  When you said Canton I though home of the Football Hall of Fame Canton, Ohio.

Paul:  I'm sorry, Denham is next to Canton.

Leo:  Canton, Mass.

Paul:  Denham and Cant.

Leo:  Cant and Canton.

Paul:  Cant town next door.

Leo:  Cant town, Canton.  Mr. Paul Thurrott will be found playing pool at the local Denham nightery.  At least until Advanced Warfare comes out.  You can find him at Super Site for Windows, winsupersite.com.  His books, of course, are legend and you can find links to many of them at windows81book.com, including his field guide to Windows 8.1.  You can also find him here pretty much any Wednesday around 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern time, 1800 UTC.

Paul:  That kid that graduated from high school but never left.

Leo: Will never leave, yep.  Never left.  Mary Jo will be back next week?

Paul:  Yeah, actually, I believe she is going to be away next week but she is going to do it from Barcelona.  I think that's where she is doing it.

Leo:  Alright, so we will get a TechED update.  Thank you Paul, good to see you.

Paul:  Thank you, good to talk to you.

Leo:  We do make on demand video and audio if you can't watch live on our website, twit.tv/windows.  You can also download it from any podcatcher including the Xbox music store free.   See you next time on Windows Weekly!  Bye, bye.