Windows Weekly 387 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for Windows Weekly! Paul and Mary Jo are here despite the snow. And they’re… a little bit of snow… and they’re going to talk about the latest from Microsoft band. Paul has his review. New Office and Surface updates. Windows Phone. We’ll even talk about Xbox One. It’s all coming up with 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 387, recorded November 5, 2014

Pint Curls

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Paul Thurrott: Is this like a flashback show?

Mary Jo Foley: I was, like wait, isn’t it the Google show?

Leo: Oh that’s the other show. I’m sorry. What was I thinking?! I have the wrong show. Paul Thurrott is here from the supersite for Windows, winsupersite.com. Mary Jo Foley from ZD Net, allaboutmicrosoft.com. The premier Windows and Microsoft journalists in the world! Hello, folks.

Paul: Met with silence as we…

Leo: What are you supposed to do? Say yes, yes we are.

Paul: Pretty much.

Leo: You’re humble.

Paul: I don’t know, sure.

Leo: We’re not going to go into this in great detail. But you know a lot of people were watching CNN last night for their election coverage. And I guess CNN has a deal like the NFL with the Microsoft folks.

Paul: Leo, it’s identical to the NFL because…

Leo: There are iPads hidden behind the Surfaces! Woopsies.

Paul: Somebody made the comment on Twitter that if Microsoft should market the Surface Pro 3 as an iPad stand. And that if they sold one of those as a stand for every iPad, they would have a pretty reasonable market share.

Leo: It’s pretty funny. But you really can’t tell commentators when they come in, oh you can’t use your computer because…

Paul: Oh I’m not thinking you can tell that woman anything that would change her mind about anything. Shocker.

Leo: Shocker.

Mary Jo: Although I do see Robert McClause who’s a friend of ours on Twitter ask Jake Tapper-is that one of the guys?

Leo: Tapper, yea.

Mary Jo: He said well hey why are you using an iPad? He said you know we were just tweeting from our iPads.

Leo: Oh, that’s all they’re good for.

Mary Jo: That’s all they’re good for, guys.

Leo: Actually the Queen of England, when she did her first tweet was from an iPad. But oddly enough and we’re not sure how this happened, the tweet came out of an iPhone.

Paul: Well she’s tiny. It probably looked like an iPad.

Leo: There’s a lot of shenanigans going on. But that’s not what we’re here to discuss. We are here to discuss all the wonderful things of the new Microsoft shackle, as Paul calls it.

Paul: The manacle.

Leo: The manacle. You know we had a review, Daniel Rubino came on from... by the way, Debby P sends her from Windows Central. And Daniel’s been on the show-I love the guy-he did his review of the Microsoft band and he said he loved it. And he said his girlfriend who is tiny even loved it.

Paul: Okay, I don’t know how that’s relevant.

Leo: Well because it is kind of clunky maybe.

Paul: Daniel’s a little too excited about the Microsoft band. I appreciate his enthusiasm. But the truth is in its current state that this thing is ridiculous. It’s too much in every sense of the word. It’s not just too big and heavy. It’s too complex. It does too much. It’s impossible to figure out. It’s impossible to know when it will automatically do stuff and when it requires you to trigger something to happen. It suffers… I don’t know if I wrote this.

Leo: You called it big, bulky, uncomfortable, and complex.

Paul: Yea. It’s something that was designed by engineers. It does everything. It’s kind of a typical Microsoft product. It’s like this gigantic do-it-all monstrosity that shoots fireworks and whatever. But you know they kind of missed some of the basics. For example, you can have the screen be off. In fact, did mine just die? Okay. So you can have the screen be off or you can have like a clock that’s on but not anything other than a clock. Like I can’t leave it on heart rate, it has to be on clock. But it doesn’t have the notion of an at-a-glance mode where you bring your wrist up to your face like you would when you look to the watch.

Leo: That’s really important. Most of these watches do at least do that.

Paul: Samsung does it. Microsoft invented the notion of at-a-glance with Windows Phone. How did they not get that into the band? There’s things like that that I just don’t understand. It measures more than any other fitness band that’s available.

Leo: It’s pretty impressive. It even measures UV exposure from the sun. That’s cool!

Paul: It’s cool. But right now it doesn’t matter. It’s like saying hey, did you know your car could go off road and everything? It’s like that’s true but I drive to work every day. I don’t need to go off road. And by the way, how would I even enable that mode? I don’t know.

Leo: Have you wore any of these other watches for any length of time?

Paul: Leo, I’ve been wearing one of these watches for four years now.

Leo: Okay.

Paul: I’ve owned two Nike Fuel bands, two Fitbits. I have both of the Samsung devices, the band and the watch. I have two on now because I wear a Fitbit every single day. And now I’m testing the Microsoft thing. And I’ve got to tell you, this is like some gigantic Tesla thing with bristling with sensors and lights, and doo-dads. And the truth is, I don’t think most people need this kind of oversight. I think it’s a little much. When you look at the…

Leo: The fly-away of all the stuff that’s in here. It doesn’t look like a really complex device.

Paul: The simplest things on this device are really complex. And like I said, it’s a lot of little things they didn’t get right. The at-a-glance mode. Why isn’t the display not curved? Why is it this gigantic thing that I hit on everything every time I move my hand everywhere? I think we lose sight when people love technology, love technology. They don’t really think of it as a means to an end. To them, it’s everything. And so it’s like oh this is so cool. Oh my God, it’s got tiles on it. Oh my God! Okay, okay. That’s cute. But you know, can you sleep with it and not kill yourself if you push your head into your wrist? It’s really obtrusive, complex, and it does a lot. It’s amazing. It’s amazing like the Space Station is amazing. But it’s just, most of us don’t need a Space Station. I don’t know, I just think it’s too much.

Leo: It has a GPS built into it. It’s one of the few that have its own GPS. So you don’t have to take a phone.

Paul: Okay, given all the smarts this thing has, I’d like it to be more automatic stuff. They’re working on this but it should be able to… it’s got sensors for everything. How about knowing I’m about to fall asleep? And just measure that for me.

Leo: But they can do some of these things with a firmware update, right?

Paul: Yes.

Leo: And if you’re using Windows Phone, you can talk to it, which is cool.

Paul: Or is lame.

Leo: Well it’s cool in thinking about it. Does it work? Can you say hey take note? Cortana?

Paul: Okay, those types of features I’ve actually temporarily disabled because as part of this thing just does too much, every single time I get a text message, an email message, a Facebook update… I think Facebook was one of them, a calendar invite, whatever, my wrist will buzz. It’s like I was getting electro-shock therapy. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Leo: Oh, that’s quite annoying.

Paul: I get too much of that stuff.

Leo: But you can turn that off, right?

Paul: You can turn it off and I have. I guess what I’ll add though is this falls into that category of things that make this thing amazing because some day-not today but some day-this thing using machine learning in the cloud will be able to look across all of these data points that every other device would be completely disconnected. Well and would be to this device that requires machine learning. And say hey, we noticed that your heart rate spikes in the 15 minutes before the weekly meeting you have with your boss.

Leo: That would be a good thing to do. So you should have a drink now.

Paul: You should drink some water or do some meditation.

Leo: No, that would be really great.

Paul: That’s amazing. But that’s science-fiction, Leo. That’s a promise. It’s I do believe it’s possible. I do believe it’s going to happen. And I do think this thing’s going to get simpler and there will be a smaller version. I’m not saying it’s crap. It’s not. It’s not like this lackluster entry. It’s almost too much. Tired of being made fun of by everybody, Microsoft shot for the moon.

Leo: We could do this! Somebody, I think it was Steve Gibson who pointed out we’re really in the palm pilot era of this stuff. And so everybody is going to be trying things and learning from that. It would probably be foolish to buy one unless you’re an avid technology buff and you understand you’re going to be…

Paul: Or an avid workout buff or whatever.

Leo: But then you should get the Fitbit.

Paul: Maybe.

Leo: Those new Fitbits look great.

Paul: The Fitbit does what I want. At least outside of myself to realize that what I want isn’t what everyone wants. I sort of look at this hopefully fairly holistically or whatever. But one of the things I really like about it is the constant heart rate monitoring. I think that’s cool. Fitbit already does sleep monitoring and it’s still more sophisticated on the Microsoft band than it is on the Fitbit band. You still have to turn it on manually. By the way when you’re falling asleep at night…

Leo: Daniel did say they plan to make that automated at some point.

Paul: I plan to have a flying car. So I’m sure that will happen. You know they told me the same thing. But I don’t… it doesn’t matter what it’s going to do. What matters is what it does do. And it’s weird. It does too much in some areas and too little in other areas. And it’s not a half-hearted, look we copied everyone else kind of thing. It really is a moon shot and I give them a lot of credit for that.

Mary Jo: You know what I think is part of why it feels so disconnected in terms of what it can do and what it’s supposed to do is, if you look at what it is, it comes from two totally different parts of Microsoft. Xbox team is the one who designed this. That’s who designed the band.

Leo: Really? I didn’t know that.

Mary Jo: That’s what I’ve heard. And then the team that did all the backend stuff, the health stuff, the sensors, the machine learning, that’s Azure and the cloud. And the database team. So you wonder, did these guys actually have much of a conversation before they said hey let’s stick these two things together and turn it into an internet of things device.

Paul: Actually Mary Jo will know. I just asked her the other day: there’s a mobile app for this on every major platform and Windows Phone; I’m sorry.

Leo: And Windows Phone!

Paul: I know, I know. There’s an underlying Microsoft health service which is Azure machine learning kind of thing that’s going to happen in the backend. Which is sort of like all those data center virtual machine things they built for Xbox Live. You just have to take our word for it, we have this thing. We’re never going to show it to you but it’s out there somewhere. Okay, but if I go to microsoft.com/health or microsoft.com/microsoft-health, where is the web version of this thing? Where is it? I found out, Mary Jo. It doesn’t exist.

Mary Jo: It doesn’t exist?

Leo: Wow.

Paul: There will be. It’s coming out next year. When people say that this thing was kind of rushed to market, I sort of say yea in some ways it kind of was. Not because Apple just announced something and Android’s been doing something and it had to get to market. This thing was coming down the pipeline for some time. But I do sort of think that the thing they ended up with, which they’re selling to real people, is just not quite ready. In some cases because it’s too much.

Mary Jo: Yea. It’s a true version 1.0. Like the old adage, they need three versions to get something right. Probably true in this case. This is real early stuff. I bet they’re making very limited quantities of this because they know it’s not for everybody. When I saw this, I had zero interest in this. I’m like it’s big, it’s complicated, I don’t have a Fitbit now. I don’t care what my heart rate is.

Paul: I don’t think you have enough room in your apartment for this, Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: I don’t. I mean if it tracked like pint curls, maybe I might be more interested. But like it doesn’t do anything that I really care about.

Leo: Pint curls? Is that an actual exercise?

Mary Jo: Lifting a pint, how many calories am I consuming?

Leo: Most of these bands are actually only good for running and walking. They’re just pedometers. So I do weights, I do rowing, and I do treadmill. And treadmill is the only thing it measures. And it doesn’t do that as good as walking.

Paul: Having been wearing these things for years, I’ve noticed a progression. The Nike Fuel band starting out only really measured your foot stride. And it was good for walking and running. If you got on an elliptical trainer, you might as well have eaten a piece of pizza as far as this thing is concerned. It didn’t have any understanding.

Leo: I was putting it on my ankle.

Paul: Yea, it’s very frustrating. That’s why some people make little gadgets that you put in your pocket or your shoe. That’s why. But as they get more sophisticated, newer versions of the Fuel band-which maybe that’s gone away-Fitbit certainly handles those situations better. Then you have the thing where maybe I’m going to ride my bike around the neighborhood. You kind of need a GPS-like thing or some combination of sensors to get an accurate understanding of that. And frankly what you really need is to say hey, I’m doing this exercise.

Leo: Well you can do that on a lot of things.

Paul: Right.

Leo: Microsoft Health will let you do that, enter an exercise.

Paul: With a Fitbit you can say I just rode a bike for 30 minutes at some leisurely speed and it will say sort of this many.

Leo: Yea, but why am I wearing a band then?

Paul: Thank you. That’s my point.

Leo: Because I can do that without the band.

Paul: Let me get this straight. This thing has more sensors on it than imperial probe drive from the Empire Strikes Back and you can’t tell that I’m asleep? Seriously?

Mary Jo: Yea. And you know it also doesn’t have some things that you kind of would think it would. Like music, the ability to have music on there. If you’re using it when you’re running, wouldn’t you want music?

Paul: It has no memory at all. It’s some megabytes of storage. It’s like nothing on here. Which by the way might be a problem for apps down the road, too.

Leo: Can I say a couple of good things about it? $200. Given…

Paul: Truly cross-platform.

Leo: Cross-platform. A lot of these others are not.

Paul: If you get an Apple watch, you’re in the Apple ecosystem. If you get an Android wear device, you’re in the Android.

Leo: Samsung, you’re in the Samsung.

Paul: This thing does not care what you have.

Leo: Two-day battery life. Better battery life than most.

Paul: The battery life sucks. It’s terrible and not two days. Two days, it’s not. And it’s bitten me because it has now twice died on me when I went to sleep which I didn’t appreciate. So I didn’t get an accurate sleep reading. And the other day I was using it, yesterday or the day before, and it really buzzed and I looked down. And it was like oh, there’s no more battery life. You need to charge me now. And it kind of craps out on you like that… I’m used to Fitbit so my Fitbit goes 10 days easily. They say 7-10. This is like one and a half. I don’t know.

Mary Jo: Version 1.0, Paul.

Paul: I know. I could do with less on the screen and more in the battery.

Mary Jo: Yea. We should talk a little bit about what’s inside. Because that’s kind of interesting, too. So we know the processor is an Arm Cortex M4 microcontroller. But we don’t really know what the operating system is. When I asked them, they said there is no operating system. It’s only firmware. And it’s called the Microsoft Wearable Architecture. Whatever that is. We’ve never heard of that before. We don’t know if it has a Windows 10 core or any part of Windows 10 or not. They won’t answer that. They just said there’s going to be an SDK coming sometime next year for it. So people can write apps for it. But we don’t know if that means apps for the phone or apps for the device. They aren’t really saying. We don’t know if it’s dot-net micro-framework and if it’s going to be moved over to this platform. Or if it’s going to be Windows-embedded or embedded compact. We just don’t know a lot of how this fits in with the rest of the ecosystem right now.

Leo: You said the Xbox team designed it. But did they do the guts?

Paul: We probably don’t know.

Mary Jo: Not sure. The Xbox team, the hardware part of it is now part of the Microsoft devices team. That’s where Surface is, Xbox, anything they make that’s hardware. It’s all sitting there.

Leo: So they would’ve made this. This must’ve been in development for a year, right?

Mary Jo: It was.

Paul: If not, years.

Mary Jo: And the company changed over time what it was going to look like and what kind of services it can connect to. If you look at what services it’s connecting to in the backend, a lot of these didn’t even exist just a few months ago. I mean there’s things like… I asked them for a whole list: Azure document DB which is a no-sequel database. That didn’t even exist until a couple months ago. So it connects to all this stuff.

Leo: It supports that?

Mary Jo: Yea.

Leo: That’s interesting.

Mary Jo: Yep, Azure, Surface…

Paul: It’s truly impressive. I mean it’s overkill. It’s like getting a gaming PC. It’s like I need a new laptop and then you get like a $7000 gaming laptop with red-lit keys. And it’s like okay so you’re going to read Facebook and email your mother. Why did you get this thing? It’s a little much, you know. It’s impressive though. It’s legitimately impressive.

Leo: The woman doesn’t seem impressed though.

Paul: Well she’s probably using an iPad behind that Surface.

Mary Jo: She is. She’s using an iPad.

Leo: Let me just ask Siri, do you look hot in that watch?

Paul: Who’s the fairest one of all, Siri?

Leo: Some people, maybe women wear it with the screen inside so you can do this kind of funny thing. How did you wear it?

Paul: It’s funny as we were talking I just switched it over again. I keep trying both ways. I actually prefer the thing on the outside although it’s awkward. If you look at my wrist right now, you can see…

Leo: Oh so you are wearing it on the inside?

Paul: Right now I am.

Leo: Now you see the band and the clasp.

Paul: It’s just so awkward. And in this position…

Leo: There used to be guys who were always a little strange who would wear their wristwatch like that. Actually that is easier. It’s just weird.

Paul: It just feels weird to me.

Mary Jo: Is it scratching a lot? I’ve read people saying it’s scratchy.

Paul: Have you ever heard the term scratch-tastic?

Leo: No.

Mary Jo: I have now.

Leo: What is scratch-tastic?

Paul: It scratches easy. The easiest scratched product I ever owned was an iPod Nano.

Leo: Remember those? They had the plastic screen.

Paul: And I had it sent to me at a hotel in L.A. I was there for a Microsoft event or whatever it was. And I put it down on the couch or whatever, took my camera out, took a picture of it, then flipped it over and the back was scratched. Just from touching the couch. And I was like oh Apple!

Leo: That was an early antenna gate. They denied it and then they said you got us.

Paul: They scratch pretty easily.

Leo: Okay, so there you have it.

Mary Jo: I’ll wait for version 3.0.

Leo: And again I don’t think this is particularly Microsoft’s fault. All of these watches leave something to be desired and it’s still the early days.

Paul: The important part here actually though and maybe we should have focused on this a little more is the Microsoft Health Service on the backend. I really think this is the important thing. This is just one of many devices that Microsoft and other companies release that interact with Microsoft Health. And it’s that machine learning piece. And if you think about multiple devices even, whether you move from one device to another or even have multiple devices over the course of a day or week, whatever reason that different things can feed into it. I could imagine a situation we went to a gym and the machines were hooked up to Microsoft Health. And with your fingerprint you log into your account and you do your exercise.

Leo: That’s how it should be.

Paul: And it goes up to the cloud. I really think the big deal is the backend. And that’s the area where Microsoft arguably, I think, has the biggest lead. And the biggest chance to make a difference.

Leo: Did yours have trouble with daylight savings time? The end of daylight savings time?

Paul: Leo, how did I describe this in the notes? An incredible and inexcusably rookie mistake.

Leo: Oh, dear. What happened? Did it not recognize it?

Paul: This is what happened when the Zune came out, remember? I think that comparison is probably out. No, I love the Zune but I mean the Zune was what it was.

Leo: So what happened? Did it just not switch?

Paul: Yea it didn’t make the switch. And this by the way I have this problem with Fitbit. It’s not that they don’t handle daylight savings but if you do a time zone change on a Fitbit, you can lose data.

Leo: Oh.

Paul: I’ve had that happen. In fact when I went to and from Spain, I did that. In fact it must have been to Spain because when I got back from Spain I didn’t change it for a while because I didn’t want to lose any data. Just six hours of time change it was lost.

Leo: Does it lose just that six hours or everything?

Paul: Whatever wasn’t synced.

Leo: Got it. So sync before you update your time.

Paul: Yea. So when this happened I read this was happening and I just decided not to touch it and let it do its thing. It doesn’t matter. It was brand new anyway so the device came out on Friday. Daylight savings time was Sunday night, or I guess Saturday night. Who cares? You lost your first day of data or something if you did. Big deal. It’s just emblematic I think of the rush to market approach here.

Leo: Ooh, can you imagine…

Paul: Really daylight savings… you mean February has 29 days some years. Dammit! How did we not know that?!

Leo: Ooh, we forgot that!

Paul: It’s like really? Really?

Leo: Okay. Well, you know everybody has to do their watch. I think you’re probably going to hear the same kinds of things with the Apple watch. Although Apple has the benefit of watching everybody else screw up before theirs comes out. So did Microsoft I guess.

Paul: Knowing Apple though, what they tend to do is go after a limited field of features and do them right.

Leo: It doesn’t feel like they’re doing that this time.

Paul: Okay. I haven’t seen it yet. I’m just saying in general. We’ll see. People as I was criticizing the Microsoft band on Twitter, people were saying yea but the Apple watch doesn’t do blah, blah, blah. I’m like listen I’m happy to criticize that in January or whenever it comes out. Today I have this and this is the problem today.

Leo: Well it won’t have GPS. In fact that is I think a really… there’s only one other watch. One of the Samsungs has built-in GPS. That’s rare. Because that’s a battery killer.

Paul: Yea, I mean I think a lot of companies who are making bands are probably relying on you… if you’re at a GPS-style event like a run or a bike ride…

Leo: Even if you have one of those runner watches.

Paul: Or maybe you bring your phone.

Leo: Bring your phone, yea. Alright, let’s take a break. More with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. We’re going to talk about Office, Surface, Phone, Xbox. I’ve got to find out how Paul’s been doing in the new cod. Paul will do his little cod piece a little later on.

Paul: There’s no dogs.

Leo: There’s no dog but there is Kevin Spacey. I think the same thing! Shame on you, Mary Jo! Francis Underwood is no dog.

Paul: Except he orders you around.

Leo: That’s right!

Paul: It’s not the other way around.

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Mary Jo: That’s correct.

Leo: That makes sense. If you use it at work on a PC, you should look same on your Mac at home. But you can’t really expect them to do something completely different.

Paul: I linked to the wrong story on this one, so it looks like it’s my Microsoft band story. I just wanted to assure Mary Jo that I did not in fact link to my Microsoft band story on every story we’re going to cover today.

Leo: That’s all we care about!

Mary Jo: I was like wait, we’re going to talk more about Microsoft band?

Leo: More band talk! It’s all about the band!

Paul: Sorry about that. I meant to link to Mary Jo’s article.

Leo: Do we have confirmation on the story you broke last week about infinite OneDrive space is available to all subscribers to Office? Is that true?

Paul: Yea.

Leo: And that’s rolled out now? Or it’s rolling out?

Paul: It’s rolling out. Some people including myself have seen 10 terabytes.

Leo: Oh, that’s close to infinite.

Paul: Just to get you to kind of prime the pump. But yea, it’s coming.

Mary Jo: And it’s funny the people that are getting 10 terabytes I see them saying hey wait, I only got 10 terabytes. I’m like really?!

Paul: Yea, what the hell? Ten terabytes is not unlimited.

Leo: Oh man! I just want to point out that it’s not infinite. Although it is effectively infinite.

Mary Jo: I think I’ve used 0.00001 of my 10 terabytes of storage.

Leo: I should try this just to see what I got here.

Mary Jo: Yea, you should see. It’s not showing up as 10 for everybody. But some people are sending us screenshots.

Leo: Somebody in the chat room said yea I got 10.

Paul: Yea, I got 10.

Leo: Where would I see that? How would I see that?

Mary Jo: That’s for business and home. That’s for all of the Office plans.

Leo: That’s really sweet. I’m going to onedrive.live.com. It’s churning, churning, churning. Churning, churning. Get more storage. They still have a get more storage button. Should probably not push that button. You don’t need to. I think that’s a big selling point. I love that. I turned it on on all my phones and everything. Yea, 10 terabytes. Yay! Woo-hoo! I like that! Yea, that’s infinite.

Mary Jo: Yea, pretty infinite.

Leo: Pretty good. I’ll take it. So what else? What else can we talk about? Oh, Dropbox, that’s what’s weird. Here they are touting infinite OneDrive and they do a deal with Dropbox. Huh? I guess they’re saying that it’s fine. However you want to use us, just use us.

Mary Jo: You know Paul and I were talking back and forth when they announced it. You have to remember, what’s the cash cow they’re trying to push? Office, not OneDrive, right? And so they’ll do whatever they have to do for Office. They made a big point of saying there’s 35 billion Office documents saved in Dropbox right now. So why not make it easy for people wherever they want to use Office to get to documents in and out. And save them how they want. Share them how they want. So that’s what this is about. It’s about they want to make it easy for you as an Office user whether you’re on iOS or Android or Windows, Windows Phone. Because Dropbox as part of this agreement also agreed to develop apps for Windows Phone and Windows. So that was a good tradeoff for Microsoft. So yea, it’s not like oh wow they just killed OneDrive. It’s wow they just gave you another reason to use Office. That’s how I looked at it.

Leo: Right. And we mentioned this last week. Dropbox is only really at this point, its reason to exist is because so many app developers integrate into it. So having access to that is one more great thing about Office frankly. It should have access to that.

Paul: It doesn’t negate any of the great stuff about OneDrive that’s going on. And from Microsoft’s perspective they’ve just offered unlimited storage to everybody. So if people don’t use that, it doesn’t hurt them. It’s fine.

Leo: Awesome. Alright. You’ve explained it. I feel better. I’m now putting OneDrive on my new phone. I have a new phone every three minutes now. Thanks to the rapid evolution of the internet. So I put it on my Note 4 and now I’m putting it on my Droid turbo. What it’s like pumping terabytes of data into OneDrive? Are you doing that, Paul?

Paul: Yea, I’m doing it right now. That’s why this is going so slow. I’m kidding! Actually you don’t have to worry about that because the upload speed is so slow. It would never impact the podcast.

Leo: We talk about that all the time because Carbonite’s a sponsor. People say all the time, I have terabytes of data and it’s taking a while. Yea, it might take a year or two with that amount of data.

Paul: Well I’ve been trying different things. Videos tend to be large files. I’ve tried photos and now I’m on to documents. And it’s like Star Trek movies, Leo. Every experience has been good and then the next one is terrible. It’s funny; it seems to me that it has slowed down over time. Which suggests that someone has caught on to the fact that I am doing this.

Leo: By the way it could be your ISP. We don’t know who it is.

Paul: I’ve been measuring my upload speed and it’s consistently what I should be getting when I measure it with net speed tests. Which makes me wonder if they’re not specifically throttling this kind of traffic. Which sounds like that’s something too sophisticated for Comcast.

Leo: No, no, no. I beg to differ my friend.

Paul: Anyway, it’s taking a while. I’m going to write about the documents stuff soon. It’s taking a while to write about because it’s taking a while to upload. You run into weird issues that’s familiar to me from home server and Windows Server activities here at home. Like long pass, which can be a huge problem. There’s all kinds of little issues with it. The truth is for most normal people who don’t have the crazy amounts of data that I do, this is going to work fine. For most people.

Leo: Right.

Paul: But yea it’s going to take me a while. And I’m not ever really replacing everything I do here at home. I think of this as more augmenting.

Leo: I think you should think of this as going forward rather than say hey everything I’ve got now…

Paul: The truth is going forward… exactly two years ago, I started using OneDrive for my day-to-day data. So I now have two years’ worth of data that’s all in OneDrive already. I’m going back now and going over my archival data or whatever you want to call it. And there is a lot of it.

Leo: Oh you’ve been like scanning in your paper photos.

Paul: Oh yea. I’ve got crazy amounts of stuff.

Leo: That’s great though.

Paul: Leo, this is a career. This is like not something you do on the side. It’s like it really requires attention.

Leo: So you’re seeing this as, in fact we talked about this yesterday on Security Now; somebody asked on one of the email questions to Steve: What’s the best form of long-term storage? And cloud probably is if it’s with a big company like Microsoft. Because they’re going to continue to…

Paul: Yes. You may know the name of this. Amazon has a service that’s essentially…

Leo: Glacier.

Paul: Thank you. Which I think of as cold storage which makes sense with the name. The theory being we’ll hold it, it will be safe. You won’t be able to get to it in a flash. The point is it’s there if you need it. I believe the way Amazon Glacier works is you can contact them and they’ll send you a hard drive or something if you really need it.

Leo: It is apparently offline. So like they probably have, remember in the old days the tapes backups you’d have?

Paul: Somebody taking a reel off of something…

Leo: It’s like Indiana Jones. It’s a long warehouse somewhere. They say hey it’s cheap as long as you don’t need it right away.

Paul: I think that fundamentally backup strategy hasn’t changed in the sense that you still want multiple versions. You need redundancy. And you need geographically separation. Obviously the cloud gives you that. It’s not like I’m going to get all my photos copied up from my server to OneDrive and then I’m going to erase the hard drive here at home. I need to still kind of work through how that works. Because I can’t just have one copy of it.

Leo: And you shouldn’t. The prudent thing would be to take advantage of this. And other services. Have them on every service.

Paul: Going forward, that’s easy by the way. I think you just mentioned this. On your phone, you turn on OneDrive but you retain the Google one. And so now it’s shooting out to two different places. And that works really well for the new stuff. The question is the old stuff. And so I have too much of it. But I don’t think many people do. So you could use obviously Google Drive, you could use Flickr or Amazon Photos for your photos. There’s all kinds of choices. The important thing is at least two. Don’t have a single copy anywhere no matter how trustworthy those people are.

Leo: I’m going to probably, now that I think about it, use this as a place to put music. And just do it over a long period of time, right? I already have it on Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Paul: I didn’t look at the number for the music. But I have some tens of, I shouldn’t say, some amount of music. This is music I’ve ripped from CDs that I literally still have in my cellar. It’s music that I’ve purchased from services and downloaded. And now I don’t consume music that way. I don’t ever do anything with that music. I happen to use Xbox Music with the Xbox music pass. But I don’t actually need this. Technically I could probably just delete all of it. It doesn’t really matter. But I don’t mind putting it in cold storage.

Leo: Technically it says I can’t put music in OneDrive? No.

Paul: No you can.

Mary Jo: There’s also rumors that Microsoft is going to make the music locker available in OneDrive, right?

Paul: Yea but depending on how you… yes. And by the way two years ago they promised that exact feature. I have some music on OneDrive right now and it’s music I know is not in Xbox Music. Beatles music or some soundtracks that just aren’t there whatever it might be. On a PC or a Windows tablet, I can mark that stuff for offline use. And the Xbox Music app will see it. It just works. They don’t have music matching so I can’t get into my devices. But if they ever enable that, that will solve that problem.

Leo: So he’s saying well the terms of service say you can’t put copyrighted material on there. But I think…

Paul: Hmm. I have a ton of copyrighted material on there, Leo.

Leo: Guess what. Everything you do is copyrighted by you. If you put your articles up there, that’s copyrighted material. I don’t think that, I don’t know what that is. I think that’s just so that if you start sharing it from there, you’re going to get in trouble.

Paul: There’s a lot that has to improve here. Last week when we talked about some of this stuff that Dropbox does that OneDrive doesn’t. If you use OneDrive for Business, you know that service especially the PC client or any client isn’t particularly sophisticated. It’s not as good as the OneDrive consumer client. And it makes it less viable for this kind of thing that I’m doing. Not that I would pour my music collection into OneDrive for Business. I wouldn’t right now anyway because the way it works is terrible. I can’t arbitrarily tell it I want some offline and some online. And that has to change. But it’s Microsoft. And the Office guys are on the ball. And I think all this stuff is going to happen over the next year.

Leo: This is good. Really this is what you want, which is a variety of archival storage choices. And I think Microsoft making this free with, by the way it’s with an Office 365 subscription. And not all of them, but some Office 365 subscriptions, Microsoft’s doing that…

Paul: Actually it’s pretty much all of them.

Mary Jo: I think it’s all of them, right?

Leo: Business too?

Mary Jo: Yea, the business ones too.

Paul: Yea.

Leo: Okay, cool.

Mary Jo: Surprisingly, all of them.

Leo: Yea, well it just shows you hard drive space is cheap. It ain’t expensive anymore. Let’s talk about Surface Pro 3. Now seen on TV from coast to coast on CNN.

Paul: iPads everywhere.

Leo: It’s too bad because you watch the NFL which I do every week a lot. Sunday, Monday, Thursday. And the big ads for Surface is there. And you see the Surface everywhere. But when the athletes use it they’re in these giant rubber holders. There could be anything in there. It could be them going, hey I look good.

Paul: Rest assured, those are in fact Surfaces.

Leo: Well I’m sure they are. It’s a shame.

Mary Jo: It makes it harder to use it as a true product placement kind of thing.

Leo: I’m sure Microsoft knew that.

Mary Jo: You can’t put a Surface or an iPad out on the football field.

Paul: They would be hitting each other with these things. I’ll bend that iPhone, on your head!

Leo: Oh those guys could really bend it. So anyway, the government now or soon will be able to buy these for… these are like you have to go through a process to get approval from the government accounting office before you can sell this to the Feds.

Mary Jo: They have this thing called the GSA schedule: general service of administration. Something has to be on the schedule to be able to buy it from an approved government RFP. But Microsoft says they have found one of the biggest potential audiences for Surface Pro 3 are government users. So they said hey, let’s make it easier for them to buy it. The best way to do that is to get the GSA approval. So it’s now going to be on the schedule, the Surface Pro 3.

Leo: Good.

Mary Jo: Yes, that’s good. It’s nice. I think I saw Paul tweet something that’s worth pointing out. I think it was you, Paul that said that. It seems like all the news lately is about Surface Pro 3. Whenever you hear Surface news, it’s about the Pro 3. You don’t hear them talking about the arm-based Surfaces at all anymore.

Leo: You mean Windows R something?

Mary Jo: It was originally called Surface RT. But then they just started calling it the Surface. And the latest version of that is Surface 2.

Leo: Come on, RT is dead.

Mary Jo: We’ve heard nothing. Well, I don’t know. It’s dead for now.

Leo: It’s dead as a door nail.

Mary Jo: At least until next year. Because they need that version of Windows 10 that is going to run on both arm-based tablets and phones. They need that. I don’t think they’re going to come out with another arm-based Surface. At least until that and maybe not even after that point. I’ve heard some people say no more arm-based Surface until only going forward. But yea, that’s something…

Paul: I think an adult has to stand up there and say this is enough. We’ve gotten to the point where you can’t justify it anymore. Because everything that made Windows RT or that platform special or whatever, is possible on Intel. So why divide your… well actually now that I think, except for phone of course.

Mary Jo: Yea, and also I think you could still say that Intel-based Windows implementations have Windows rot over time. And supposedly the arm-based ones do not. And there was also some sandboxing maturities.

Paul: I’m sorry. I was thinking more along the lines of tablets. Windows Phone or for phone devices, it makes sense to have this closed platform. Even on a tablet, a 10-inch tablet that’s two gigs of RAM and a small amount of storage, you might just want to run iTunes. That might be the one thing that puts it over the top. I would get this tablet if I could just run iTunes or whatever the app may be. And you can’t do that on Windows RT and that’s too bad.

Mary Jo: So yea it will be interesting. It’ll be interesting to see if they make anymore. If Microsoft makes anymore arm-based tablets going forward. I don’t know if they will or not.

Leo: But they’ll make Windows Phone tablets.

Mary Jo: Well they’ll make Intel-based tablets.

Paul: No he said Windows Phone.

Mary Jo: I don’t know if they’ll make those.

Leo: You don’t think they’ll make those?

Mary Jo: I mean they make fablets, right?

Leo: Yea, you’ve got the 1520.

Mary Jo: I don’t know if they’ll go bigger than that. But I bet some of their OEMs will. I don’t know if they will.

Leo: Reluctant WP guy says Lumia 1530 with a Surface pen. Like a seven-inch Surface pen.

Mary Jo: I know a lot of people wanted that. That’s the Surface Mini. That’s what that was going to be.

Leo: Then really RT is dead. Who needs RT?

Mary Jo: It will be interesting to see if any of the OEMs make a Windows Phone tablet or something with an Arm processor that is actually a tablet as opposed to a phone.

Leo: Can you still as an OEM get RT?

Mary Jo: I think you can.

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: I don’t think they took it off the market or anything.

Leo: Just nobody wants it.

Paul: All the companies that made V1-arm tablets did not come back with V2. They all walked away from it.

Leo: The market has spoken. That’s probably because nobody bought it.

Paul: I remember the Lenovo Yoga, the first-gen, the small one, the 11-inch version; my reaction to this is wow this is beautiful. It’s too bad you couldn’t get an Intel version of this. Six months later you could and this one went away.

Leo: There you go. Alright, Audible and then we’ll continue on. We’re going to get to Paul’s side of the fence. His side of the aisle with Windows Phone and Xbox.

Paul: Huh?

Leo: The groom’s side. First a word from, well this is Paul’s too, isn’t it? Audible.com. A great place; I’ve been listening to a really great Audible book called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I highly recommend it. It starts off as a normal novel. It’s one of those novels where the first chapter is all about this person and the second chapter is about a seemingly unrelated person. And the third chapter is another seemingly unrelated, and their stories then intertwine and it’s wonderful because it’s really about big brother, corporate big brother. Google-style company that’s partnering with other Google-style companies to collect all of your personal data and sell it back to you. And it’s just great. I hope I haven’t spoiled it. I don’t think I have. It’s easy to remember, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot or WTF. Anyway, this is something you can get for free along with a lot of other books. This is the David Schaffer version. Apparently there are other books with the same name. Let’s not forget Mark Sinovich, our favorite Azure guy who’s got three really good, very sophisticated technological thrillers: Zero Day, Rogue Code. They’re the Jeff Akin novels. I can’t remember what the other one is. Probably if I go there I’ll see the other ones. Is it Trojan Horse? Yes. Here’s an interesting one. It looks like William Gibson has a new novel. I’m a big fan of the man who created Neuromancer, one of my favorite books. It looks like Gibson’s got a new one: the Peripheral. Alright.

Paul: This is usually the part of the conversation where I say you’re a peripheral.

Leo: You’re a peripheral, no you’re a peripheral! We interviewed; this is a really good book: Hieroglyph. We interviewed Larry Krause on Triangulation about this. These are science fiction books with a positive look at the future. It’s called Hieroglyph and it’s some of the best people: Elizabeth Beard, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson. Anyway, short stories maybe if you’ve never used Audible a good way to start. Then you can listen in one chunk at a time. I don’t know. You know what you should do? Just pick the book that you really want to listen to. The Innovators, the new Walter Isaacson book. Many of our hosts are listening to this and say it’s great. Here’s the deal; if you go to audible.com/windows, you can get one of these books for free. Wouldn’t that be nice? You’ll be signing up for the gold account, that’s a book a month. This is such a good book; I would highly recommend this. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. This is a full-cast production. So all the Norse Gods and different Gods come to life in this in such a great way. Love this book! What are you listening to now, Paul?

Paul: So they had a sale for Halloween, like horror books for $6.99. So I bought like 10 of them. Lately the novelization of Psycho which of course is the basis for the movie is shocking for when it came out in the 1950’s. It was actually an amazing story. And it’s interesting to me how it differs from the movie in some ways, the basic plot and the characters are basically the same. Hitchcock is given a lot of credit for kind of inventing the genre or whatever. The truth is it’s all in the book. It’s actually fairly amazing. But I got a bunch of Stephen King on sale. And right before I did this I have been listening to the Stephen King, I think it’s pronounced the Lisey Story. It’s yet another Stephen King book about a writer. He seems to write a lot of books about writers. Anyway, Robert Bloch, Psycho, the reading is really good. It’s not super long which is a big thing for me these days. It’s a good one.

Leo: You know what I got is a dramatization. I think I mentioned this before, Dracula.

Paul: I have that one too. That’s fantastic. Tim Curry?

Leo: Yea. Alan Cuming. People don’t know because they all know the movie and so forth, the movies. But Dracula was really a series of letters. The book, the original Bram Stoker novel was written in 1897. It was a series of letters and it’s chilling when it’s done right. And they really did it nice. Anyway, good luck finding a book. 150,000 titles, it’s just, that’s the challenge. There’s so much good stuff. But if you have a favorite author, I would recommend you pick something that you’re really going to enjoy. That will give you a sense of how great it is listening to it in the car, in the gym. It completely changes your relationship to working out. Here’s the new Stephen King coming out in a few days: Revival. 11/11 that comes out. A small New England town, half a century ago, a new minister transforms…

Paul: I’m just glad he’s finally writing about a small New England town.

Leo: Probably there’s a writer in there somewhere. This is the hardest thing to choose as your first book. But you know what? You have a lifetime ahead of you of great reading. Audible.com/windows. First book is free. Pay nothing in the first 30 days. That book is yours to keep but I think you’re going to love it. Oh, this sounds interesting. I have to see if they have this on Audible. It’s called Wish. I’m now getting chat room suggestions. I wonder if this is on Audible. It’s the making of Princess Bride. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Paul: Only if it’s read by the guy. What’s that guy’s name?

Leo: William Shawn.

Paul: I was thinking of all the guys that were in it.

Leo: You could certainly get the original Princess Bride on Audible, that’s for sure. Here it is. As You Wish. Inconceivable tales from the making of the…

Paul: Yea, there you go. Exactly.

Leo: Who’s Kerry Owens?

Paul: He’s the main character.

Leo: Oh.

Paul: In fact, that’s our…

The count of that sadness is the comradery of being back with those who are here tonight and who stood alongside me so many years ago. Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Wallace Shawn, Chris…

Paul: Yea it’s basically the whole cast that’s left.

Leo: Oh!

Paul: If I’m wrong and I’m never wrong…

Leo: I’m getting this book! That’s awesome!

Paul: There are so many great lines in this book. Have fun storming the castle.

Leo: Adding it to my card. Yay. Oh my goodness! I didn’t know that existed! The dread pirate robbers.

Paul: Yea, it’s just really good.

Leo: Audible.com/windows. See this is what happens when you’re an Audible subscriber. You get together with others and it’s like have you listened to… whoa! Sorry, Mary Jo. Didn’t mean to leave you out.

Mary Jo: I wonder if they have a book I’m reading.

Leo: What are you reading?

Mary Jo: Reading the Bone Clock’s David Mitchell.

Leo: I read and listened to the Gold Finch which we had both…

Mary Jo: I loved that one too. That was great.

Leo: They do have the Bone Clock. What’s this about?

Mary Jo: It sounds a lot like your WTF book. Inter-leaved plots with characters carrying over between the different chapters. Really, really good.

Leo: Psychic phenomenon. Oh and this is another dramatization. They’ve got several readers. So that’s kind of neat when they do that. It really comes to life. I bet the voices in their head are different voices. Alright, enough of that. Moving on. Windows Phone. I put the Hear app by the way on my Note 4. Awesome download of the United States. Fabulous. Now I can’t find it anymore.

Paul: You can’t find the app?

Leo: No. Maybe they renamed it.

Mary Jo: I bet it got renamed. Because they were renaming everything that was Nokia to Lumia.

Leo: I was searching for Nokia. Let me search for Lumia.

Paul: No but those wouldn’t be among those.

Mary Jo: Oh, Here would though, right?

Leo: Right because that’s still Nokia.

Paul: That’s still Nokia. It should be under H.

Leo: Here Maps for Android. Would that be it?

Mary Jo: That could be it.

Leo: But then I do that search.

Paul: Where are you doing this?

Leo: On Android Store. Do I have to go somewhere else? Oh I got it from Samsung last time.

Paul: Well, no it’s broadly available.

Leo: It’s not on the Google Play store.

Paul: It’s broadly available but I think you have to go to Here Maps online to get it.

Leo: I get it, okay. So they’re getting rid of the Nokia name even in software now.

Paul: Yea, but so parts of Nokia that went to Microsoft are being rebranded. So the apps are being rebranded to Lumia. And so they basically completed that process this week. So I think the Lumia camera app was the last one to cross over to the other side as we say.

Leo: Oh Popeye.

Paul: So if you use a Lumia then you know if you go to the Apps list, the action used to be in the N. In the N section.

Leo: Now it’s in the L.

Paul: Nokia, Nokia, Nokia. And now it’s all Lumia.

Leo:  That just happens in the update.

Paul:  Yep.

Leo:  And then the phones are still not yet but will eminently be renamed.

Paul:  Well yeah, I don't think they are going to rename the existing phones.

Leo:  Let me reach out to my 1520 and scratch off the Nokia.  Here would you put this sticker on it?

Paul:  If someone has a 3D printer.

Leo:  We've got a new case for you.

Paul:  Just line it up exactly right because if you don't...

Leo:  Are they even going to put the Microsoft logo on it?

Paul:  Yeah.

Leo:  They are?

Mary Jo:  Lumia is.  Yeah, so no more Windows Phone devices, right?  That's just going to be Lumia from Microsoft.  But if you are a third party and you are makings Windows Phones it's going to be capital Windows small phone because Windows Phone isn't a thing anymore like it has been.  Instead you are making Windows phones because that wasn't confusing enough.

Paul:  I'm editing your beer pick and laughing to myself.

Leo:  Do not.

Mary Jo:  Do not edit my beer pic.

Leo:  Oh goodness.  Okay, it's misspelled.  Don't fix it.  But delicious is misspelled thank you.

Mary Jo:  Oh, delicious is misspelled?

Leo:  That's what Paul has done.

Paul:  I would be so terrible at sneaking up on anyone because I would just be laughing the whole time.

Leo:  Paul is not very good at the...alright.

Mary Jo:  Keeping a secret?

Leo:  Keeping a secret.  What is that in Call of Duty when you sneak up behind somebody and whack them in the head?

Paul:  I usually knife them.

Leo:  Knife them.  Love that.  Sorry, that's bloodthirsty.  That's terrible.

Paul:  That's one of the good things about the new game; they got the knifing thing right.  If you play Call of Duty you know what I'm talking about.  The knife mechanics get screwed up.

Leo:  Right, it looks weird.

Paul:  It doesn't work right.  The timing was wrong.  They got that right.

Leo:  They call that the Thurrott maneuver.  

Paul:  Yeah, they got Thurrottled from behind.  And then you hear me giggling.  It's exactly like real life.

Leo:  I think we have a show title.  Lumia 830 will be overpriced says this note.

Paul:  So there are two new Lumia devices that are coming out sometime soon.  One of them is the Lumia 830 and the other is the 730 or 735 depending on which market you are in.  The 830 is going to be on AT&T but if you want to buy it out of pocket sans contract it's going to be $450 which is a little tough.

Mary Jo:  Dumb, dumb.

Paul:  What did you say?

Leo:  Dumb she said.

Paul:  Oh, okay.

Leo:  Really, I mean look, I just paid $650 for my Droid Turbo.

Paul:  Yeah, but right.  I guess if you were to look at the Lumia lineup and you started to compare the lineup, this thing is right in the middle between a $129 Lumia 635 and a $500 Lumia Icon or 1525.  So the middle of that price range is not $450, its $300 or $315.  It's too expensive for what it is.  It's too bad, because it positions a really affordable flagship but really it's just a mid-level phone.   It's fine; there is nothing wrong with mid-level phones.  In fact the 735 is wonderful, I'm using it every single day right now.  This is the phone that I prefer to use.  This is not a high end phone, it's wonderful.  The 830 is a great phone, it's just not at that price.  It's too bad.  However, if you do buy it from AT&T at least at the beginning...

Leo:  Wait a minute, you are using the 735?

Paul:  Yeah.

Leo:  The smartphone made for selfies?  

Paul:  Yes.

Leo:  That's your preferred phone?

Paul:  Yep.

Mary Jo:  It is?

Paul:  So it's even weirder that you think because I actually think the phones that make that phone special have nothing to do with the selfie camera.  In fact, I don't think the selfie camera is all that good oddly enough.  The rear camera is...

Mary Jo:  Cause selfies stink, right?  You don't need that.

Leo:  It's so funny because it's totally how they are pushing it is the selfie camera.

Paul:  I actually don't think the selfie camera is all that special.  The back is fantastic.  It's actually really nice.  The phone itself is wonderful and lightweight.  I hand it to people say tell me the first thing you think about when you pick this phone up.  They all say the same thing, oh my god, it's so light.  I'm like, I know.  

Leo:  So Paul is a 20 year old girl.  We've figured this out now.

Paul:  At heart.

Leo:  At heart.

Paul:  A Call of Duty playing 20 year old girl.  

Leo:  Okay, that's interesting.  You like it because it's small and light?

Paul:  I love it.

Leo:  And the camera is good?

Paul:  I think the camera is just as good on that phone as on the 830.

Leo:  It's still not out, right?

Paul:  That's the thing.  The problem is that we don't know what the price is on that one and I think we only know that Verizon is carrying it here in the United States.  They have already said that they are not going to ship it until early 2015 because you know that Verizon is right on the ball.

Leo:  This is using wireless charging.  I like that; it comes right on the dock.  

Paul:  That's nice.

Mary Jo:  Does it have Glance with them?

Paul:  No, this is the weird thing about the 735 versus the 830.  Each of them have plus and minuses so the 830 has Glance.  By the way, the other thing that you get with Glance that I really like is double tap to wake it up.  You can't do that on a 735.

Leo:  I love that.

Paul:  I love that because if you think about it if you phone is sitting there and it did something and you want to look at it, tapping the screen will bring up the pin, you tap the pin, and then away you go.  But to turn it on otherwise you pretty much have to pick it up.  That, I know, first world problems, but I mean, it's a different operation than just tapping the screen.  Tapping the screen is nice, it's a nice feature.

Leo:  I really like that.  So this is the 830, also not available.

Paul:  Well it's coming out this month.

Leo:  This month, okay.

Paul:  This month on AT&T.  I think the contract price is $99.  Obviously you can get it with the Next plans for various amounts of money per month, like 12 or 18 months.  Those are probably better deals than paying cash for it.  I hoped that you could buy this thing out of pocket and it would be a reasonable $350 or sub $350 price like you said on the Nexus 5, but it is not.  That's too bad.

Leo:  You know, looking at the specs, it's a 720p phone.  It shouldn't be an expensive phone.

Paul:  Here is what you want to compare it to.  What else can you buy for $450 dollars out of pocket, iPhone 5c?  I'm sorry, no offense Windows Phone fans, I with you on this one, but if you were to show those 2 phones to anybody they would chose the iPhone; they would chose the 5c.

Leo:  10MP camera, it's a Snapdragon 400, kind of an old processor at 1.2GH.  It's mid to low.

Paul:  So the performance on this thing is not awesome.  The 735 is the same thing, you kind of suffer through it.  Mary Jo will let you know about this with Windows Phones; when you are in the camera app and you want to look at other pictures you press that circular icon and on these two phones you wait a couple of seconds.  It's up first like it's going to do something and then eventually it appears.  It has that kind of leisurely performance.  That's what you get with that kind of processor which is common to those two phones.

Mary Jo:  That phone is not coming to Verizon, right, the 830?  

Paul:  That's the 830.

Leo:  Should Mary Jo replace her Icon with the 735?

Paul:  No, no, no, no.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, I don't think so.  I'm going to wait.  We should bring this up too, because I think Paul has heard the same thing as me.  I think we are both hearing no new flagship phones for the rest of the year on the Windows block.

Paul:  I am hearing nothing, which equates to that.  Usually you do hear something.

Leo:  By now you would have heard something.

Paul:  This is actually a big problem.  In fact I meant to write a story about this today.  Now what?  In other words, you are a Windows phone person, you really want the next Windows Phone, maybe you bought a 920 over two years ago and you are wondering what the heck.  Maybe you bought something newer than a 1520 that isn't bigger than the 1520.  They really don't have it.  They are not going after that part of the market right now.  I'm not saying that they won't but these mid-level devices are nice for what they are.  They don't satisfy the needs of the people who love the photography stuff that you get with the 1020, the 1520, the Icon, the 930, whatever.  It's a problem.  If the HTC One had a wonderful camera, even a slightly better camera, I think you could make a great case for that device.  I think it's the camera that does it for me.  I can't, I don't know, maybe they fixed it in software or something.  It's possible; it's just that I can't get excited about that.  By the way, that phone is coming to AT&T on Friday as well.  That started out on Verizon way back in, when did that launch, August?

Mary Jo:  Which one?  The Icon?

Paul:  The HTC.

Mary Jo:  Oh, the HTC.  That was August.

Paul:  Right, so it's coming to AT&T this week.  

Leo:  That's a nice phone.

Paul:  It's a beautiful phone.

Leo:  That's probably the one that I would recommend.  

Paul:  Except for the camera.  It depends on what...

Leo:  Really?

Paul:  For some people that's not important.  If that's not important than it's a beautiful phone.  

Mary Jo:  Maybe if you hadn't used another Lumia phone you wouldn't notice the camera as much, but once you use the Icon or the 1020 it's like you are really spoiled.

Paul:  Or any iPhone.  Or a lot of Android phones.  The Galaxy phones have good cameras.  Even the Nexus 5, which a year ago when it came out had a garbage camera, I don't know whether it was through software or the Google Camera App or whatever, that camera today is fantastic somehow.  That tells me that you can make improvements through software to a camera kind of like we did through the Hubble Telescope.  So there is hope for the HTC One I guess.  My fear for the HTC One is actually that phone has been around for a while and those complaints about the camera existed when that phone was on Android.  There are features on Android that you can do with the HTC One camera that you can't do with the Windows Phone camera.  

Mary Jo:  But otherwise that phone is great.  I think that was the only loaner phone that I ever had that I did not really want to send back but I made myself.

Leo:  The camera is that ultra-pixel 4mp and it does make sense with the Android software that they included with Softies and all of that.  You didn't get that on Windows?

Paul:  I don't remember that exact list of things that we didn't get.

Leo:  It had a lot of nice features.

Paul:  There was a lot of stuff that you could do on Android.

Leo:  You are right I guess.  You are spoiled by Lumia, that's the problem.

Paul:  It is a problem and it's a problem on a number of levels because you also get used to the slowness of the Lumia stuff.  So the high end Lumia cameras tend to be slow because the processor and the chip sets that are in those phones are fine for Windows Phone, they are fantastic, but the high end cameras usually stress that stuff out.  Even on these mid-level new phones you kind of put up with it.  You can't really click, click, click, click and go.  It's like click, 1, 2, 3, click, 1, 2, 3.

Leo:  Yeah, you want it to be faster than that.  

Paul:  Yeah, it's a little tough.  

Leo:  Okey dokey.  So Friday for the AT&T version of the M8, that's nice.

Paul:  By the way, as a flagship phone if you were to buy that one off of contract it would be $699.

Leo:  Yeah, but we are used to that.  That's how much these high end Android phones cost.

Paul:  You could buy 5 Lumia 635s at that price.  That would be a better deal right there.  

Leo:  The flagship phones are expensive.

Paul:  Yeah.

Leo:  I know because I buy a new one every week it feels like.  It's crazy, crazy, crazy. I was lucky that I got the, this is not for the show, but Google apparently now is going to put 5 more Nexus 6 phones on sale every Wednesday.

Paul:  By the way, I just looked at Twitter.  Daniel Rebino tells me that the Lumia 735 does have tap to wake and it's separate from Glance.  Maybe that's just something that I haven't enabled in settings.  I need to look at that.

Leo:  That is a really nice feature.  It's going to be in Lollipop too, on Android.  You get hooked on it.

Paul:  Yeah, it's one of those goofy things.  It's like TouchID in an iPhone.  Once you've used that typing in a pin is a pain in the ass.  It's weird how it makes it hard to go back.

Leo:  Xamarin is free for students.  That is good.  

Mary Jo:  How about that?  They just announced it today in fact.  So if you are a student and you want to build IOS or Android apps using C-Sharp they have a thing on their blog today "Apply Now and Visit the Student Page".  A lot of people that talk to me all the time about I would use Xamarin except it is so expensive, I can't afford it, and that's why I wish Microsoft bought them because I think they would make it cheaper or free.  Well Microsoft didn't buy them, it doesn't look like they are going to buy them, at least anytime soon.  

Leo:  How much is it?

Mary Jo:  Oh man, even for the lowest end its multiple thousands.

Paul:  It's $1300 a unit at least.  It's very expensive.

Mary Jo:  It's pricy, it's pricy.  

Leo:  If you are a development house it's not pricy.

Mary Jo:  Right, but if you are kind of a one man shop or whatever.

Paul:  Enthusiast developer who wants to write your first app.  

Leo:  That's way too much for an enthusiast.  But that's good, a student should get it for free.  That's good, it's smart.

Paul:  I think so.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, very good, yep.  So that's a big thing today, everybody is tweeting about that today.  Everybody who is anybody I should say.

Paul:  Let me qualify that.  Everyone who is everyone Leo.

Leo:  I'm tweeting about the Master Chief Collection of Halo.  That's what I'm tweeting about.  It's very exciting.  What is it now, it's 45gb plus you are going to get 20gb more on the update?  It's a huge update the day it comes out.  It's coming, right, when is it?  November 12, one week from today?  Mary Jo, Paul and I are taking the week off.

Mary Jo:  Alright, I will carry the show.  We will do an all Enterprise all the time kind of show.  

Leo:  We will get Father Robert in here for that.

Mary Jo:  We will add on all things Enterprise.

Leo:  So I bought it and I guess it's been downloading ever since the initial stuff, right Paul?   Before I could play it on the 12th I will have to do one more update.  One massive update.  

Paul:  Well, I think that you can start playing it.  I think that it will support that, you don't have to wait.  Especially if you are going to play single player, you are good to go.

Leo:  Did you do the Modern Warfare the day ahead version of Advanced?

Paul:  Yeah, yeah, so you know that every year I used to wake up my son and go to Best Buy at midnight.  This year I woke him up at midnight and we started playing.  He threw his Xbox out in the living room so that we could throw controllers at each other.  Yeah, we stayed up for a couple of hours.  It worked, on the screen it said at 12:01 ET come back and you can launch the game.  At 12:01 I launched it and nice.  It worked great.

Leo:  Mary Jo says to budget 45 minutes for this discussion.  

Mary Jo:  That was Paul, I said I'm going to go to Rattle while you guys are talking.

Paul:  Just think if Mary Jo was paying attention.  

Leo:  I bought, I'm confused, is it Advanced Warfare?

Paul:  Advanced Warfare is the new one. 

Leo:  Modern Warfare is the old one?

Paul:  Yeah, there was a series of three games with Modern Warfare, there was a series of two games so far and I think that there is going to be a third on Black Friday.

Leo:  Modern Warfare is the one that launched with Xbox One.  That's the one that I bought.  I played it and I like it.

Paul:  Actually that was Ghosts.

Leo:  Ghosts, okay.  I played it and I liked it, but it's too much for me.

Paul:  This is more, though, Leo.  Advanced Warfare is even more.

Leo:  It's in the future, right?  It's in the future?

Paul:  Yeah, it's like Titanfall with none of the shame of playing Titanfall.  I know that I'm going to hear it from people on that one.  In the sense that it has Titanfall like aspects where you can kind of jump high in the air and the vertical component.  I think that they did a good job with it.  I think that the biggest compliment that I can pay it is that as a Call of Duty player I have trouble playing other shooters because they feel so different.  This game is Call of Duty instantly.  There was no transition period, it just worked.  All of the layout and everything were exactly what I expect and the play mechanics are the same.  It's simple, I love it.

Leo:  One of the things that I love about Titanfall is running the walls and jumping.

Paul:  Yeah, so it has those aspects.

Leo:  I don't care about the Titans, I could do without the Titans.

Paul:  Yeah, I don't care about that personally.  If you don't like that stuff they have classic playlists, so it's basically the new versions of Call of Duty without the jumping in the air and stuff.  

Leo:  I'm telling you, I love Sunset Overdrive.  I know that it's not your game.

Paul:  I'm not making fun of it.

Leo:  It's so great.  It's funny.  Every time you die you come back in a different weird way.   It's really funny, and it's very fast moving.  It's fun.  You are doing a lot of riding the rails and skateboard style moves, bouncing on cars, boing, boing.  What else is there to say about this?  $50 off of every console version including bundles.  What is that?

Paul:  So this came up last week but it's in effect now.  Now through the end of the holidays if you buy an Xbox One, any version of the console, any bundle, you get $50 off the normal price.  That means that the base entry price for the console is $350 although with sales and things you can get it for even less than that.  I guess if I can drag Mary Jo kicking and screaming into the Xbox conversation I guess I'm curious because I've looked at many of the milestones over the past year, Titanfall was one thing, the Connect less Xbox for the $400 was one of them.  What's it going to take for the Xbox One to beat the PS4?  If they never beat the PS4 does that matter?  Are they going to be like we are number 2, we are number 2?

Leo:  Here is what it is going to take.  I'm going to show you right now.  You can't do this on a PlayStation 4.  That's Sunset Overdrive baby.  

Paul:  I like that the teddy bears both have bombs strapped to them.

Leo:  Those are actual weapons in the game.  It is such a great game.  I'm just saying, that's a Microsoft exclusive, right?  You can't play Sunset Overdrive on PlayStation 4.

Paul:  I have important beer news.

Leo:  Uh oh, beer news.  We need beer news sounder.  

Paul:  Our local brewery has just released my favorite beer, the newest version of it.

Leo:  Somebody is saying in the chatroom that it really isn't going to be Xbox One versus PlayStation because 4K is coming.  Not in the next 10 years it isn’t.  That was how long it took to get the Xbox One out.  I don't see a 4K console. 

Paul:  Like remember when the Xbox 360 shipped it was technically just 720p.  They were able to upgrade it to 1080p, which a lot of people at the were like yeah really, and they did.  So based on the performance that I see on the Xbox One I don't think that we are going to be seeing 4K anytime soon.  

Leo:  That's not even 1080p, is it?  The new games are, aren't they?

Paul:  They can be.  Obviously a lot of controversy is that they haven't been.  I will say that in Call of Duty the graphics are noticeably better than they have been with previous games.  Maybe that's true in other platforms, I'm not sure.

Leo:  They are saying in many cases that you just can't do 1080p.  Sunset Overdrive is 900p and is never going to be 1080p. 

Paul:  Yeah, there is just too much going on.

Leo:  Too much going on.  That's what I love about it.  I guess you could have a really boring game; you could have Pong in 1080p.  

Mary Jo:  Was your question for me if I think it mattered if they beat the PS4 ever?

Paul:  Yeah.

Mary Jo:  Or were you just trying to make sure that I was awake?

Paul:  No, I'm actually curious because I tend to come at this from a bit of a fanboy perspective.  Thinking about this from a pure market share, does it matter?  They are selling millions of them but they are being outsold.  

Mary Jo:  I think that you have to remember with Satya Nadella's new productivity and platforms they kind of downplayed hardware quite a bit, right?  They said that they will still stay in hardware and they will make Xboxes, and Surfaces, and phones, but it's not like we are just making hardware to make hardware.  We are going to make it to show off certain experiences and kind of show people why our software and services matter.  So if you look at it that way they would like to be number one but I don't think they feel that they have to be number one in hardware.  I think that they care more that they are number one in software and services.  

Paul:  Okay.

Mary Jo:  That is just my outsider’s take as a non-gamer.  

Paul:  You know, if this holiday season comes and goes and they don't reverse these trends over the course of the holidays it starts to get weird.  

Mary Jo:  Yeah, decoupling the Connect was a good start, right?

Paul:  And they had their best month ever of Xbox One sales in August and still didn't outsell the PS4.

Leo:  Isn't it really though, this is just me, the exclusive titles that drive console sales?  

Paul:  Historically, but also remember that assumes that the consoles are fairly identical from a function standpoint and fairly identical from a pricing standpoint, which they haven't been.

Leo:  If the only differentiator is the games then it would be a differentiator.

Paul:  Remember in the last gen Sony came out in limited quantities and they were an expensive console.  They justified it by saying that they have Blu-ray, and it was so much more powerful, and it was worth the price.  It was like exactly the same message that Microsoft had with the Xbox One.  I thought that was kind of a clueless way for Sony to market stuff in 2006.  Thought that was clueless of Microsoft to do that last year.  Of course the market has spoken and they decoupled the Xbox and brought down the price.  

Leo:  But didn't it work for the PS3?

Paul:  Well, by the end of the console generation the PS3 sales went up and up.  Actually the way it is now they have sold more PS3s then Xbox Ones.

Leo:  3s not 4s?

Paul:  I'm sorry, it's 360s.  3s versus 360s, not Ones.  

Leo:  But at first it didn't?

Paul:  At first it didn't.

Leo:  I think that physical media now is so unimportant that it doesn't matter if you have a Blu-ray player.  Decouple it, get that out of there.

Paul:  Yeah, I agree.

Leo:  Not as expensive probably as the Connect, but it would get the price down.  I'm just saying, Sunset Overdrive, they should be pushing that.  That's the only way that you can play it, right, is with Xbox One.  

Paul:  The best part of Connect would require a $10 microphone.  I don't understand why this thing is...

Leo:  There is no need for the motion.  

Paul:  Yeah, voice control is tied to a $125 boondoggle.  It's just too bad because it's awesome, the voice control is awesome.

Leo:  And the Master Chief Collection is exclusive.  Is that going to be on 360 too?

Paul:  No, that's just Xbox One.

Leo:  Xbox One only.

Paul:  Yeah, I'm going to be spending the next couple of months playing a 10 year old version of Halo now that looks better.  No, but those are good games.  It's going to be good.

Leo:  Let's take a break.  When we come back I will stop doing a silly dance.  When we come back the back of the book is coming up, Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, we are talking Microsoft on Windows Weekly.  One of my favorite things to do on a Wednesday afternoon.  Our show today is brought to you by Carbonite online backup.  If you have one computer at home or a dozen at work Carbonite has a solution for you.  You know, Carbonite has always offered unlimited backup.  A lot of talk about OneDrive Unlimited, Carbonite has always been unlimited.  You pay one flat rate, $59.99 a year for a single computer and then back up what you want.  That's pretty awesome, you don't have to measure it, you don't have to think about it, you don't have to get a bill because you backed up more.  It's great for business, too, in fact Carbonite has hybrid appliances for businesses with local and Cloud backup.  Carbonite backs up 350 million files a day.  They will get your business backed up within 15 minutes or less, that's their guarantee.  50,000 small businesses trust them.  You need Carbonite.  It's automatic, it's continuous, it's Cloud backup with total data security.  Yes, it's HIPAA compliant, that's what you need.  It's secure, it's safe, and you are going to be able to sleep at night.  In fact, you can even see the stuff backed up on Carbonite.  Just log into any computer, you can download any file, they even have free apps for phones and tablets.  It's Cloud storage that you can access any time.  It's a backup that you can rely on, it's automatic, and it's $59.99 a year for everything on a single computer.  They have plans for all kinds of systems, for business and for personal.  Visit carbonite.com, pick the plan, try it free, but do use the offer code WINDOWS so that you get 2 free months with purchase.  Carbonite support comes directly from the US, people who really are great.  I got an email from somebody that was so fantastic, let's see if I can find this, I sent it on to the Carbonite folks.  He was just so thrilled, he had had a crash I think at his business, and Carbonite sent him a hard drive and had him up and running.  He was just really thrilled with the support personnel and the extra lengths that they went to to get him back.  That's what you want, somebody on your side.  Carbonite is going to get you back.  Carbonite.com, the offer code WINDOWS, try it free and get 2 months free with purchase.  We thank them for their support of Windows Weekly.  

Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, time for the back of the book.  We will kick things off with Mr. P, Mr. T, Mr. PT, PT time.  Your tip of the week has nothing to do with Windows.

Paul:  You know, if you an Apple guy you buy an Apple TV for the living room.  It's really simple.  If you are a Google guy you buy a Chromecast or now you can get a Nexus Play device or whatever it is called.  If you are an Amazon guy, Amazon makes devices for the living room.  The thing that we don't have on the Microsoft side is a low end Microsoft device that does all of that stuff, kind of like an Xbox that doesn't play games kind of thing, like a $99 whatever.  Increasingly, even though the Microsoft services like Xbox Music and Xbox video are not on there, it seems like the one to get is Roku, like a modern Roku.  A Roku streaming stick is about $50 or $60, Roku 3 is about $99.  They support all of the online service you would expect, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, yada, yada, yada.  They support Google Play now which is a big deal.  If you are into the PC stuff and you want to get something from a Windows based phone, or a Windows based tablet, or a PC onto your TV it supports Miracast, you can do screen mirroring.  It's increasingly kind of the obvious one to get.  I really do wish that Microsoft would put its services on there, which would put it over the top.

Leo:  The only thing not there is Apple's iTunes.

Paul:  Is Apple's stuff, that's right. 

Leo:  By the way, Amazon is not on Apple.  I think that there is a real compelling reason to go with Roku unless you are an Apple person.

Paul:  Oh, Amazon is on Roku as well.  It's really neat, yeah.  If you have Apple stuff, if you have got $1000 worth of iTunes movies purchased then you have got to have an Apple TV.  There's no way around that.  But if for some reason you are buying a bunch of Xbox, imagine you spent $1000 worth of Xbox Video movies for some reason, which is a horrific thought, but you did.  What's the alternative?  What are you going to do, are you going to buy a home theater PC and put it in your living room?  Are you going to buy a Xbox One for $300 plus?  You could, but you could use Miracast too, and Roku does Miracast and it has all of that other stuff.  Frankly when you are doing things like watching Netflix, or Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime video, or whatever, a tiny little hockey puck that has no fan in it with a dedicated remote is a better experience than a big honking PC, or an Xbox One with a fan, or that kind of stuff anyway.  It's kind of got a lot going for it.

Leo:  Clarify Miracast for me.  Is that only from my PC or can I Miracast from other devices?

Paul:  Miracast.

Leo:  Can I Miracast from a XBox One?  No.

Paul:  No, but you would hard wire that into the TV.

Leo:  That's true, it's already in the set.  

Paul:  So Miracast is compatible with most modern Lumias, it could work on any Windows Phone, but I believe that only Lumias right now and Windows 8 devices, Windows 8.1, etc. so Surface obviously.  It works on Android phones and tablets as well, so it gives you that as well.  I would have said before Google Play came along that this was a viable way to get Google Play content on your TV as well.  If you had an Android smartphone, using a Miracast device like Roku is the same experience as using Chromecast basically except you don't get the second screen deal.

Leo:  It uses Wi-Fi but...

Paul:  It's Wi-Fi direct.  So it doesn't require that you have to be online, it works offline, it's a direct connection between the 2 devices.  

Leo:  Do you use it a lot?

Paul:  Yeah, I do.  The truth is that I would normally use these other things more.  I would use Netflix directly on the Roku.  Because Microsoft has these Miracast devices that they have been putting out the past month I have been testing.  I'm trying to convince my kids, it's a hard sell, but I've been doing it myself, using Netflix over Miracast instead of Netflix direct just to kind of get a feel for how reliable the connect is, and how well it works, and that kind of stuff.  The truth is that it's a better experience if you can do it direct.  Miracast to me is like that last mile solution in the living room.  I've rented a movie on Xbox Video for the plan ride home, I've only watch half of it, I want to finish it at home, but I want to do it on the HD TV where I don't have an XBox.  This is how I can get it on the screen.  So it works for that kind of stuff, it's good.

Leo:  So you run a Miracast App?

Paul:  Miracast is just running in the background on the Roku.  You will see it there all of the time.  So if you go on Windows Phone, which is how I typically do it, if you go to project my screen and settings.

Leo:  Project my screen, I see.  It doesn't say Miracast, that is just how they are doing it.

Paul:  Ironically the word Miracast doesn't appear anywhere in Windows.

Leo:  Or in Android either, right.

Paul:  Right, that's right.  It works similarly on Android.  We did this in Spain with a variety of devices as well if you recall.  The chip sets in those device are not so great and there are a lot of reliability issues.  Microsoft is using a new, I think it is a Real Tech chip set.  It's brand new and in my experience so far it's been rock solid, so that's worked really well. 

Leo:  So I'm looking on this Droid Turbo, I think this is a pretty stock Android.  In the display settings it says cast screen.  That's what they are talking about. 

Paul:  Yep.

Leo:  No Mira, just cast.  Well thank you, that was a little Miracast tutorial.

Paul:  Sort of, yeah.

Leo:  But a reason to get the Roku, right?

Paul:  Because you know that Microsoft device is going to cost $100 or in the $100 range.  You could buy a Netgear or third party device for $100 or whatever.  It's just built into Roku, it's just another thing that you get.  It's really neat.  You have to have a new one like a 3 or a streaming stick.  It's just like another feature, it's just another reason to have it sitting around.

Leo:  And now your software pick of the week.  I see now your chagrin when I launched the show.  Go ahead.  I was saying how nobody on MacBreak Weekly liked Outlook for the Mac.  They don't use Outlook.

Paul:  And ironically I don't use a Mac, so obviously...I just thought this was interesting because as Mary Jo knows we've been talking about this for months and months.  What's going on with Office for the Mac?  What's going on with Office for the Mac?  What's going on with Office for the Mac?  I think those guys finally heard the complaining and they have released an interim update of Outlook for Mac.  If you have Outlook 2011, which is the latest version of Mac Office, I'm trying to look if that's a requirement for this, I think you actually do need to have Office 365 to get this.  You can get a new version of Outlook for Mac.  I don't use this a lot.  Based on the feedback I've received I did install it, I did attach accounts to it, I did check it out.  It's actually not like a super sophisticated next generation exchange active slink slash MDN awesome client.  It's basically the old Outlook client for Mac spit shined to look like OneNote for Mac, which is the visual style they are going to use in the next version of Office for Mac which is coming out next year.  So in early 2015 there will be a preview version, in the 2nd half of 2015 there will be the public version of whatever they are calling it, let's call it Office 2015 for Mac or whatever, will come out.  This version of Outlook and the version of OneNote, which is free, for Mac have that ribbon based UI that we are going to see across all of the Office apps in the next version.  It's really pretty and it's a nice looking app.  By the way, I hate Outlook.  I hate Outlook, I very specifically use web based clients myself on PCs and I would on a Mac.  But not everyone works like I do and I sort of acknowledge that at least.  Microsoft has released a new application for the Mac, that's all.  It's pretty.

Leo:  Hey, it's free, if you have Office 365, get it.

Paul:  More importantly they answered the questions we had.

Leo:  And we get a sense of what the new version of Office will look like on the Mac as well.

Paul: Yeah, and it looks good in my mind.

Leo:  Mary Jo Foley, time for you and your Enterprise pick of the week.

Mary Jo:  Yes, my Enterprise pick of the week, it's a very complicated thing that I'm going to try to explain simply.  It's a licensing thing.  Yeah, I know.  Right now if you license Windows 7 or Windows 8 as an Enterprise user you license it per device.  Microsoft is making a really big change to their licensing come December 1st.  They are going to start allowing Enterprise users to license Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8 Pro by user instead of by device.  The reason that this is huge is that this is really a step along the path that we have been talking about in terms of how Microsoft is going to turn Windows into more of a subscription play.  We knew they weren't going to do it exactly like they did it with Office 365 but this is kind of the glimpse or a start to how they are going to do it.  There are so many different permutations and combinations of this that I'm not going to go into detail.  I have a whole blog post with resource links.  This is so complicated that there are whole webinars about this whole licensing change.  I'm not kidding.  In the end we think, because Microsoft hasn't really talked a lot about this, that it's going to be simpler and cheaper for customers who have multiple devices and who also have cross platform devices.  So if you have IOS, Android, and Windows you are going to be able to bring all of these things together under this new per user license.  In theory at least it's going to make your licensing headaches a little less painful.  So go check it out, I have a ton of resources on my site.  You can go look for things around this new bundle they have called the Enterprise Cloud Suite where you are going to be able to actually have a Windows 7 or Windows 8 Enterprise License on a per user basis, plus Office 365, plus the new Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite all in one package.  That's another great interesting bundle that a lot of Enterprise users are going to want.  So that's my pick of the week.

Leo:  Me too!

Mary Jo:  It's one of those things that sounds like who cares, but when I wrote about this this week so many people were like oh man, if this actually pans out this is going to be the end of my headaches on licensing, or at least a lot of my headaches.

Leo:  The article is at allaboutmicrosoft.com.

Mary Jo:  All About Microsoft, yeah.

Leo:  You will want to read it.  Mary Jo has written it, so you should read it.  Your code name of the week?

Mary Jo:  Code name of the week, since we talked a lot about the Microsoft Fitness Band, that is my code name of the week.  That was code named Project K interestingly.  Two reasons to me that that is interesting, one is that it is not the only Project K code name that Microsoft has.  In fact the next version of asp.net, which isn't out yet, is also code named Project K.  So they are reusing the code name or two different teams decided to use K for various reasons.

Leo:  Or special K.  One is Special K.

Mary Jo:  Special K, right, it must be about that.  I actually don't know why they used the letter, but I do know that the team that built the fitness band is using letters as code names.  The other one I know that they have in the works is called Project B.  That supposedly is a gaming helmet.  I don't know any details, but there has been a CAT siting.  Kind of along the lines of Oculus Riff I think.  Not exactly like that, but something that you would wear using the Xbox I would think.  Maybe only the Xbox, I'm not sure.  They are using letter names, so we know K and we know B.  I don't know any of the other code names from that group which I think is known as the Analog Team inside of the Devices Group.  So if anyone has any other letter code names they know pass them along, we will take them.

Leo:  Special K.  Is it snowing where you are?

Mary Jo:  No.

Paul:  It has snowed here.

Leo:  It looks very dark.

Mary Jo:  It's very dark out here.  It is very, very dark.

Leo:  It looks like a storm is coming.

Paul:  It snowed here the other day.  That was a very unhappy experience.

Mary Jo:  I know, I saw you say that.  I was like, oh no.

Paul:  I'm like the crazy person down the street.  People who live near me see this guy walk outside and he looks at the sky and he goes damn you mother nature.

Leo:  And then takes a picture of it and posts it.

Paul:  Yep.  It's not real unless I put it on Facebook Leo.

Leo:  That's why I follow you.  And now ladies and gentlemen, it's so important to spell everything correctly, that's why it's time for our beer pick of the week.  Lukcy Basartd Ale.

Paul:  You can't even read this post, it's so crazy.

Mary Jo:  The real name of the beer pick is Stone Lucky Bastard.  

Leo:  But it's not spelled that way.

Paul:  It's not even the right name, that's awesome.

Mary Jo:  They misspell it at l-u-k-c-y b-a-s-a-r-t-d, but what it is a combination of three of their different bastard brand ales, Arrogant Bastard Oak, Arrogant Bastard, and Double Bastard.  Wow, I've never gotten to say so many bastards in one pop, wow.

Leo:  I think that it's pronounced bastard.

Paul:  Which is amazing because you are here with Leo and I. 

Leo:  Two of the most famous bastards.

Mary Jo:  So the reason that they misspell it if you go on the Stone Brewing site, it's kind of like a little joke.  It's around we said we would only brew this once but we are actually brewing it multiple times.  It plays on the whole thing around Stone's Arrogant Bastard Ale and "this is an aggressive ale, you probably won't like it".  "It's doubtful that you will have the taste or sophistication to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth."  That's kind of how they talk about their Arrogant Bastard.

Leo:  What is this, Gaelic?  

Mary Jo:  No, I think it's...

Leo:  It's funny.

Paul:  I think it's from Zune.

Leo:  This is like the thing that was circulating on Facebook for a while that shows that you can understand language even if it is horrifically mangled.  "Open your mind, use a crowbar if you must, since 1997 Argonaut BT Ale has demanded that the tyrannical mediocrity relax its script of opprobrium on a collective conscious."

Paul:  Tyrannical mediocrity?

Leo:  Yeah, tyrannical.  "Few possess the opprobrium."  Don't make me laugh.  Few pesos acriblium site of teas.  It's one of those things were if you just kind of don't look at it too hard you can read it.

Mary Jo:  Yep, you can just gloss over it.

Leo:  It's pretty funny.

Mary Jo:  It is, it is funny.  But if you ever do find this beer I think that you will really like it.  It's categorized as an American strong ale, which is kind of an amorphous type of beer.  A lot of things fall into that category.  It comes in at 8.5%.  It's not a light beer, but it's a very, very good beer.  The combination of all of those different bastards really works.  

Leo:  It's from the Stoned Brewing Company.  Now I understand.

Paul: That's what they say about this podcast.  A combination of all of those bastards.

Leo:  At least it's not hoppy.

Mary Jo:  It's not hoppy.

Leo:  Not hoppy.  

Mary Jo:  It's not hoppy, but it's very tasty.  It's delicious.

Leo:  I'm hoppy though.  Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes this portion of the programming day, the famous, world famous Windows Weekly show.  It's famous because it stars Mr. Paul Thurrott as the lucky bastard and Mary Jo Foley as his foil.  Together they make an amazing show.  If you are interesting in Microsoft or you know someone who is you must tell them about Windows Weekly.  We do it every Wednesday at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern, that's 1900 UTC if you want to watch live.  If not there is a on demand audio and video available after the fact at twit.tv/ww and wherever fine podcasts are pushed to your appliances.  Hey, thanks guys.  Have a great week.  You will both be here next week?

Mary Jo:  Yep.

Paul:  Yep.

Mary Jo:  And the week after I will be in Sweden but still on the show.

Leo:  We've arranged.  Yes.  We've arranged.  So we will see you and thank you so much.

Paul:  Thank you sir.

Leo:  Alright, take care.  Thanks for joining us everybody, we will see you next time on Windows Weekly!