Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Leo Laporte

Mar 5th 2025

Windows Weekly 922

There's Never a "Not OK" Button

Hosted by Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell

End of Skype, MWC25, Rust-inovich

Records live every Wednesday at 2:00pm Eastern / 11:00am Pacific / 19:00 UTC.
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Category: News

Skype to EOL in May, replaced by the consumer Teams client, which is surprisingly good now. There are three possible responses to this:

  • "They still make Skype?" 
  • The 13 people who rely on Skype for calling landlines come out of the woodwork.
  • "Come on, Microsoft telegraphed this two years ago"

Plus, Opera previews what an AI agent in a browser can be used for. Firefox 136 now comes with vertical tabs (again), updated sidebar, AI chatbots, and more. And a Google-related tip that lets one see what it’s like to live in the EU, minus the universal health care and other social safety nets.

Windows

  • Microsoft FINALLY updates the Copilot app in Windows 11 for the 127th time - What Microsoft didn’t tell anyone. Arrives just after the release of a native Mac client
  • Three months of Recall, and it IS controversial, just not for the reasons you think
  • Dev and Beta (last week): lock screen widget customizing (finally), Windows Share updates (again), Task Manager CPU usage calculation change (seriously), more
  • It may be controversial at Linux, but not at Microsoft, which is all-in on Rust
  • Intel delays Ohio fabs until after the earth careens into the sun
  • Dell up 7 percent to $23.9 billion ($11.9 billion from PCs)
  • HP up 2.4 percent to $13.5 billion ($9.2 billion from PCs)
  • Intel brings Core Ultra Series 2 “Arrow Lake” chips to commercial market

Microsoft 365

  • Microsoft finally puts Skype out of its misery
  • A look back at 22 years of Skype
  • Outlook Mobile gets delivery and read receipts

AI

  • USA! USA! USA! Microsoft makes AI export changes easy to understand for our stupid government
  • OpenAI announces GPT-4.5, its final non-reasoning model
  • Microsoft brings new local distilled DeepSeek models to Copilot+ PCs, starting with Snapdragon X - a little hands-on
  • Microsoft announces Dragon Copilot for clinical workflow
  • Stability AI + Arm Holdings = generative AI audio, more to come
  • Scam Detection in Messages for Pixel and Android
  • Gemini improvements including upcoming features
  • Apple’s struggles with AI are real. Just ask Siri. Kidding, no one asks Siri anything

Xbox

  • New Game Pass titles for first half of March
  • Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 coming to all platforms including Game Pass on July 11
  • Sony slashes prices on VR2 months after it stopped building it

Tips & Picks

  • Tip of the week: Remove yourself from Google Search results
  • App pick of the week: Mo’ browsers!
  • RunAs Radio this week: Secure by Design with Karinne Bessette
  • Brown liquor pick of the week: Knappogue Castle 16

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Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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