(electronic music)
- Hey everyone Daniel Rubino, Windows Central
and this is your Microsoft and Windows roundup.
First up, the Surface Book 2 got a refresh
kind of.
If you're interested in the Core i5 model
well that version was always strange.
Microsoft shipped it with a Core i5-7300u.
That's a dual core processor, also seventh generation.
That was always weird cause the i7 model shipped
with the eighth generation.
Well, Microsoft has now rectified it.
You can now pick up a Surface Book 2 with the
Core i5-8350u.
So you only get a slight processor bump but
you also go from dual to quad core.
And that delivers a lot of extra performance.
And don't forget this model still doesn't have
a discreet GPU like the Invidia does for the Core i7 model.
But you can still get the Intel UHD graphics with it
and overall this should be a significant performance bump.
Now, pricing starts at $1499
which is the same price for the old Core i5 version
which is actually still available
but it's $200 cheaper.
So you could pick that up if you wanna save some money.
But I'd go for that Core i5 Quad model.
I think that's gonna be a really interesting skew
for a lot of people.
But hopefully we'll see a Surface Book 3
maybe later this fall.
Next up is the Razer Turret for Xbox One.
So we acually did a quick unboxing, hands on
with this recently.
We'll have a full review soon.
But if you don't know, you can now use a
keyboard or mouse with your Xbox One
and you can actually bring any kind of
keyboard or mouse with it
but this one is actually designed by Razer
for the couch.
With it, it's gonna have a,
really four and a half pound, heavy keyboard
that sits nicely in your lap
and a nice little mouse.
Overall should be a really good experience
but it's expensive at $250.
And as a lot of people pointed out
it doesn't have a headphone jack.
As to why, I'm gonna ask Razer later today and find out
and hopefully we'll have an answer for you
in our full review.
Now if $250 is too expensive
don't worry there are a couple alternatives out there.
I will be covering those at Windows Central.
I hate to use the fake news tag
but Cortana is leaving Skype.
Not really, actually.
Cortana bot is leaving Skype
and that may actually sound bad.
There's a lot of people who're going to say
"well this is a proof that Microsoft is
pulling Cortana everywhere."
It's not really the case.
It turns out bots are going away from Skype.
If you don't remember a few years ago,
Microsoft tried to use the bot model in Skype
by putting a lot of applications in there,
Cortana was one of them.
This was actually supposed to mirror
a lot of the Asian market
where something like WeChat does use a lot of bots.
In fact, in Asia bots are a big deal.
Western markets, not so much.
And it turns out they didn't catch on.
So as a result, Microsoft is pulling the Cortana bot.
As well as, all the other bots.
In fact, your latest version of Skype
for PC and Android and iOS
probably does not have any bot support.
There are still some on there
hanging on.
But you can't search or add any more.
And that's the way it is.
Now, Cortana is actually still in Skype
specifically conversation view,
where it'll make suggestions
based on the context of your conversation
and help save you a couple keystrokes.
That does not seem to be going anywhere.
It actually mirrors what Google is doing in Gmail
as well, for it's email system.
Alright, next up is market share
specifically the Windows 10 operating system,
the October update from 2018
apparently has hit around 26%
of the Windows 10 market.
Which is pretty low when you think about it.
Now, the numbers come from AdDuplex,
which uses a survey of about 5,000 applications
in its Advertising SDK to get those numbers.
So this is scientific-ish
but it's not the end all, be all.
Still, that's a pretty low number
and in fact the October update
didn't roll out for a lot of people
until Decemeber.
I still had devices that didn't get it
until January and later.
The October update did have a few problems
when it did roll out.
Including the ability to delete some files,
for some users.
Let's just say this was not the most smooth update
and that 26% number reflects that.
Fingers crossed though that the
April 2019 update does much better
and it's gonna be much more stable.
We'll see though in a couple of weeks
and see how well it does.
And finally,
in the things that Microsoft is removing this week,
it is gonna be books from the Microsoft store.
So books were always kinda weird
but it was part and parcel with the Edge browser,
which we all know is kind of going away
or rather is being replaced with
their Chromium version.
Unfortunately, with book support going
away with Edge
doesn't look like Microsoft wants to
put it into the Chromium edition
and that may be a fact driven by the fact
that not a lot of people are using books
on the store.
In fact, it does raise the question
who's actually using this?
I've tried one or two books but
I just don't use my PC that way.
I'm like most people
I go with an Amazon Kindle.
Or a lot of people like to use Audible instead.
So in a way, this makes sense
but still not a good sign.
Microsoft probably invested a lot of money
to get that book system rolling.
And it did seem like a good play for
schools or education, would matter here for
using books.
But unfortunately this system is going away.
Now my personal thoughts on this is
I kinda don't care, like I said,
I never used books
but it is another bad sign of Microsoft again
launching something and pulling back again.
They seem to not be able to get this right.
But then again Apple did just cancel Airpower.
So they're not necessarily alone here, at all.
Alright so there's your latest news roundup.
Now you leave me a comment below
and tell me what you think about
Microsoft's decision to remove books.
Do you care?
Or do you mind a lot?
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Thanks for watching,
take care everyone.
(electronic music)