Microsoft Windows in the Cloud, How to Treat Yourself Effectively, and More Productivity and Technology News This Week

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:03

Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:15

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:16

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 70. Can’t believe it’s 70 episodes in Microsoft Windows in the cloud and how to treat yourself effectively. We’re recording this on July 20 2021. And so welcome to those of you who are watching live. For those of you who are watching after the fact Hello as well on the podcast or on video streams. Each week, we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And to do that this week, we have invited Art Gelwicks Art Gelwicks a, you know as the productivity collaboration consultant blogger at the idea pump.com and the host of being productive podcast. And of course, he joins us each week on ProductivityCast. Welcome to the show art.

Art Gelwicks 0:57

Hey guys, how you doing?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:59

Good. We’re doing great. So back. Glad to have you glad to have you. And so this week’s theme, I thought we would talk about how to treat yourself effectively basically, the concepts of how do you reward yourself for either achieving finishing a task, achieving a goal or completing a project? And so let’s start there. And since you’re our guest today, well, we’ll throw it to you first, how do you think about the concept of rewards and your personal productivity system?

Art Gelwicks 1:29

Well, for me, it’s a matter of scale. Some rewards are like end of project end of initiative, end of day type of award rewards. But I also have little ones I do for myself during the course of the day. Like for example, if I’m working on maybe writing some promo copy for something. And I know the coffee cup is sitting there getting cold, my mental reward is okay, if I finish this, I can go get a fresh cup of coffee. It’s not that that’s a break that kind of while it is a break a bit, but it’s a way for me to give myself a little bit of an incentive or a target to work towards. I’ll be honest, it doesn’t always work. I mean, I’m okay with cold coffee. So it’s not that big of a deal for me. But those kinds of little milestones can be very beneficial. I will try to work them also into my to do to do lists and my task lists, find things in my task list that I want to do. And I would like to do and intermix those in with the things that I really have no desire to, and try and make that part of the initiative. I know many people or some people will use a much more structured reward system. I was actually looking at an app earlier this week, around gamification of tasks, and it had a very structured reward and point system and you earned your own coins within this and leveled up and and i think that’s great just doesn’t seem to connect for me. So I always go for the little quick reward stuff and live with that.

Augusto Pinaud 3:04

You see, I agree with you, I don’t I for big end of projects and those kind of things I tend to have maybe, but I’m more of the little rewards. For example. I ice cream, I love ice cream. So that’s that’s a that’s something that is that carrot, you know, in front of the thing. Okay, well, do you want ice cream? Or do you want frozen mango that is what I substitute for ice cream. So it’s a little bit healthier than Well, we need to finish this and but I tend to in more recent years, I tend to be much more frugal into what my rewards are and my rewards tend to be more about experience and activities then about things are lately so that’s a big change for me. It tend to be more Okay, well what how about we finish this and then we go Tuesday morning and then do this activity and oh pandemic make that a little bit challenging. But I still go for a good book. So I’m still will do that and say okay, well what about it, we’ve finished this and then take two hours, the middle of the afternoon and go and read, grab a cup of coffee or grab a cup of tea and read for a couple of hours. And that tend to work really, really well for me, but even with your lack of instructor did you wait until you achieve the goal or you do also task in the middle of the goal cast as you’re achieving? You said you know, kind of those landmarks Okay, well when we get to this point in the project or not?

Art Gelwicks 4:47

It’s it’s a tough one because for me, I’m always working around how my brain works, when it does, and it’s it’s one of those situations where sometimes I can feel it. It’s starting to derail itself, I’ll be getting distracted, I’ll be losing focus, something else will be catching my attention. And sometimes I can use a reward to pull myself back in. If I absolutely have to. Other times, I have to recognize that, I’m not going to be able to get myself back on track right away. So giving myself the latitude to make that step away, becomes the reward itself. You know, if I’m doing a large, monotonous task, and I’m, I’m getting to that point where I’m just losing it. Maybe the reward is to be able to go run things through the paper shredder for five minutes. Yes, it’s a very juvenile activity, but it’s also very therapeutic in my mind. So that’s my little reward my mini vacation that I have there from doing that other thing that I had to do. And it gives me an opportunity to go back and say, okay, maybe I can get started back in that again. I don’t really use it as a motivator, though. That’s, that’s the hard thing for me. Because for me to set something out there and say, if I do all these things I can do I can have that I can achieve that I can go, Well, technically, I can go do that. Anyway, it’s very difficult for me to con my brain and say, Oh, you’re not allowed to do that until you do that. So it was interesting, though, you mentioned about the the reward piece, something struck me somebody needs to make an app for tasks or in a task app, that when you complete certain tasks, it unlocks the option to go do other tasks that you have now put into this good task category, or nonwork, or reward category. I mean, it is kind of the gamification and I’m sure somebody has something similar to it in the nap. But that might be useful for it. I’ve just never found the reward piece, to be that high of a motivator, just getting the thing off my freaking list is a reward enough in many cases.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:06

Oh, from from my perspective, I always think about this from kind of a personal reward system, and I actually tear my rewards so that I have different rewards set aside for different things. And unlike you art, I just just, I just say to myself, I can’t have that, unless I do that thing. And for some reason, I’m able to do that to myself, or I’ll just, you know, be completely, you know, like, instead of giving myself the little reward that I want, I will just basically set it aside and say, I can’t have it unless I achieve that, that thing. And so it works for me. And you know, it doesn’t work for everybody, as you said, you know, you could just like go do it yourself and just take that thing if you want it. But I’ve chosen to just make that strict rule for myself, and it happens to work. And so what I’d like to do, though, is to set aside healthy rewards, those are, you know, things that I feel like are healthy for me. So, for example, a glass of wine in the evening for having achieved my primary tasks, I consider healthy. So I’ve decided, so I’ve decided that that’s a reward that I can give myself if I do certain things. And so if I’m working on a set of really important tasks for the day, I’ll say, you know what, if I finished these three things, then at the end of the day, I’m going to have a glass of wine with dinner. And that is going to be my my healthy reward that I want to give myself. But there could be other things, you know, I enjoy running, I don’t always get to set aside time for running, you know, I do other cross training or other kinds of things. Or if I’m training for a marathon, then yes, I’m always going to do those, you know, I’m going to do those training runs. But just a leisurely run, you know, like along the river here, whatever, you know, like, I’ll set that aside as a treat for myself as like a self care item. And I’ll say, you know what, if I do these, you know, few projects this week, then I’m gonna actually take a long run along the river and just set aside the time. And it’s actually really motivating for me to do that thing. Something to also keep in mind for folks is that the reward, the reward needs to be commensurate with the work you’re being done that’s being done. So you can’t be like, Oh, I made three sales calls. So I’m going to take a trip to Hawaii. No, you you need to do the sales calls, like

Augusto Pinaud 9:13

a sales call. You know,

Art Gelwicks 9:16

you got two old sales guys here. I mean, you make the right call Hawaii, maybe Cummins.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:22

I didn’t say you made three sales.

Art Gelwicks 9:27

My sales manager,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:29

but but if you if you if you say to yourself, you know what if I if I make this big deal, then yeah, I should take myself to Hawaii. That’s that mean? That makes sense to me. You know, it makes sense to me that you would that it’s commensurate with it right? You’re going to make a big deal. You’re going to make a you’re going to give yourself a good treat. It needs to match up though.

Art Gelwicks 9:46

And this is one of the things that we’ve talked about a bunch on on various different shows. It’s understanding your own motivators. I mean, the the benchmarks that we lay out, the things that we talk about driving us are extremely personal. They need to be and they need to be something that’s not, you know, the Danish at the end of the day, or tomorrow morning to go to Starbucks for coffee. If that’s something that is that unusual for you and that exceptional and has that level of emotional impact for you, then yeah, it’s a good quality reward. It’s a good way to say, Yeah, I really want to do that. But often we will look for things or we’ll find things that, yeah, we may could probably just skirt around the edges and do it anyway. But I like I like the idea of taking that time for that introspection, and figure out what’s really going to motivate you. And, again, you can you can manipulate things. For example, I like to go through and I go through and do my amazon shopping. But what I do is I give my give myself time and say, Look, I’m going to take 15 minutes and go through and just like go through the deals of the day, and I don’t get them, I put them into a wish list. Now eventually, I just throw the wish list out because it’s, it’s that reward action, you know, selecting a trigger and give me the food pellet because I just push the button kind of thing. But that’s the type of thing if, if that’s something you enjoy, then working that into your system to say, Okay, if I do this stuff that I don’t enjoy, and I get to this certain point, then I can go do this other thing. Yeah, there’s a lot of value for that for a lot of people.

Augusto Pinaud 11:28

So you are the cost that Jeff besos went to space?

Art Gelwicks 11:31

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, he could have stayed for all I care. Yeah, no, I just I just go through. But that’s, again, that’s one of those things where understanding how your brain works, can make a huge difference on being able to work with your brain. Because in my case, specifically, like going through and being able to look at that stuff, I like to look at the new shiny things, I think this is neat. This is Oh, yeah, I want to get that. Well, rather than putting it into the cart, I put it into a list that’s never gonna go anywhere anyway. But I tapped a button, I tapped a button, which triggered a little dopamine in my brain, and all of a sudden, I feel, you know, oh, I did something, and then I move on. So being able to, again, work those into our systems, maybe it’s a, you know, that piece of chocolate that you rarely get, or you go and buy yourself some and you hide it in the cabinet, you know, you’re not going to get that unless you do certain things. It almost feels a little juvenile at times. But if it works, more power to you.

Augusto Pinaud 12:39

Sorry, don’t they say that we that we just never grow? We are still kids and hardware changes this number of zeros that the toys require now?

Art Gelwicks 12:51

Absolutely, you know, the price of the toys get more expensive, but the motivators stay the same. And if there are things that you like, I admit, a good reward for me, would be honest on a significant thing. I’m a Dungeons and Dragons nerd buying another set of dice, do I need another set of dice? Absolutely not. But giving myself the option to say you know what, you’ve recognized the fact you don’t need that. But you really like that. So you’re going to give yourself permission to do that. If, if you accomplish those other things, excuse me. The other thing I do recommend, though, is you write this stuff down. The conscious effort of saying if I accomplish the following, I can do the following in the written contract with yourself is much more compelling than just you know, mentally saying it or saying it out loud or anything like that. Because it’s easy to for to lose track. And to lose scale. If you say that I’m going to take 20 minutes to read, you know, this, whatever I wanted to read, great. But then you’re committing to a 20 minute period, you’re not committing to it scaling into a two hour, you know, boondoggle out of your day.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:07

Yeah, and I’ve thought about this for a long time, which is, you know, getting the business into different grades of revenue is very similar to doing many things in life where it’s when the business gets to x revenue levels, then we need to do these things. And those are things that are going to save us time, but also help the business grow. And it’s like, okay, when we hit X amount of revenue, then we have to hire a new person in order to do this thing. And you you start to grow in that sense. And I think the same thing really works in regard to rewards and your own personal productivity system, where it’s like, you know, once I am executing at this particular level, I’m getting these things accomplished, then maybe we need to get someone to come, you know, save us time by maybe doing grocery shopping or by you know, you know, cleaning the house or those kinds of things. You can actually reward your With time, akin to what you’re talking about here are, but like in a in the flip side, which is like, what can I do to outsource things to then save me time and give me back that free time in some way, shape or form. So think about them in all those stages. And I have three layers of like, you know, basically small rewards, medium rewards and enlarge rewards. Think about how you give yourself, you maybe you have four different tiers, but kind of tear your reward so you know, what kind of reward system you want to set up for yourself. And also remember that variable variability, that is, some level of randomness is also really helpful, you have to your brain has to tie the reward to the, to the activity that you want to accomplish. So there needs to be some consistency, and building up that that that connection between the reward and the action. But then over time, if you give yourself the same reward over and over again, then it’s very Pavlovian. And that will actually reduce your, your efficacy there. So then you have to give to create a little bit of variability, a little bit of a little bit of change up, shift it up and a little bit of variety to make yourself reengage there.

Art Gelwicks 16:08

So one of the fast ways into this that I’ve seen is to use the prioritization function that many task management tools have. So for example, I used to do is to do is has priority one through four, well set up a reward system so that you know, priority four, which is the lowest has just little rewards attached to it, because they’re minor things. priority one items are significant rewards. And that way, you’re encouraging yourself to get those priority one items done, because they’re tied to your more important rewards. If you find that system works, it’s an easy step in if you’re already using prioritization. If you’re not, then now you’re doing double work, because you got to prioritize and figure out the rewards, too. It’s just something you have to do a little introspection on, but I agree with you completely. It’s, it works really well for some people, it really does.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:01

Absolutely. So for those of you who are watching or listening, you know, consider your reward system for yourself. Think about either formalizing one is noted, you know, having it written down for yourself is really, really important and powerful, so that you can actually set yourself up against your own standards. Remember, it’s like, I don’t care if you brush your teeth or not, you know, I’m not sitting next to you. But, you know, in 2030 years, you’re going to care that you did that, right. So you have to make sure you’re doing these things for yourself. They’re they’re really it’s like you don’t get a you don’t get a treat for the heart attack you don’t have but you can build up a reward system for treating yourself for rewarding yourself for doing those little things that actually over the long term. But get you you know, profound benefits and whether they be health benefits, or productive benefits or financial benefits or otherwise. So this has been a great discussion, let us move our way along then from talking about treating ourselves to the latest news this week in personal productivity and technology. Augusto What is our first story this week,

Augusto Pinaud 18:01

Apple and Samsung labs laptops are leading the global growth according to trend for and it’s not a surprise that the laptops grow year over year with the pandemic, you know, to incredible levels are incredible compared to what we were seeing most people. A lot of people discover, oops, we need a laptop now that we are all at home and kids are in here. So. So it is it is not a surprise. But it’s interesting to see that Samsung and Apple lead the pack probably close to two Chromebook and the article says they didn’t account Chromebook as a separate operating system that I will be really interested interested in to see what are those numbers from Chrome? And what are really the growth for Chromebooks because for a lot of families, that was the solution to solve. And so that’s, you know, the numbers are interesting. They’re growing. I mean, without any doubt, the one cheap for Apple, make a difference announcements. Samsung has done we have covered hearing the show, really making a difference. They’re making their system integrate really nicely like Apple do. And I think that’s going to pay off in the next future, the near future.

Art Gelwicks 19:26

This is one of those situations where, again, we have this reinforcement of needing to be able to do what we want to do where we want or need to do it. We were getting away getting another push from having a desk sitting on a computer sitting on a desk all the time. We may be at a dining room table. We may be at a coffee table. We may be in a living room, we may be in a car, we don’t know in many cases where we’re going to be at any given time. So technology that is focused around That is a huge draw. Couple that with a reduction in the pricing that we’re seeing, you know, it doesn’t take 15 $100 to get a good quality system anymore, you can get good quality systems for 500 600 $700. And if you really want to, you know, mind the cost, as you were saying you can get into a Chromebook easily for under 300 bucks under 250 in many cases. So this piece, this movement is not something that I find surprising. Samsung is the only on the PC side, the only real major manufacturer that has a consumer play that isn’t either asis, or Acer, which are considered slightly lower end than what Samsung is bringing to the table at the high end. The long time classic ones of HP and Dell, those are corporate viewed. So I’m not I’m not really shocked by this. I’m encouraged. And I hope the manufacturers continue to recognize the value of making these platforms as user friendly as possible and as available and accessible as possible.

Augusto Pinaud 21:11

Well, but he’s interested in something you mentioned is true. HP is more viewed as a corporate but that was not the always No, not at all. Not at all. And and that’s the space that they have led. More brands like Samson take over from from HP,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:31

HP and Dell gave up so much space, you know, they lost, they completely dropped the ball on this. Like I said an HP did as well.

Art Gelwicks 21:39

HP Dell used to own the market space. At home, everybody had an HP sitting on their desk or they had a Compaq at the time. You know those types of systems. And with the influx of systems like Acer like cases like Lenovo, which Lenovo makes a great product now. Yeah, those have completely pushed the old standards off to the side. And honestly, I think that’s a good thing. Because right now sitting on my desk, I have two HP laptops here. They’re okay. They’re all right. There. Nothing I wouldn’t write home about them. But I’ve got an asis laptop that I love. I’ve we bought another asis laptop for my wife, works great for her. And I know the cost is probably two thirds of what I would have had to have paid for these other ones. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:30

Acer, Acer did that with the surface, you know laptops, they created the lower lower priced version of the switch, and or the switch, which is a little price version of the surface laptops and the surface pros that is, and they’re as good. And sometimes even better, I feel like the the hardware feel of the switch is actually really nice.

Art Gelwicks 22:52

I have a theory, I have no evidence to back this theory up. But I have a theory that the vendors who dip their toes into the netbook world years ago, are the ones that we’re seeing are more successful now on these lower end laptop systems, especially on the Chromebook systems, even though it’s a different operating system. They understand that low price point, production level necessary. And companies like HP and Dell, they just can’t do that they can’t work in that mindset space. I don’t think they want to either, honestly.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:29

So you saw HP kind of try that with the Chromebooks but they didn’t have a lot of success. And and Samsung went with the higher end Chromebooks and and it worked out, you know, they kind of went lower, and then they built up market share, certainly name recognition. And that’s been good for them. So I think overall a good thing. All right, because no, what’s our next story,

Augusto Pinaud 23:51

the rings end to end encryption, finally, his role now, globally, if you’re watching here, I have a big cylinder. But basically, if your territory is eligible, now you will be able to have end to end encryption. And I think that is great. I mean, now you need to be subscribed, you need to have the double authentication. And I’m happy to see ring staking all these steps towards security and towards in securing the videos. I mean, it’s we have to are here at around the house. So I’m glad to know that they are less vulnerable than they were.

Art Gelwicks 24:33

Yeah, for me, my assessment is it’s about stinking time. I mean, there’s, there’s so many of these IoT devices, camera based monitoring based systems that are completely insecure, out of date. The versioning is out of whack. They don’t get security updates. It’s just it’s an it’s a risk waiting to happen or it’s a disaster waiting to happen. And we don’t really have any control over it as consumers, because we’re kind of stuck with whatever one we got. And I have a variety of them here at the house. And honestly, I know they are not the level of security they should be. So yeah, seeing somebody like ring step up and finally say, yeah, we get it, we this should all be encrypted. It’s about time. And I hope other vendors recognize this and take this step, take this as a sign to say, okay, maybe we ought to do this too.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:31

And I think this is also partisan in Amazon going the way of making sure they’re doing public things to show that they’re encrypting on a level that makes people safer, not just with regard to ring, but also with regard to Amazon sidewalk, I think that a lot of people had negative reactions to sidewalk thinking that it was somehow, you know, less secure, and so on, so forth. Amazon sidewalk is incredibly secure, and a great piece of technology for, for people generally, it just has the Amazon name. And so, you know, somewhat skeptical technology reporters went out there and kind of lambasted it. But the reality is, is I think that Amazon sidewalk is really useful for people. And I think that going forward now that whatever project chip is, you know, the, the, the movement toward matter, really giving Google the edge in terms of us having Well, not just Google, but really the consortium of companies, we’re going to want to see more of the protocols working together interoperating and giving us extension of network out there on the edge. You know, if you have a large piece of property, long driveway, you can now do those things that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. And Amazon is doing this as a way to kind of say, like, Hey, we’re serious about security, too. And, and this is nice, a nice little public relations win for them, I think, because Jeff Bezos going up to seek to up to space is not a public relations win for them. I guess that you’re gonna say. Okay, on to our next story, then what’s our next story?

Augusto Pinaud 27:03

The next story is about the new Google Drive for Windows and Mac. And, as art will say, it’s about time. I mean, I heard it, I don’t use the Mac, I don’t use the Mac much these days, or Windows for that matter. But I’m glad that if I need to, you know that that will improve on I already install it. And you can now imagine this, you can access all the files, yeah. Okay. On their old piece of software, you could not so I’m happy to see a significant improvement in there. And looking forward to what else is coming, I still wonder why you cannot have like Dropbox, where you can select, hey, I only want these files to synchronize with the computer, the rest of the thing I just want to see download when I use, you know, uninstalled again, when you

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:03

scan, you can’t do that. Now, again,

Augusto Pinaud 28:08

you can do it on individual files, but you cannot use folders.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:11

Now you can choose directories, it gives you in the preferences directories in order to do so I’ll show you later. It’s actually it’s capable of being done now. So you have basically all of the features of the former Google backup and sync, and you get a few extra features. The only thing that I think is missing in all of this is that before you could exclude certain file extensions, and in the new Google Drive for desktop applications for both Mac and Windows, you cannot. So all extensions are now are basically sucked up into the system. But you should be able to do that in the Google Drive. You know, in that sense, the thing that I’m really excited about with regard to Google Drive for desktop is that both Google Drive for Mac and Windows is now consistent with regard to how it’s going to operate. And the The only thing that folks need to be pay attention to is that if you go to the Google Drive website, currently, you will not see the links to the new Google Drive for desktop application. So use the link that is in the show notes. Because you will be downloading the just old standard backup and sync application, not the new Google Drive for desktop app that is only in the announcement for some reason, they’ll update the website eventually. But right now, it’s only available in that Google blog announcement, which I don’t know why, but that’s what the case is. But you’ll be able to now do multi account switching really easily, you are going to get a consistent File Stream experience now, which means that you don’t have to have documents on your system in order to be able to utilize those files directly from the Google Cloud environment. So it’s basically a cached and backed up in real time, you know, experience, which is really nice. You know, obviously people with shoddy or shaky internet connection, you know, will want to have something a little bit more secure and stable, you know, by basically moving those things offline. utilizing them and backing them up again. But for the most part, Google has thought this through really well in this new application. And I’m looking forward to utilizing it on all the platforms. See how it works. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 30:13

Okay, this one, I’m excited. So I’m going to introduce it. And then I’m going to say nothing else. But ball stakes, and then intend to switch with an own portable gaming PC. Finally, we are going to have a PC to run games. Hopefully, he’s going to be able to run the games that is going to be a handheld, and you’re going to be able to install good games into that thing, and it’s not going to be Nintendo.

Art Gelwicks 30:41

So who’s who’s bringing this out? valve? Oh, Valve? Oh, it’s the steam console? Oh, yes. Okay. Yeah, I’ve seen pictures of this thing. I liked the idea. I haven’t. All I’ve seen are the articles. The form factor, I’ll admit, it’s a bit long. I mean, it’s like holding the top of a shoe box in size. But you’re right. I mean, it’s one of those things that you can install games on it, you can play on it, things like that. That said, I think they missed the boat. And the reason why I say that is is because steam is also pushing their browser application. Soon, Microsoft already has theirs. I spent an entire weeks vacation in the evenings playing Xbox, on my browser on my Chromebook, and playing my Xbox games from the game pass and being a happy man. So while I like the idea of a physical device for that, I don’t know that it’s necessary anymore. I don’t like I said, they have to show me something in that steam device that I can’t do through the other channels that are they’re providing now for me to really be on board with it.

Augusto Pinaud 31:52

And that will be a really good point. If I can buy a Bluetooth remote and use my iPad there, that thing is dead.

Art Gelwicks 31:59

I use my Xbox controller hooked Bluetooth to my Chromebook. And because it still has a a courage jack, you know, three and a half millimeter earphone jack, plug my good headphones into it. And I’m gaming away. So yeah, I can’t play every possible game out there. But I play the ones that I like. So it works for me. But I do like the fact that they brought it out. I do like the fact that it’s an alternative to the Nintendo Switch because I’m always a big fan of competition. So we’ll see what they do with it. I’m very curious to see how it goes.

Augusto Pinaud 32:37

Well, one of the things before we go into the break in that interesting for me is that really sit well into that middle. When you know you don’t want to have the Xbox or I mean on assuming the Xbox being able to go remote. Okay, and you want to have play I think you know, kids, okay, there is a moment where the Nintendo Switch gets now can you once different kinds of games that are more in the PC, but then oh, now you go to the PC to make it really to be able to play now you’re talking to a completely different ballgame. So if this can really play games Well, at the same cost of the Nintendo Switch, then this is now an alternative for that middle machine between the Nintendo Switch and when the kids get to the point that they want a PC for gaming.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:31

I just want to know if the stream deck can actually load my remember the milk app. Alright guys, we have reached the end of our productivity and technology news this week. So we’re gonna take a break here a word from our sponsor, co working space by personal productivity club, and then we’ll come back for our productivity articles this week. Our new tools of the week. We have a segment from Dr. Frank Buck and our featured story this week, so we will see you after

Sponsor Voice Over 33:58

the break. Well, working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating and there’s something powerful about being with productive people even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core. We provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie. Visit Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do to again head over to Anything But idle.com forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:09

Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined, as always with Augusto Pinaud. And we have here today, Art Gelwicks, with us joining for the show. And so what we’re going to do now is we’re going to kick into our productivity headlines of the week, all the various productivity articles that we come across, and we picked a few to talk about a gousto. What is our first productivity article this week?

Augusto Pinaud 35:35

It’s from Spin suck. And it is really possible to have a four day workweek. And you did it rich go into a whole article into it is possible or not and discussed about the summertime. And I remember the first time I hear about summertime, when I start working here in the United States, I had a client in Minneapolis, and he was on Fridays we close at noon. And but they close at noon, okay, the whole summertime and now. And one of the things that she’s causing the articles, well, we ended up taking the whole Friday off because clients are fine. And one of the things is yes, client is fine. As far as they know, they can contact you if there is an emergency and there is going to be somebody able to respond if that kind of emergency happen. But are we really ready to go and leave behind the 40 Hour Workweek, you know, when we think about it was around 1921 Ford start implementing the four hour workweek or the sorry, the eight to five, again, five days a week. And he was at least in the states around 1938 when that came to be law, and now everybody was doing that. But I wonder really, how many people are working, you know, 40 hours a week, and I see both sides, I sadly see more people into the 50 plus than what I see on the 30 plans. So even if we say okay, we’re going to go to four days a week and 38 hours, are that really going to mean people are going to work that or we are going to see the same thing we see right now, where people who are not are our employees were exempt. You know, pay get paid for 40 hours, but then really work 50 plus?

Art Gelwicks 37:39

Yeah, see that? This is where I struggle with this whole concept. Because so often I hear people say, Oh, yeah, we’ll do a four hour, you know, four day workweek four day workweek, that’s great. Well, you’re talking about 14 hour days, in most cases, if you’re lucky that you’re still actually only working at a 40 hour window. So it’s a fiction. And it’s a fiction that’s being spewed to try and make you feel better about this. I’ve also seen ones where they talk about well, it’s a, you know, you go down to like a 32 hour week, but you do it over five days. So you’re having shorter days. But we know that’s not kicking in either. People are going to carry those days over unless you literally are deliberate of saying, Look, I’m starting at this time, and I’m ending at this time and I’m walking out the door and not touching anything, then you’re continuing to work for a four day work week to work. One of those days has to be non work, doesn’t mean the entire business has to close on the fourth On the fifth day, it just means that you only work four days out of that week. And that’s the right way to handle it. The business can stay open all week. But some people take Monday off, some people take Wednesday off some table, take Friday off that rotation, you get to take one day off during the week, so that you have your four. Great, that’s an incredible flexibility. That’s that’s what this should be. That’s what managers should be thinking of. This is what corporations should be thinking about. Because that does not negatively impact productivity in any way, shape, or form. And it’s highly beneficial. But this nonsense of we’re just going to close down on Fridays, and everybody’s going to be out is actually harder than it is beneficial. Because now you’ve got all that work that you were going to quote do on Friday, and you’re trying to cram it into the four days before that. And you have the stress building up on Wednesday and Thursday to make sure that you can actually have that extra day off. This really shouldn’t be a wonderful new benefit. This should be a smart way of working. But unfortunately, so many organizations would Have you sit there and be under site and under vision during all those hours to make sure you’re working, rather than actually taking account into account the fact that you can just get the job done. And maybe you can get it done faster than the time period that they put it out?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:19

Yeah. Alright, next story.

Augusto Pinaud 40:22

Next story is survey. There is a saying there was an article in consider survey needle, half of business owners said remote work is hurting productivity. employees may want to keep working from home, but bosses are expressing the concern about the output. And it is interesting, because that’s the theme of the many weeks coming back. And we have some people saying, I’m talking about the benefits of increasing the productivity, some businesses talking about No, there is no improvement. We want everybody come back. And at the same time, we have people saying, Well, if you want to come back, I will find a different horizon to work. So what’s going to happen? We don’t know, we know the shift is coming. You know, even Apple, Tim Cook announced that he wants people in and there has been open ACC slash what’s going to happen? We don’t know. But it for sure, I think companies who decide not to find a hybrid model? And who said no, we are only going to do it this way? Well, they’re going to see a shift on their employees. Is that going to be bad? We don’t know. But the good there is going to be a shift, I think on on their talent, and what’s going to happen after that.

Art Gelwicks 41:51

So I have I have two responses to this one to every company out there who’s going, Oh, this is negatively impacting our productivity, I got two words for you, prove it. Stop telling me Stop thinking stop being concerned. Prove it. And if you can’t prove it, shut up about it. Because all you’re doing is creating stress in the entire environment. Second, if you think if you can prove it is affecting productivity negatively, then go get all your management and sit them in a room and teach them how to manage, because it’s not the people who are working that are the problem.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:27

Yep, I couldn’t, I couldn’t more agree with what Art is talking about there is no, there’s no empirical evidence that shows that people working in a distributed environment outside of very clear industries that require direct contact with their, you know, market, that this is at all impacting businesses, you can see that by the very fact that the survey has a clear divergence between the employees saying that they are not being less productive, and the and the small, and the business owners who are basically saying that they are being impacted by them remote working, if anything, it’s poor scheduling, it is poor management, and or it is misalignment between mission of the organization and how management sees the mission of the organization being effectuated. Most often than not that misalignment is what actually creates this conflict. And therefore, people lose, lose vision, they lose their Northstar when it comes to wanting to work for a company that clearly doesn’t have their best interests in mind. And so, you know, you’ve got to figure out better ways in which to incentivize people to work in an environment. And we are also still living through a pandemic. I don’t really think people understand this, but here in the States, yes, we are, have been managing it. Well, we are starting to see a turn in that and we’re seeing lockdowns happen again. So the Delta variant has clearly made an impact and inroad into affecting us a little bit more, and we’ll see how that works out. But people think we’re kind of out of the woods, when in reality, this is a global issue, a pandemic is a global problem. And so we are in the midst of a pandemic. So to say that people somehow are, you know, just kind of, okay, and, and are continuing to work at the same productivity output. A lot of us are burned out, you know, from having to deal with these issues. We have family members dying, we have people getting sick, now young, younger people consistently getting more and more ill, and those are, those are all impacts on all of us from an emotional mental health perspective. So I want to be conscientious of that fact. And the issues that employers are having, not being able to find enough staff. You know, that is a concern and an issue right now, but part of that is actually industry’s fault. So you do enough to suppress the worker over a number of generations. This is the backlash that you get support your people, your people will do well, and, and so we’re kind of in that kind of middle ground. We’ll work it all out and this will all get solved in the end, but I will tell you that my bets are on workers, we are in that pendulum swing toward workers having a stronger input into how this is working, how this is going to work for them in terms of being able to have flexibility, we’re going to be in a hybrid work world very soon. And, and employers need to get on board. If they do get on board, they’ll see greater gains, both in productivity and profitability. And they just need to figure this out for themselves. All right, gousto. On to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 45:29

So our next article is what happened one happy story, hope your story, what did you want to know if he’s happy? What to do when an important team member quit? Or goes on leave? It goes on to leave maybe a happy story if it quits. I don’t know. But this is interesting, because doesn’t matter the size of the company, it’s a problem that I see, you know, I work mostly with small business. And this is the problem that personal leaves. Nobody knows what’s leaving. Nobody has a clue. But I see this in the small, the medium and the large. And, oh, what are you going to do with communication? What are you going to do with the work? What are you going to do? To explain people why what is going to be the your game plan, you know, and what you’re going to do with the people who stay because the problem is, as you were mentioning, with the challenges that exist right now, filling up positions, okay, now you have one people who leave and people came back to those memories in 2008, or nine, when people were leaving the company, and you’re like, Great, now I can do 20 more things to do at work. But as you said, people is reaching that level of burnout. So what’s going to happen?

Art Gelwicks 46:53

Yeah, knowledge management, knowledge, retention, knowledge transfer is probably the weakest link is one of the weakest links I’ve seen in so many organizations, the inability to give people time to capture what they’ve done, and how they’ve done it and to document and illustrate and communicate to each other and create redundancies within the systems and within people and have backups is something that I don’t understand why it’s so painful to see. Why is it so difficult to recognize that you do not want to introduce single points of failure, those being individuals. So having backup people just having, you know, sharing of information is critical. But yet so many organizations, small and large, and even our own? If we look at our own processes, and say, Have I got this written down clearly enough, that somebody else can do it? Almost all the time? The answer is no, no.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:58

I’ll say this, you know, not just from a quitting or leaving perspective, I had an employee pass away, abruptly, you know, many years back, and you need to be aware that, you know, you have humans working for you, and they can die. And, and when that person was she was the project manager for a very large part of our business. And we were lucky because we had Google workspace, I was able to, you know, immediately go into the admin console, realign documents, access everything over to someone else. It was emotionally, you know, impacting, you know, this person was, you know, 50 years old. for all intensive purposes, I thought she was in great health. I was irritated with her because I had called her that afternoon. And she hadn’t called me back when she had a good excuse. And, and so, you know, like, unfortunately, I called in and I got her I think it was her mother. And, you know, she said, unfortunately, you know, this, you know, my employee had passed away. And, and so it was, it was a shock to all of us, you know, we hadn’t expected it, but these things happen. And when you have someone who was holding thankfully, she documented so so well. But imagine if she hadn’t, you know, we would have been an alert, we have been a very difficult position, has she not done what she did in terms of making sure we had everything, every I dotted, every t crossed, she had all of those pieces put together. And we were able to make a transition. But, you know, these things happen. They happen to all of us.

Art Gelwicks 49:28

And this, this is the type of I get on I get worked up when people don’t recognize the wake up calls that the universe is providing us right now. This entire nonsense that we’ve been through over the past year and a half, has to be that reminder that at any point, a person can be pulled out of the conversation, short term or long term. And it can be for any number of reasons. I have a situation right now where one of the people I was working with is moving to a client’s company from Mike company in taking his knowledge with him? Well, that means all of everything that was in his head has gone along for the ride. So the question now becomes, well did, what did we have document, what did you write down so that we have to work from, and it, it works from a very bad place up because then you have frustration, you have stress coupled on top of it, you have a time sensitive sensitivity and an urgency. And often you have things fall through the cracks, or they don’t get executed at all, because you don’t know about it. So taking time making part of your plan and your process and your execution, to go back and write things down and capture them and discuss them so that everybody’s on the same page is one of the most important things you can do. I really believe that and it almost never happens, which is unfortunate.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 50:51

And and just like to that point, the article does a really good job of laying out how we should really be handling this stuff. And the thing that I really encourage everybody in my company to do, we’ve actually created an interest site, we’re in the Google workspace world, but you could do this in Microsoft and the SharePoint world. And so just like we just created an internal website, and just, we have everyone document their work before and after they do it. And that very simple trait means that mostly me has to go through and and document what I’m doing, because I’m doing most of the work, you know, just generally. And so I want to make sure that when I start to hand things off, you know, in the in those stages, I’m capable of doing that as seamlessly as possible. And it’s as easy as screen recording, you know, just pulling up loom or Vimeo now has their own screen recording technology, you can use zoom allows you to just open up your own zoom client, you don’t have to have anybody in the meeting, you can just start recording. And you can go ahead and record your screen, just doing what you’re doing and talking over it. And then we upload it, we upload it to the suitable intranet website. And now everybody has access to that for future needs. And that really helps to make sure there’s continuity of both quality. But also, yeah, I’m not always available, you know, I went away for a long weekend to see my family. And I wanted to make sure that everybody had everything they needed. And you know, I just quickly scan to make sure all the instructions were there in the system. And then I was able to go away, because I knew that that stuff was documented. So it can be for short term or long term kind of, of, of loss of labor. And you want to be able to make sure that everyone in the company is either cross trained, or has access to documentation. So those things can be done.

Art Gelwicks 52:37

Yeah, the video recording is an excellent idea, because so much so many organizations will say, well, we don’t document this stuff, because we don’t have someone to formally document it and review the material. And it doesn’t have to be that polished, it just has to be captured. So I agree with you. We’re all used to doing zoom and video meetings anymore. So you shouldn’t be comfortable enough. seeing yourself on the screen. Start your webcam, record it, save it, move on to the next thing.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:05

Exactly.

Augusto Pinaud 53:06

So our next news is the Virgin Galactic has opened a sweepstakes offering a trip to the space. And that is exciting for me because it is I grew up in the Star Wars Star Wars universe. And the idea of leaving on the space moving on the space was exciting for me. So seeing how this is getting closer and closer to be a reality for the people not I mean, astronauts could be do it. Yes. But this is now getting more and more closer to where normal people will be able to go one day to space. It is particularly exciting for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:53

I’ve got a few people I want to send a space. But

Augusto Pinaud 53:57

yes, but those are not going to go to space. That’s the problem.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:01

We could strap them to a rocket but anyway.

Augusto Pinaud 54:04

But those who want to just jump in the outside of the rocket, that’s the if that’s different.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:09

I’m not that cool. But uh, but I would like to, I think they could go live on other other planetary bodies and enjoy their time out there.

Art Gelwicks 54:17

I hear I hear read all the news about this stuff. Okay, this is all great. I just go back to 135 successful shuttle missions. And we’ll just leave it at that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:31

All right. With that we are going to turn it over to Dr. Frank Buck for the next segment. He does a segment for Anything But Idle called Why don’t they teach you this in school? And it’s all about edtech and productivity, education productivity. And so in this episode, Dr. Buck is going to be talking about starting a new job. He said starting a new job presents a learning curve for everyone for the new teacher. It’s especially steep. And so Dr. Frank Buck. He’s a longtime school administrator. Turn to time management expert, he’s gonna bring a gift to get making started a whole lot easier. And so take it away, Dr. Buck,

Unknown 55:08

the start of school is not far away. Today we’re talking about help for the new teacher. We’re talking about the teacher fresh out of college preparing a classroom for the first time. But we’re also talking about veteran teachers who are moving from one school and beginning again, in another. Both groups base a learning curve, because every school is unique with its own procedures, traditions, and personalities, so many things to learn about the new school, before the first day, the learning curve is steep, and the time is short. What if you had though, a list that put all of the two dues in one place? Well, that’s my gift for you today. And it’s right here at this link. Little things are big things when those little things add up to being ready. Because being ready is a big thing. If you’re a new teacher, or you know, we care about someone who is share that link with them, it’s a list of little stuff. This list talks about the people you’ll meet, and lead sure meet them before you need them. The places you’ll find in your new skill, because there’s no need to walk around loss. We’ll talk about the equipment you’ll use, like how to get a code for the copier before you actually made the copier. And the records that you’ll clean will explore the systems you’ll create in the procedures you’ll follow. All work and no play makes you a dull teacher. So let’s get out and explore the town where you’ll teach, and the rich content information you’ll collect. The list includes the learning environment that you’ll structure, the supplies you’ll need, and the cooperation you will foster. You know, you’ll likely find nothing on this checklist to be difficult. The difficulty lies in thinking through all the little things that add up to a successful start in a place. Well, thankfully, you don’t have to make that list. It’s done for you. It’s my gift to you. Alvin Toffler once said, you got to think about the big things while you’re doing the small things so that all the small things go in the right direction. So all the new teachers out there, as you begin a new year in a new place, may have a small things go in the right direction for you. This is right book, helping you get organized and make it look easy.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:42

All right, thank you Dr. Buck for his segment on education productivity. And that brings us along to new tools of the week. And of course, as you know, each week, Augusto and I scour the interwebs for all of the various wonderful both productivity technology news articles, and also productivity blog and other news articles that we bring to you for each show. But in the process, we also come across a lot of tools and services and apps that we think you might also like and of course when we have a guest like art, we also invite them to share tools that they might like as well. And so in new tools of the week, that’s what we do. This week, we have three tools to share with you. And so we’re going to do that. So our first tool this week is a tool called TL dv. And this is actually really interesting to me. So what TLD v does is it actually takes Google meet meetings, it goes ahead and pulls a transcript of those meetings, and then provides back to you a set of key moments in the meetings with the transcripts associated with it. If anybody knows there was an application once upon a time it still exists that was called Sona sent notetaker. And it’s incredibly powerful allows you to basically take a my there, I feel like something is I think the TLD v website is is giving me problems. So I’m going to go ahead and let’s see if I can upload the video in the background of the TLD v website is actually causing my my system to have a have a little bit of a connection. So I’m going to bring that down for the moment. Anyway, so so TL dv, what it does is it provides you with a this transcript, it gives you all these key pieces and Sona sent notetaker back in the day and still does this. You could take a PowerPoint presentation, throw it in there and it audio records the lecture say you’re in a school environment and it will then give you the ability to color and tag different audio clips throughout the session. And so TLD vi does something very similar. It’s giving you the capability of going ahead and tagging different parts of the video with these transcripts associate with it. So you can just basically grab the key moments. And that’s all you have to read. You just have to read those few pieces. And now you know, everything that happened in the meeting that was salient. So really interesting tool. I have been playing around with it and seeing limited success. But I think that’s just a matter of using it more and seeing how it all works. But it’s certainly something that folks should check out. So TLV TLD, v.io, we’ll put a link to it in the show notes. And I’ll go from there. Already Cousteau, what is your

Augusto Pinaud 1:00:29

So mine is an application called jump dekstop. And you can basically connect to any computer a Windows or Mac, from basically a Chromebook or an or an iPad, or even another Mac, what I like about it, is I do some tech support from the family. So now I have with that setup, my parents computers, my grandmother, my mother in law computer and all that. And I can access all from the iPad, and it will do fix the resolution of everything will make the mouse work better. I used to use Chrome Remote chrome desktop. And that’s what I’ve been using for a really long time. But this fixed a lot of things. One of them is allow me to network wake up the device. So I don’t need them now to be out there it It worked with Windows. So when windows send the alert that you need to be there, I can click that in use in remote, Chrome Remote Desktop, I cannot. So I wanted to release a really incredible app. It costs for the iPad around $15. And now I can connect to all these machines, you know, in a much, much wonderful way.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:47

fantastic art, what’s your tool

Art Gelwicks 1:01:50

this week, mine’s actually a physical tool. It’s the now this is like the worst name ever. It’s the Chromecast 4k Ultra with Google TV. It’s their little streaming device. And the Chromecast had been around for a year or years. But I finally got my hands on one of the new ones. And I have to admit, I’m a bit of a movie hound. I love my movies. And I love the streaming services. So comparing Roku and Plex and fire stick and this. Since I’ve installed this, I haven’t used the other ones. The interface is nice. The app slowed cleanly. It plays all the all the services that I that I use, and I use way too many. It’s just a solid implementation. But there are some very nice features on it that I wanted to call out right away. One is the fact that you can add in a USB drive to the end of the Chromecast and pull video files from it and play directly into it, which you can do with some of the others. But I like their implementation on here. The second one is probably the more important for me though. There are two buttons on there. There’s a YouTube button and a Netflix button. You can reprogram those buttons. And there’s actually an app, I think it’s called remote keys or something like that, for the device that you can reprogram all the buttons on the remote, nice feature. Just the fact of holding down the YouTube button allowed me to change it from YouTube, to YouTube TV, or to youtube music or Youtube Kids just by holding it and configuring it. So with the new Google TV interface, they’ve done an excellent job. And this thing’s really cheap. It’s like 40 bucks, maybe 9949 99. There you go. So it’s not expensive. It’s a quick install quick setup. If you have a Google account already in odd, it sets up almost right away. And the key thing about this and the reason why I really wanted to call this out, is Google is really pushing their developers to develop multi platform applications. This is one of those platforms. They’re trying to get them to write games and build apps that work on Android Chromebook on they work on the phone, they work on a tablet, and they work on this TV implementation as well. So really nice device. Also, if you use stadia, it’s a great way to play the games too.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:04:26

And that’s what I was gonna say this is this is one of the supported chromecasts for playing the stadia on the stadia platform with a with the remote controller with the remote control. And that’s a really great experience. So wonderful. So the Chromecast Say that again, the Chromecast

Art Gelwicks 1:04:43

the Chromecast, 4k Ultra with Google TV. fantastically totally, the only worst named product is the Samsung phone I have when they did the note 20 Ultra 5g so I don’t know what these marketing people are doing but please Stop it. Oh, man.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:01

All right, that takes us along to our final story this week, which is our featured story of the week, which has gotten a lot of misunderstanding. And so I thought we would have a discussion about it. But basically, Microsoft has announced windows 365. And so windows 365 is basically windows 10, which will become windows 11, the PC environment in the browser. I can’t even say it’s really in the cloud, I guess it’s in the cloud, but it is, it’s basically your your browser being streamed in your your alesse. Windows is being streamed from the cloud, into your browser and being utilized. Gentlemen, what do you think about this?

Art Gelwicks 1:05:42

Do you want to go first that gousto? Or shall I? Um,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:49

so I’ll start I’ll start here, the pricing is for enterprise, this is not an individual.

Art Gelwicks 1:05:55

This does not take the place of grandma’s computer.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:59

Absolutely not. And so so on the enterprise level, I see this as a good other option. That is that is not currently available for some very unique circumstances for enterprise. So this is just one option in the panoply of other options that are basically similar products provided by Windows.

Art Gelwicks 1:06:24

Yeah, to me, this is this is kind of a product in search of a problem, because you’ve been able to do virtual machines for years ever. Yeah. And various implementations there of this still requires the hardware device, it requires at least at a minimum and OSS, at a Chrome OS level, to be able to fire up a browser to be able to get to this. It’s not the cheapest thing in the world, I think it’s like, and correct me if I’m wrong, I want to say it’s like $30 per month for a machine. That’s the equivalent of like a four gig machine with 128 Giga storage, which is not exactly a high end machine. So I’ve really been struggling since this announcement came out as to what’s the use case that they’re targeting specifically for this, because as an old IT guy, every time somebody says, Yeah, we can run your machine virtually, you know, well, that’s fine. But how’s it really helping me? Now there are circumstances where I get it, where it makes sense to not have a whole room of machines, if I was setting up a call center, this might be something where I would do a cost analysis. But then again, I’m also going to have to depreciate the hardware versus a monthly costs on the licensing and everything else. So even though I’m getting a Windows machine, doesn’t mean I’m getting an office 365 license with it doesn’t mean I’m getting, you know, exchange licenses with it or Azure licenses. So it’s really, I don’t know, I hope you guys have an idea.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:08:02

I think there are certain circumstances where the the work in setting up the Windows environment in such a way for a user, especially user that needs to move from one location to the other, I think this product is going to work well for the for that kind of enterprise environment, where you have an IT administrator who is constantly having to deal with access issues. for remote work, folks who are who are constantly moving from one location to the other with a specific visioning they want to have for those particular users. And I think this, this is that problem that’s that they’re solving for those particular users. And I only say that, because when they did the announcement, they kind of use that as the use case of saying, you know, this basically allows you to, with high precision set up your environment, and all of those App of the OS and the applications associated with it, which they, which they have said will fully support, all of the applications you’re currently using. Those applications will be supported in that streamed cloud environment. Um, so I see that as being the most practical use case. I don’t think this is for everybody, though. No, I

Art Gelwicks 1:09:08

could I can see this now that you mentioned it that way. I can see this used in environments where you have high turnover. Where you have, for example, in the education space for any university, you’ve got, you know, a state run University, you’ve got 10,000 kids coming in in the fall. That’s a lot of labor, if you can just literally run a script routine that spins up 10,000 workstations, or at least stores the equivalent of them and allows you to sign in and out of them. Without having the big iron in the background to actually create the virtual environments. There could be a potential cost savings there. The other thing that I don’t think they they really framed very well is even the cost numbers that they’re outlining. When you’re dealing at a volume level that’s going to make this worthwhile. You’re going to get a reduced costs on that volume line. syncing. So you may actually save some stuff there. But it does open up some interesting opportunities. Is this Microsoft saying, Hey, you know what? If you got a Chromebook, you can still run Windows? If you got, you know, I don’t know if you can run this thing through a Safari browser, but if you can, that’s a whole different conversation too.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:19

So I don’t know about that.

Art Gelwicks 1:10:21

Talked about running Windows in the cloud for years. Now they can, the question is, who’s going to go do it? And how successful with it? Will they be?

Augusto Pinaud 1:10:33

Well, the question is for how long to because the problem is. So this is what I think this is, this could be really great. Over time, where you can now come especially in the third world countries, if you make this available, you can eliminate, you know, all those licenses that are hacked or pirated for, for Microsoft, okay, in which you now get a paying client to access a legit machine. Okay?

Art Gelwicks 1:11:09

Good, because I got an idea where this might be usable, go ahead. So

Augusto Pinaud 1:11:12

that I think is useful, I mean, not as a corporate as, but also, when you have now the reality is we are going towards a global thing. Now, if you get a client, who pretty good an employee, again, this, this happened to a company, it was I’m consulting with, they got a client, or employee or a potential employee in South Africa. Okay, before COVID. So are you going to try to ship a laptop there? No. But now you can get them joar, secure, you know, inside of what you need, with the software that you need. And just tell them just get out any machine and you’re logging into this machine. So I can see in cases like that, you know, a lot of them. The other thing that I see is, if I were a corporate with access with that, that means I can now travel, just with my phone. And when I get to the hotel, I can connect remotely to that machine without the need to carry a heavy laptop or a heavy PC, just relying on the Wi Fi, given that regard, depending where you go. But that is really interesting to me, what just

Art Gelwicks 1:12:30

what just struck me is because of the environment that we have right now. And we’re moving back to a hybrid type of implementation with so many companies, where they’re trying to bring people back into the offices, this does raise the opportunity of a hotelling model, where you have bare bones machine sitting on the desktop, you never know what machine you’re going to have or where you’re going to be sitting because you’re going to reserve at any spot and it doesn’t matter. virtualization services do require some sort of a data load onto the local machine. Currently, there’s, there’s some part of an image file that gets loaded, that has to be transferred has to be cleaned up. That’s what gets corrupted. This eliminates that because it just means the browser has to work. So the flexibility is much more much greater in this model. Now, can you do everything through it is fast enough? Is it reliable? What happens when Oh, I don’t know the VPN goes down, you know, does everybody’s window machine stop working? Because I kind of think that would be the case. Those are things that an IT department is going to have to look very deeply into on this. I don’t know that having your Windows machine being completely dependent on internet connectivity is necessarily a good thing in many cases.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:13:55

And the way I understood it was that actually the VPN would would not really matter. In this particular case, I guess, depending upon which VPN you’re talking about. But the the idea here is that Microsoft, everything is, is sitting in Microsoft’s cloud unless people do on prem solutions with Microsoft in those in those cases. But this cloud solution is completely Microsoft, all the data, everything is inside of Microsoft’s coffers, and so segmented and streamed from that location. So you have less and the data all together in that space. So the only missing element is the internet connectivity.

Art Gelwicks 1:14:31

Yeah, but that’s, that’s the situation where I can see this going off the rails. Let’s say you have an office building, and everybody in that office building is using this type of an implementation. And you lose the network connection from that office building out to the Internet, and maybe your VPN connection that’s getting you out there. Now. It’s not like those machines just lose internet connectivity, and they can still keep working on their local copy of Excel. Those machines just go dead. There’s nothing to interact with based on my rudimentary knowledge of what they’re doing. But that’s a big concern is to, how long is that going to be down, I granted, I’m not gonna lose anything, everything stored there, that’s a wonderful protection. But we’re back to that single point of vulnerability where infrastructure plays a much greater role. And this is at a much deeper level than what we were talking about earlier. So yeah,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:15:24

either way, I think this is a good other option for enterprise to have, I think this will be interesting to watch. I’m curious about it, just from from the perspective that there are circumstances where I would actually like to have a license, where I can just basically pull windows from anywhere I am, and know that it’s ready and loaded and having everything set up for me. And so especially if I’m in an environment that I don’t feel comfortable with, accessing my system, other than through the browser, that way, you know, everything I’m doing is basically, inside of the walls of that particular experience, it’s sandboxed. So I can see some opportunities here, where there being edge cases for individuals to take advantage of this, I also see enterprise, probably adopting this, you know, in in these situations where they have a distributed workforce, they’re hotelling, they have hybrid workers who are who have varying degrees of technologies, you know, some have higher end laptops, and some have lower end laptops, and they want to be able to scale those out, especially lots of employees who want to use their Mac’s in their, you know, they have their Mac books in their personal world. And the companies don’t want to have to buy licenses for you know, every platform, now they can just do all of that in one streamlined space, I feel like that could be a really beneficial thing for them as well.

Art Gelwicks 1:16:45

So concurrent licensing, could be a big thing with this.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:16:49

Yeah, yeah, it helps to streamline that whole process. So with that, that brings us to just a couple of announcements that we have. And then we’re gonna close out, I did want to make just a quick note here, about one thing that is not in the rundown. but bear with me, gentlemen, which is that if you have recently done the latest Chrome OS update, there is a bug that has been plaguing some people and locking them out of Chrome, your Chromebook. So just be mindful, to maybe wait a couple of days and not update Chrome OS, because there is that lockout issue that’s been occurring, I know that the Chrome OS team is working on it, and should hopefully get everybody back on on track. But if you are prompted to update Chrome OS, just don’t do it for a couple of days. This is not the Chrome browser, this is the operating system on Chrome books. So just be mindful, it is locking folks out, have at least one in the household that’s currently locked out, and will require a power wash, and so on and so forth. So just be mindful that that’s happening. And are there any other items in the announcements gousto that we need to mention that

Augusto Pinaud 1:18:01

there is going to be a lot more articles in the show notes, when the show gets published tomorrow. And that’s

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18:09

fantastic. So with that, Art, thanks so much for joining us, how can folks keep up to date with you and what you’re doing with the idea bump,

Art Gelwicks 1:18:19

you can always you can always stop by the idea pump and see what’s going on. And I just want to take a second and plug the new show that a gousto and I are doing called cross platform. We’re doing it on Wednesdays usually hits Thursday morning where we talk about doing all kinds of things across different hardware and software platforms and trying to make it work in as many different places as we can. So it’s a brand new show. We’re just getting our feet under us we have a lot of fun doing it. And we even get a special guest come in this week, but I’m not going to reveal who yet.

Augusto Pinaud 1:18:53

So we are not but we are going to be able to share that the guy kind of likes Evernote. Yeah. talks a lot about that maybe

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:19:04

Alright, so with that thank you Art for joining us here on Anything But Idle. My pleasure. Always a pleasure to have you. Alright gousto we have put another episode in the bag. Thank you so much. 70 7070 episodes in thank you so much for putting the show together every week.

Augusto Pinaud 1:19:23

My pleasure as always.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:19:25

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