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Microsoft's Windows 365 Cloud PC Service Will Range From $20 To $162 Per User Per Month (zdnet.com) 102

When Microsoft unveiled its Windows 365 Cloud PC desktop-as-a-service product last month, officials said they'd release pricing on the day the service became generally available, August 2. As promised, the company has published pricing, and it ranges from $20 per user per month for the lowest end SKU, to $162 per user per month for the most expensive one. From a report: Windows 365 is available in two editions: Windows 365 Business and Windows 365 Enterprise. The Windows 365 Business SKUs are capped at 300 users per organization. The $20 per user per month Business price is for a single virtual core, 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage -- and requires the Windows Hybrid Benefit. (Hybrid Benefits are Microsoft's Bring-Your-Own license model, which allows customers to apply existing (or new) licenses toward the cost of a product.) Without the Hybrid Benefit discount, that same SKU is $24 per user per month.

At the high end, the Business SKU with eight virtual cores, 32 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage costs $162 per user per month --- or $158 per user per month with the Windows Hybrid Benefit. The Enterprise SKUs for Windows 365 are priced similarly. A single virtual core, 2 GB of RAM and 64 GV of storage will go for $20 per user per month. At the high end, the 8 virtual core, 32 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage SKU will go for $158 per user per month.

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Microsoft's Windows 365 Cloud PC Service Will Range From $20 To $162 Per User Per Month

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  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:03PM (#61647581)

    Shadow Cloud Computing costs less and you get you OWN GPU per VM!

  • by Radical Moderate ( 563286 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:08PM (#61647591)
    Some publishers, Adobe for one, specifically prohibit running their product remotely on a VM. It would be nice to see MS use their muscle to get them to back down, wonder how that will play out.
    • Adobe don't prohibit running on a VM at all, just like many other vendors though their licensing changes on multi user devices to avoid you using a single licensing for many users.
  • by iamnotx0r ( 7683968 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:15PM (#61647613)
    Microsoft has been working on making themselves a monthly pay for service. Most do not see this. The suits and ties, looked at cell phones and said, hey, this is what we need. MS failed at cell phones. Yet they are making everything thing that they have be a monthly service. The OS is just the new vehicle for this. No internet?, no working stuff. Excel, Word, Powerpoint, all a service, no stand alone. As soon as MS can, email will be a monthly fee, and anything else that MS can charge recurring for. I have abandoned MS. I do not need to pay a monthly fee for anything they offer.
    • email IS monthly fee for domain use on cloud

    • Microsoft has been working on making themselves a monthly pay for service. Most do not see this.

      It's been going on since 1997 with the beginning of "MMO's" aka when they started stealing networking code out of PC rpg's to sell them back to a computer illiterate public with monthly subscription. That's how we ended up with steam in 2003.

      It's also why we lost dedicated servers and level editors.

      Shit we had 20 years ago - Quake GTK level editor

      http://icculus.org/gtkradiant/ [icculus.org]

      Free maps mods and skins

      https://ws.q3df.org/models/ [q3df.org]

      • makes me miss Quakeworld? Whatever preceded game spy.

        Damn. All the mods and servers in one place.

        • makes me miss Quakeworld? Whatever preceded game spy.

          Damn. All the mods and servers in one place.

          Kali and Kahn IPX emulation all the way, Warcraft 2 over Kali was the shit back int the day. Same with Descent 2, Duke 3d, doom 2, what a time to be alive. Then the shit hit the fan in 1997 when they figured out the kids were computer illiterate and everything went to shit.

          Modern slashdot is filled with these idiots who are literally destroying videogame history, shit is tragic. What wonders what will be preserved of post mmo/post steam/denuvo games.

      • by edis ( 266347 )

        You still were able to calculate and purchase yourself Windows and Office. You go under restless RENT now, ownership expense being dramatically higher than before, in exchange of the current candy.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Hmm. MMOs were inherently better suited to a server based model. One of the Ms is for 'Massively', indicating support for a number of users that would, erm, massively overwhelm a peer to peer set up.

        Add in the desire to prevent cheating and the developer owned server model made a level of sense. Add in the continued development, persistent character/item storage, server hosting costs and support teams, and ongoing charging made sense.

        MMOs did not steal networking code and they did not sell them back to an i

    • That would be a more relevant point in a story about software licenses though. This is an instance of a cloud desktop PC, in other words access to hardware and bandwidth. This is not something anybody would offer perpetually for a 1-time payment.
      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        It's also something people in business are used to paying a lot for. Citrix built an entire company offering this, charging companies scary sums for just the software needed.

        How the MS Enterprise pricing compares would be interesting to understand - you'd need to factor in the cost of hardware (or cloud services), hypervisor, operating system(s), virtual desktop software, all of the user management and security overlay across that.

        I'm thinking I need to also look into how customisable the MS offering is. Ca

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, MS is basically parasitic at this time. And they know it. So they are hard at work making the one step to replace them even harder and this fits right in.

    • I do not need to pay a monthly fee for anything they offer.

      Neither do I since I'm not a business and don't intend to use this business only product for which they already charge a monthly fee.

  • by aegisqc ( 7648148 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:17PM (#61647627)
    I am not sure everybody who have a workstation with 16-32GB of ram, will like to pay 10K~ over 5 years, to have a "cloud pc", to which at the end, you have no hardware left to resell or to re-use. And when you start deciding how many core is "right" for the employees, you also normalize the delays there and there, and their workload capacity, and flatten it all. That so wrong. While I am sure there are some market for this, I hope that Microsoft will stick with the desktop license model, for those who do not want that cloud pc model. That a hell of a ROI to get by.
    • The best use-case for this Windows-365 is as a "Plan B" for people jumping ship to ChromeOS or MacOS. If things go horribly wrong after switching and a user finds out they NEED to stay on Windows it's a simple/quick way to fix the issue temporarily.

      Even in that case 365 is very expensive. For $145/month you can get a MUCH better specced computer from OVH [ovhcloud.com]. OVH has 30sec on-demand delivery for Xeon+64GB+dual-NVMe-1TB server for $122/month. You have to pay an additional $23/month to get them to put a Window
    • I am not sure everybody who have a workstation with 16-32GB of ram, will like to pay 10K~

      You're not playing for this. Your employer is. Unless that is you have a Business or Enterprise agreement with Microsoft for their cloud services at home in which case I would just write WTF.

      MS is not replacing a desktop licensing model. This is replacing it's Azure remote provisioned desktop business for people who need a cloud environment for something.

    • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

      If you have a workstation with those specs and aren't traveling around multiple sites on a regular basis then this isn't really applicable to your situation. Windows 365 is more of a solution to accessing the same computer from multiple sites without the need to set up a vpn and remote access.
      Office 365 has been offered for several years and yet Microsoft hasn't stopped selling the non-cloud retail version that they have always sold.

  • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:20PM (#61647647)

    It seems that every decade or so, Microsoft pushes out a Thin Client solution. In which fails, because of Security Issues, Speed and performance, lack of consistent network infrastructure, no downtime working option, complex setup, and the fact that the Thin Clients often cost nearly as much as a New PC does anyways.

    • by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:33PM (#61647697)

      Yeah, I really don't get this as a business model - it also completely takes control away from enterprises - microsoft can pretty much call the shots on whatever this service delivers.
      It could easily render an enterprises custom software useless with an update, in seconds, as the service updates the OS.

      If there's an issue with the service, it renders an entire enterprises workforce unable to work - a single point of failure so massive, it could do serious financial damage.

      This is centralisation at its worst - absolute worst.

      It's a terrible idea.

      • by Monoman ( 8745 )

        I would think this is intended primarily for M364 shops looking for a creative ways to provide devices to their end users. Until the costs come down I suspect most early adopters will fall into one of two categories.... "Money isn't an issue" or "Let's put a toe in the water".

        I can see it as a way to setup cloud based admin workstations. Lock them down with 2FA and some strict network restrictions.

      • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:57PM (#61647765)

        You are 100% correct. And for some reason the management types are drooling all over themselves at the prospect. They love the entire "cloud" ecosystem. Now when something fails they don't have to accept responsibility and making sure their team can get them back up and running. All they can do is point to the etherical "companies" in charge of the cloud services that are dead and say, "it's not my fault." The number of times I've heard, "no more updates and we're not responsible for anything!"

        That scenario is great so long as everything is completely perfect. The first sign of trouble that isn't something the provider sees literally every day, and you're essentially boned.

        I can't wait for this MBA cover-my-ass solution to blow up so hard in management's face that it actually makes them fear for their careers. Then maybe we can get back to making infrastructure decisions based on responsibility rather than cowardice. Or I'll be retired and be able to just point and laugh from the stock holder's meeting.

        • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @02:17PM (#61647821)

          As a side note, I am an MBA. But the problem is too many Execs and whatnot are more afraid of the responsibility for an issue, vs having a measurable increase of functionality. Well we have been out of commission for a week, but it is Microsoft Fault seems preferable to 20% of our systems were down for a day, because someone tripped over the network cable in the Server room, and knocked down a rack.

          While it might be easier to just send lawyers and get a refund for failing to meet SLO to Microsoft, than actually looking at why the Server room was prone to such problems, but the cost of a week outage, vs a day partial outage, is big money.

          Companies like Microsoft are experts in writing contracts, and have a much bigger legal team, so good luck blaming Microsoft and getting anything tangible from it.

      • > Yeah, I really don't get this as a business model

        Monthly service fees are a more consistent and reliable income than putting out a new version every X years and hoping everyone is willing to pony up the cash for an upgrade they likely don't need.

        That's the business case. I'm sure for Microsoft, being more convenient to roll out security patches is a plus for them as well, but mostly it's the idea of steady and reliable income vs. a huge investment in development in a product that might fall on its face

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          My guess is MS got really scared when too many people did not move to Win10 because there essentially was no reason to. With a service, they do not have delay the still missing improvements compared to a mature OS and can stop coming up with fake features and meaningless design changes to justify a move to a new OS or office package.

      • If there's an issue with the service, it renders an entire enterprises workforce unable to work - a single point of failure so massive, it could do serious financial damage.

        This is centralisation at its worst - absolute worst.

        It's a terrible idea.

        I'm looking forward to having to explain this to middle-management and then being ignored!

      • by dnaumov ( 453672 )

        Yeah, I really don't get this as a business model - it also completely takes control away from enterprises - microsoft can pretty much call the shots on whatever this service delivers..

        What on Earth gave you this idea? You do realize AAD, Intune et al are a thing, right?

      • Yeah, I really don't get this as a business model

        It's to end piracy buddy, this has been in the working since the 90's, they are going to turn the global telecom into giant mainframes big media conglomerates control. You'll seen be able to be banned from the internet.

        See the scary shit they are working on @ trusted computing group.

        Trusted networking

        https://trustedcomputinggroup.... [trustedcom...ggroup.org]

        Trusted software stack

        https://trustedcomputinggroup.... [trustedcom...ggroup.org]

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        This is centralisation at its worst - absolute worst.

        It's a terrible idea.

        Indeed. But the move from local computing to server computing and back has been going on for as long as there are computers. This is just another cycle of the same old thing.

      • It could easily render an enterprises custom software useless with an update, in seconds, as the service updates the OS.

        Quite the opposite actually. MS has a long history of maintaining compatibility almost at the expense of many other developments through OS updates. This service exists largely to provide ready access to enterprise custom software to the users in a custom environment decoupling it from the OS.

        This is a replacement for Azure Virtual Desktops deployed within a corporate environment which has provided easier than ever access to custom enterprise software provisioned directly with a networked environment which

    • by dnaumov ( 453672 )

      If you think thin clients have failed as a solution, you haven't been paying attention for 10+ years.

      • For the most part we have been more successful with Thick Clients. Such as web applications, in which the browser is given the code to run and it runs it. Vs. nightmare solutions such as using Citrix (the more popular thin client software), Which things in general really suck. As you need farms of servers that are more expensive than PC's for the performance needed.

    • both onshore and offshore. They don't work well, but it's amazing what a company can do when they can just make the employees work harder to make up for broken tools. The offshore guys especially get screwed because nobody gives a rat's ass how many hours they work.

      Anything is possible with the proper application of evil and indifference to human suffering.
  • by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:29PM (#61647683)

    What would you use that low end spec for? I mean technically, the requirements say you can, but in reality the performance is miserable with lots of paging and slowdown. It should start at 8GB and go from there.

    Anyway, seems like a totally raw deal all around unless you're an enterprise client where the cost scaling and economics makes sense. But you still need a thin client on the user end to interface with this virtual PC, that cost has to be factored in as well. the one time I could see this being useful is for a short term contract where you need to scale up to do FEA type calculations on some powerful virtual machines, and those need to run Windows.

  • Way overpriced (Score:5, Informative)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:35PM (#61647707)

    The $20 option is no more powerful than a Chromebook, actually less powerful than many Chromebooks I've seen. Plus you have to have some kind of computer to access it, so you're already paying for a computer, but then you need one in the cloud.

    You pay $100 a month for 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB storage, and 4 core CPU. That's $1200 a year. At that price you could buy a similarly specced new machine and pay it off in less than a year.

    • They practically brag about it; at least openly admit to it.

      How many times do people pay for their "free" smart phones? Yeah, insurance... well, buy insurance then. it's just sooo much work to buy a new phone! I'd rather pay monthly for my phone and insurance then after I've over-payed get a "free" upgrade instead of buying one.

    • Welcome to the cloud!

      I could literally run 4 of those $20 thin clients off my $100 Synology NAS.

      This really shouldn't be surprising because margins on cloud services are off the fucking chart.

    • You pay $100 a month for 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB storage, and 4 core CPU. That's $1200 a year. At that price you could buy a similarly specced new machine and pay it off in less than a year.

      Cheaper to just buy a macbook pro and turn it over every 3 years. Microsoft isn't going to make this the only option, it's just an offerring for the niche market that it appeals to.

    • I assume this comes with support from Microsoft, in which case this is a bargain.

      Lets say you have a company with 1000 people, so $100 per month, you are looking at $1,200,000 per year. Normally for those 1000 people you need a team of at least 10 people for support, then an IT manager, your exchange server tech person x2, network tech, purchasing people to buy PC hardware, not mention the cost of the PC hardware. Then you have USB monitoring software to stop people plugging stuff in, you have to manage dis

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        now I just give people a box and tell them to find their own workspace. Genius.

        Ah. Without wishing to detract from the other points you've made on this particular matter I fear it may help to highlight how businesses have been managing this for the past 15+ years: Laptops.

        Amazing, I know. A whole computer you can take with you that lets you work where you choose. It can even (and I hope you'll believe me here) act as a thin client!

        Astonishing, isn't it.

        Still, it does come with all of the other downsides you mentioned, so your other points are valid.

        • I fear it may help to highlight how businesses have been managing this for the past 15+ years: Laptops.

          My workers seem to have a habit of losing laptops. It never goes down well with the client when I tell them my worker left a laptop on a bus, in the pub, on a park bench, got robbed walking home etc, and the laptop contained all of the source code to their secret project. I'd be glad to not have to worry about that happening.

      • I don't think you can really get rid of support though. They still have to have a physical machine to connect to the virtual machine. You still need to maintain your hardware and your local network, and give support for issues that aren't related for connecting to the virtual machine. Unless you are having issues with one of the included applications like Office, don't expect Microsoft to help out.

        You could save a bunch of money by having people work from home, but I don't see how that requires cloud based

        • Funny, I've got a thin client. It's a repurposed Lumia 950, the USB3 port connects to a hd-500 breakout box [microsoft.com] that drives a monitor+kb+mouse, and I just remote into a VMWare virtual PC.

          There's so many things I can use as the thin client. The point is you can put your entire office IT in the cloud. Look at this from a risk management point of view. Why would I want a whole lot of pieces of hardware spread all over the planet with IP stored on them? When the whole lot can be centralized and managed remotely? Th

  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:36PM (#61647709)
    if you had such a powerful machine running in the cloud you would usually want to have low latency by having it run locally instead unless you’re doing something that's best done by proper servers anyway.
    • Depends on what is the slow part of your software. If it's raw calculation it may be faster in the cloud. If it's accessing data sets stored in Azure it may be faster in the cloud (that's my experience running some corporate software that is far faster in VDI than locally even if the desktop itself has noticeably lower latency).

  • by holophrastic ( 221104 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:36PM (#61647715)

    There are those business that are technology businesses. They use technology to connect their staff, to communicate with customers, and to track workflow.

    Today, those businesses spend money to purchase hardware. They spend money to purchase software. They spend money to maintain both, optimize both, and plan the future of both.

    All of that comes at a real cost, both for purchases and for human salaries. I'll be happy to be able to recommend these types of everything-as-a-service because there's a huge amount of complexity that gets replaced with a different-but-ultimately-smoother kind of complexity. Whether or not it's directly cheaper, it's definitely business-actually cheaper, and it's way smoother.

    But then there's the other kind of small business clients that I have. Those are the person-to-person businesses. The ones that make money while staring at their customers, face-to-face. Amongst my client-book, they are invariantly minimal on the technology usage. Sure they have a computer or two, and sure they use that technology every day, but it's insignificant compared to their human efforts.

    For those businesses, technology was always just replacing paper. The security needed to be as good as the paper security. And we all know that every filing cabinet in the country uses the very same little key. And we all know that a staff member can be bribed for cheap, right at the front desk.

    The only saving-grace for the computer was that, once set up properly, it runs for a decade, with no moving parts and no additional supplies and virtually zero maintenance -- an hour a year; pencils need more sharpening than that! Paper costs more in band-aids than that!

    For those clients, the everything-as-a-service is immediately ten times the cost, and a forever headache of changes and differences and inconsistencies to a tool used less than 1% of the business day.

    And that's exactly the difference: usage. Computing as a service is an at-scale solution. Any business needing the latest version of MS Office has only benefits to the subscription model of the last bunch of years. But the vast vast vast vast majority of businesses are fine with MS Office '97 -- which makes sense because they are still manufacturing the very same white socks that you've been wearing for decades.

    I'm sure my barbershop's straight-razor shaves aren't any different because their appointment booking is on-line. I couldn't care less. The only thing better than a great shave from a 70-year barber is the same great shave from his 90-year old father -- and yes, that happened to me one glorious Saturday morning!

    I don't need a reminder, my face colludes with my mirror to remind me every day. My pillow chimes in every night.

    • Your second class of companies can actually benefit more from cloud solutions though than many of the technology focused ones. Interoperability is less of a priority, and they just need something that works and deals with edge issues for them.

      That said, they can do it for very little money with [hosted or on-prem] tools like NextCloud with the devices they already have/need for other reasons, like phones or tablets. There is no reason to have Microsoft Word to create a flyer or something no need for Excel

      • You've just listed four pieces of software that class of business doesn't know how to use. Which means that you're suggesting an IT company sets it up for them, teaches them to use it, and then supports it for ten years.

        Not only isn't that the cheaper option, but it's also no longer possible to find an IT company that will manage a two-computer small business.

        • Jeesh we are back to the “MIS” days. You are correct the companies don’t need an IT consultant; what they need is a business consultant to recommend turnkey solutions at the smallest end of the buisinesses. That said, every business I know that has fewer than five computers uses quickbooks (online), and about 60% use a NAS, most of which are capable of running some type of small office cloud platform. The retail stores and restaurants all use a cloud-based POS system that can handle all

          • Indeed. Alas, that "business consultant" would need to speak with three staff members, understand the way business is done, and understand the way the business intends to grow. Then said consultant would present two or three solutions, based on an unfolding future.

            When I'm that business consultant, I charge for that work. Done properly, it's a total of two interviews, often a day of research, and a day of writing and/or presenting. That's two quarter-days and two full days. With some form of acceptance

            • $5k is a good value for good advice. It is even a better value if it focuses expenditures where they provide the greatest value. I would hope for a business consultant to provide life cycle cost of ownership comparisons of different (viable) options, even if just a ROM cost.

              • But you're looking at value, not at comparative value.

                $5k is a lot of paper and pencils.

                Good-value doesn't mean anything when that's not your business. It's a solution to a problem that you don't have. Therefor, it has no value.

  • It would be interesting to see how this stacks up against doing something like spinning up your own metal in a couple of colo facilities and leveraging something like VMWare's VDI solution while consuming the existing O365 service.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Probably more favorably that you might think at first look. If you consider DC/Hosting costs, licenses, hardware (compute/storage), and labor, it really adds up. I'm moving 2,000 on-prem VDI to Azure AVD for a customer who is getting to the end of their hardware refresh cycle. The hardware cost alone is about the same as the expected Azure resource cost over 5 years.
  • Not on a bet would I ever use this. Windows Desktop on the Cloud ? Really ? Is M/S thinking:

    We have may be falling behind in or # 1 status as the most insecure OS due to Cell Phones, so we need to up our game. I know, Desktop on the Cloud will get us well ahead of the competition.

  • by SysEngineer ( 4726931 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @02:09PM (#61647797)
    In the 1970's & 80's people used to work on terminals connected to a main frame. Now it's a "thin client and the cloud".
    How thing have changed.
    • "In the 1970's & 80's people used to work on terminals connected to a main frame. Now it's a "thin client and the cloud".
      How thing have changed."

      They want our gold. In the 70ies we had at least still a gold-key.

  • by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @02:10PM (#61647799) Homepage

    Then the price goes up once your shit is locked in and too hard to remove....

  • I'd definitely go for this if it were priced correctly. It would have to be below the cost of owning a comparable laptop over a 3-1/2 year period.

    Low end w/ I3/I5, 8G memory, small SSD is about $600 these days. So under $15 per month.

    Higher end w/ I7/I9, 16 GB, 1TB SSD about twice that or under $30 per month.

    Only governments are going to waste money on the high end SKUs.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @02:16PM (#61647819)

    Back in the 80s, MS ran ads telling people that they shouldn't rent IBM mainframes because that's the past, instead buy computers with MS DOS. There was even a graph showing off how you break even in less than 3 years because with MS, after the initial fee it is FREE!

    It's time MS gets its own MS now that it turned completely into IBM.

  • by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @02:29PM (#61647865)

    The $20 per user per month Business price is for a single virtual core, 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage -- and requires the Windows Hybrid Benefit. (Hybrid Benefits are Microsoft's Bring-Your-Own license model, which allows customers to apply existing (or new) licenses toward the cost of a product.)

    The thin client you're going to need to run this is going to have similar specs, if you have to bring your own software licenses, might as well just run the OS on the thin client itself and save yourself $20/mo.

    • A Raspberry Pi with FreeRDP is $30-40.

      I'm pretty sure there are solutions that this service would be helpful. I have setup remote systems for people to get around certain issues (regularly stolen PCs, sensitive custom applications or data, etc.) and would not mind having the virtual machine and billing management handled by Microsoft.

    • might as well just run the OS on the thin client itself and save yourself $20/mo.

      Implying you are providing the thin client. Here's one application for this kind of thing: Provisioning a desktop environment so a 3rd party contractor can use your custom tools. We do this and in the past it used to take months including requesting and provisioning hardware, issuing it, tracking it, dealing with the resulting management overhead of another machine.

      Now along comes a Worley or a KBR and we say, here's your user account and your remote desktop connection, go nuts. No need to deal with trackin

  • by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @02:34PM (#61647885)

    I see absolutely no benefits and a lot of downsides. I predict it will fail
    But, stranger things have happened

    • We use such remote provisioned desktops for special purposes at work an there are several benefits:
      a) I have a piece of software written in the 90s that doesn't run on my office provided desktop. The VDI instance is setup to run this software (while breaking some other software we use).
      b) I have some software which accesses larger network datasets. It's far faster to use this software in VDI than to run it locally, including logging into the virtual desktop.
      c) We have contractors who need access to software

  • For this whole WFH period, I've been wanting a virtualized PC so I don't have to worry about my machine needing a physical reboot.

    This service would honestly be perfect in a lot of ways, but the spec needs to be a lot higher. I'm a game developer, and my current machine has 64GB of RAM (I could honestly use 128 some days) and a 20-core Xeon. The resource that I keep running out of is disk space, so my latest upgrade, they gave me another SSD.

    But it would honestly be so much better if I could just have a vir

    • NO GPU?? virtual machine GPU can cost allot like in 1-2 month's to hit the cost of just buying one.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Yea you really are not the target market for these right now. They have larger SKUs, including some with GPUs coming out, but those are not going to be cheap.

      Even better, if the top-end spec was just 'as many cores and as much RAM and disk as you can eat up at any given time', that would be ideal. If I could start a distributed compile and they just allocated 128 cores to me for a few minutes, that would legitimately increase our productivity a lot.

      You can spin up some insane machines on Azure by the hour. The biggest I'm aware of is the M416ms v2. It's 416 vCPUs, 11.4TB RAM, 8TB temp storage for $148/hr with a Windows server OS, $128.90 for Linux.

  • by fulldecent ( 598482 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @03:13PM (#61648037) Homepage

    Yes, the plain view is this is a stupidly priced product.

    But when they switch to-per hour billing this makes a lot of sense.

    If I could pay a few dollars to RDP into whatever the latest Windows is to check how my website or whatever software works --- or use some website open some DOCX file that won't open on Mac a few times a year -- then this is valuable to me.

    Even in the year 2051 there are some websites/files you can't open on Mac.

    It would be super if they can double the price and include a bunch of software. But even if I have to install whatever Adobe/office crap that is needed I'll be happy for what I need.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      But when they switch to-per hour billing this makes a lot of sense.

      They already have this, it's called Azure.

      It would be super if they can double the price and include a bunch of software. But even if I have to install whatever Adobe/office crap that is needed I'll be happy for what I need.

      You can pull Win10 images from the marketplace with Office 365 pre-installed. Microsoft 365 Apps for business includes the office suite license and is $10/mo for month-to-month (so you can turn it on and off as you like) or $8.25/mo for a 1 year commitment.

  • Which is what I do.

    And I prefer it to microsoft office, 2012 edition- which I own (aka. have a license and install disk which cost me $20 thru their corporate program right before I retired).

    I've even used Libreoffice to repair microsoft word files which microsoft word couldn't read without hanging.

  • 4 vCPU 16 GB RAM 256 GB Storage $79.00 user/month
    So that is how much it cost to run Win 10 properly.
    That times 3 years equals $2844. About $1600 more than getting the same laptop specced laptop with a 3 year warranty.
    You could go cheap of the storage for $9 less, but still expensive over three years.
    • and the cost of staff for that on-prem laptop to maintain, image patch, support? not suggesting it is cheap, but you are falling into the trap of just looking at the device cost without taking into account the "real" costs which are normally mostly people related. this saves nothing on tech, but it may save many businesses are fortune on expensive IT or support staff.
      • By my guess, at least $8000 a month between me and the sysadmin.
        Not like this will eliminate our roles. Still going to need someone to administrate them. Still going to need someone to help the stupid fucking users.
        Cheaper buying laptops as I said eariler. We do get the good warranty since the users here have no fucking sense. Plus there is me that can fix things.
        As for server costs, I don't know. Not part of those meetings. Thankfully.
  • by rossdee ( 243626 )

    What happens on a Leap Year?

  • Seriously, if they made a simpler less expensive VDI license for Hyper-v or any virtual desktop really for like 2 to 5 bucks a month so it was say 30 bucks a year per user. Then, I could take my dual 10 core server and max it out, Raid 10, a bunch of ram and dual 10gb cards etc.. Should be good for 50 users on even on a 6 year old Dell R720 I think you would achieve acceptable performance and you would probably gain a much much larger following of users that you can advertise to to make the jump to othe
  • You read the subject right, private communism. All the disadvantages of State Communism plus the downsides of Capitalism. Like state communism, private communism says that you own nothing. In state communism, the state owns everything ostensibly for the benefit of the people (including you) who are the state. In practice, the benefits mostly accrue to high level party members and their friends. Private communism, operates similarly except you still have to pay for things. The benefit is reserved for the maj

  • How do you connect to it without a desktop?
  • IMHO it's a smart move,
    lots of cloud providers already provide similar solutions for years. It's great for small businesses who cannot afford in-house team to care for backups and updates and crash recoveries and so on.
    Today, these solutions are using VMware, Citrix, whatever.

    Seems logic for MS to try to get a bigger share of that cake.

    Let's assume they'll be smart enough to provide a full "LAN-like" setup for VM's to mimic a usual office closed-loop pc network, and no doubt businesses will go for it.

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