Microsoft is Integrating Its Windows 365 Cloud PCs Into Windows 11 (theverge.com) 53
Microsoft put PCs in the cloud with Windows 365 last year, and now it's integrating these Cloud PCs directly into Windows 11. From a report: Windows 365 lets businesses access Cloud PCs from anywhere to stream a version of Windows 10 or Windows 11 inside a web browser. It's something Citrix and many others have been doing for years, but now Microsoft will allow Windows 11 PCs to boot straight to Windows 365 Cloud PCs or easily switch between them using Windows 11's virtual desktops feature. It's part of a hybrid work push for Windows, allowing businesses to support a mix of working remotely on traditional devices or through virtual cloud-powered ones. Microsoft is working on three new Windows 365 features that will be deeply integrated into Windows 11. The first is Windows 365 Boot, which will enable Windows 11 devices to log directly into a Cloud PC instance at startup instead of the local install of Windows. It's designed for devices that are shared between multiple people or for businesses that allow employees to bring your own device (BYOD) to work.
Windows 365 Boot? so how do you install local driv (Score:2)
Windows 365 Boot? so how do you install local drivers?
re: local drivers (Score:2)
I don't think you would install local drivers with this?
You just boot into a virtual desktop session hosted entirely in the cloud on an MS server. Your PC acts like a dumb terminal.
With many newer printers support Internet printing, you could still theoretically print back to a local printer in this scenario.
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so my local pc does not an video driver or network driver or sound driver to use this?
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well considering you need windows 11 for this feature one would assume the bare minimum microsoft drivers for your machine would be loaded, but instead of going to your local machine it remotes to a piss poor virtual machine. Does that clear it up for you or do you feel the need to be more difficult
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I don't think he's "being difficult" so much as trying to understand how this would all work? And I'm not 100% sure myself?
I wonder if Microsoft's strategy will be to simply boot up most of Windows 11 like normal, except instead of launching the "explorer" shell to serve a desktop and whatever process handles the user login/password process, they just proceed to an alternative environment that connects to the cloud server? If they go this route, then all of your video, sound and network drives and so fort
4GB ram for $32/mo with 2 cpu and 64GB disk (Score:5, Informative)
4GB ram for $32/mo with 2 cpu and 64GB disk. /mo for useless.
so $32 user
quad core starts at $70.00 user/month with 128 GB Storage and 16 GB ram.
at prices like that it's better to just buy an full pc.
Re:4GB ram for $32/mo with 2 cpu and 64GB disk (Score:5, Interesting)
4GB ram for $32/mo with 2 cpu and 64GB disk. so $32 user /mo for useless.
quad core starts at $70.00 user/month with 128 GB Storage and 16 GB ram.
at prices like that it's better to just buy an full pc.
With moves like this from Microsoft, it's better to start migrating to Apple or Linux PC's.
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Re:4GB ram for $32/mo with 2 cpu and 64GB disk (Score:5, Insightful)
MS is not trying to make anything better or cheaper for you. They are trying to get more money from you for the same substandard crap they have been pushing out for decades. If this comes with a (false) promise that you can do with fewer windows administrators, many businesses will go for it.
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Cloud instances need OS administrators the same as traditional with IAAS, with SAAS they are paying for the OS admins which means you still have to pay the same cost plus their profit in the bottom line of the fees they are charging regardless of how they split it up and lab
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Well, yes. But the history of tech shows that careful competent engineers only get handled the reins when all else has failed. Which will happen eventually in all tech disciplines and IT is no exception. IT just needs a few more decades. The reason is that bad engineers always want to do "innovative" and "new" stuff (always hoping some new tech will make them not suck at their job) and clueless management always wants to do things on the cheap. Both cannot see this will and must fail.
Usually the turning poi
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The bigger issue I see at play is ethics and here security related ethics. It is highly unethical to deploy cloud-based solutions for the majority
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Well, it is definitely unethical to work professionally at something you are not good at.
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Well the prices are mostly onpar with what you would get for a PC. However like all things cloud, it is an affordable option if you don't use your equipment for an extended period of time.
My Laptop is about 4 years old now, and I have no desire to upgrade it any time soon. It is still more than enough for anything I need or want to do (within reason, sometimes I may do some AI Coding where I need more power, but I will do that on servers not a laptop)
priced per user! so even with 2 shifts you pay for (Score:2)
priced per user! so even with 2 shifts you pay for 2 systems. Vs say an call center with shared pc's that you just need 1 piece of hardware
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Note, employers
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at prices like that it's better to just buy an full pc.
For whom? What you're missing here is the target market. This isn't going to replace your developer workstation, this is to allow a non-native device to login to a cloud based systems that is provisioned on a company internal network while providing isolation from the PC and not having to get into any ownership discussions.
We use these extensively already to give contractors access to our networks without having to buy non employees additional hardware and force them to carry two laptops to work. Bonus poin
Re: 4GB ram for $32/mo with 2 cpu and 64GB disk (Score:2)
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It's not useless. It's perfectly adequate for running Office or web applications.
If you're a developer working on Linux, something like this might be useful for the other parts of the company still using Microsoft stuff. So the company could give you a Windows laptop alongside your Linux laptop to do your work,
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well 64GB may low for just OS + app installs.
X Terminal (Score:3)
Windows 365 Boot = the new X Terminal: local hardware runs the display/keyboard/mouse and window management software, the remote system runs all the applications.
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Indeed. Typically MS is 20 years behind. On this, they are more like 30-40 years behind.
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There tends to be a cycle every decade or so, where we go from remote systems to local systems.
Mainframes with dumb terminals
Local PC's with all the software installed
Internet Based SAAS (Cloud) apps where we just need a browser
Apps on mobile devices
Cloud based OS's...
There are times where computing hardware advances faster than networking capability so they go local, then we get improvements in network then they go remote.
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There tends to be a cycle every decade or so, where we go from remote systems to local systems.
Definitely. I have seen and used all these including a vt220 (real one, but old) to access an equally ageing mainframe. Once one way is established, the other one pops up again.
It seems to me that the same arguments are used each time for the same movement direction. Makes me think they are all bogus and it really is just faster local computing vs. faster networking, as you say. I expect we may see a few more cycles of this going on in the future. It is just too profitable when you can sell everybody new ha
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I think it's also that neither one is a silver bullet, they both address different issues of performance vs. cost, flexibility vs. reliability and so on. The swing comes because the "experts" keep pushing for the adoption of one over the other for everything and that just generates a pendulum swing towards the side currently out-of-favor.
Everything old is new again (Score:4, Interesting)
Edging ever closer to reconstituting the old distributed 3270 terminal environment with a much nicer UI. Or maybe an X-terminal. Just hope backend security is up to task and the comm line between the terminal and cloud remains operational. Decades ago I would have thought this were wonderful.
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Malware and ransomware would end overnight if 3270 terminals made a return.
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Malware and ransomware would end overnight if 3270 terminals made a return.
So would email and zoom calls.
I'm in.
They can take it to (Score:1)
...the clouds of Uranus
What I want to know (Score:4, Interesting)
What I want to know is - how is this going to work once IT is truly fully tossed over the wall to the SAAS/PASS/IAAS guys?
Everyone working form home kinda sorta works because most people at home only have one or two active users. If people go back to the office but there is no professional IT you now have a density problem.
Put 100 people in a building using VDI and doing VOIP/Teams/Zoom etc and that is a lot of bandwidth. The basic CPE the carriers drop off isn't really up that many clients - not enough radios, switch ports etc.
You can't just slap some TP-LINK stuff you got at Office max in front of that expect run a whole office full of clients without issues. Even if you have a gig-fiber uplink you probably need to start thinking about mls/qos and priorities. At least if you don't want calls and VDI experiences going to shit randomly.
Who exactly is going to do this work, who will fix it when it breaks, or needs changes?
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We will probably see a reduction in IT staff, not complete elimination. You'll still need somebody to deal with the types of things you bring up, but those are relatively simple things that don't require a full traditional IT department. Another option is using an MSP to support the local infrastructure and basically outsourcing all of IT between MSP, SAAS, etc.
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If your company is doing the same thing as other companies are doing, then you might have a point. However, normally we work at a place that is doing something a little different than everyone else, so you have a competitive advantage, or a niche in your process.
You are going to need to do something on your end that the cloud guys will not do, because it will not fit their business model.
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Microsoft is also going to provide IT support for people using remote devices. So you can do all you want with one-stop M$!
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Perhaps you could consider the average person with a few decades of experience in the industry is likely smarter than the folks who dreamed up yet another reinvention of the wheel?
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We have 1440p and UHD streaming clients (h265 4:2:0 60hz). Bitrate is around 4-5Mbps most of the time per client.
Even a half gig pipe devoted to streaming desktops would allow 100 users simultaneously to be working.
If your router and switch is crapping out over 500mbps of pretty steady UDP traffic you've got bigger issues than a lack of IT.
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You can't just slap some TP-LINK stuff you got at Office max in front of that expect run a whole office
I'm not sure why you expect your IT department with pockets deep enough to afford Microsoft enterprise offerings including paying a hefty fee per employee per seat per month to go and get some cheap TP-LINK stuff from Office Max.
The two are at odds with each other.
Mind you Microsoft did come up with a product called "Works" and the President of the USA did serve honoured guests McDonalds in the white house, so really all bets are off.
Windows 12 (Score:3)
Re: Morons (Score:2)
Sadly the morons are IT managers who believe all the MS marketing crap. MS are laughing all the way to the bank.
Yet Another Windows Login Push (Score:1)
And, of course, this forces the user to log in to Windows using a Microsoft account instead of a local account because God forbid we should have local usable resources if the internet takes a dump for a couple of minutes or hours. Also, Windows is hardly the most useful OS in the cloud. Don't believe me? Try running a LAMP stack or containers on/in it. BSD and Linux win hands down, full stop, every time. YES, EVERY TIME. Fun Pro-Tip Question: How stable do you really think the internet is, anyway? An
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All doom, no gloom! Or was the gloom lost in your nonsense? Either way it's clearly raining frogs. /s
How stable is the internet? Check the billions (trillions?) of Zoom/VoIP call participant instances. Trillions of hours of streaming content viewed. SDWAN has entire offices, even companies, dependent on it. Internet-connected Cloud services run mission critical platforms for major enterprise all around the world. Heck, in a true test of things you can even play FPS via cloud 3d gaming.
Yeah, yeah, Lin
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p.s. from TFA
"Microsoft is also working on a Windows 365 offline feature, which will allow you to work locally when you don’t have connectivity to access a Cloud PC. “When connectivity is restored, the Cloud PC will automatically resync with the Windows 365 service without data loss so the user experience and workflow are persistent,” says McKelvey."
Awesome! (Score:2)
I'm sure this will be a fantastic push to get more people using LibreOffice.
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They don't learned with IE6?! (Score:2)
Who owns your data (and YOU)? (Score:2)
If you are like most Americans, your doctor's office and your hospital are all running Windows, and the morons administering this stuff will only be able to resist the urge to hand it all over to "the cloud" (Microsoft's servers, which belong to Microsoft, are physically controlled by Microsoft, administered by Microsoft, encrypted (and decrypted) by Microsoft, etc) for a little while. So much for HIPAA and the integrity of your medical records and your privacy.
How many other businesses, and people, have an