Windows 365 Link is a $349 Mini PC That Streams Windows From the Cloud (theverge.com) 118
Microsoft is planning to launch a new purpose-built miniature PC for its Windows 365 cloud service next year. The Verge: Windows 365 Link is a $349 device that acts like a thin client PC to connect to the cloud and stream a version of Windows 11. The Link device is designed to be a compact, fanless, and easy-to-use cloud PC for your local monitors and peripherals. It's meant to be the ideal companion to Microsoft's Windows 365 service, which lets businesses transition employees over to virtual machines that exist in the cloud and can be streamed securely to multiple devices. Windows 365 Link cannot run local apps.
$249 too much (Score:5, Insightful)
If all of the heavy lifting is done elsewhere then this is far too expensive for what it is. Why would I need that much machine? My $300 laptop actually does work and has a screen.
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If all of the heavy lifting is done elsewhere then this is far too expensive for what it is. Why would I need that much machine? My $300 laptop actually does work and has a screen.
To virtualize the GUI at decent performance.
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Stadia could do that with an $80 dongle for 4k@60 gaming. While you might be right it could point to it being an inefficient service?
Re:$249 too much (Score:4, Informative)
It's called a thin client
Re: $249 too much (Score:5, Funny)
At that price it's called a thick client
No wait, that's the schmuck who decides these are worth this much money
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At that price it's called a thick client
No wait, that's the schmuck who decides these are worth this much money
I think you mean "a thin client for thickos".
Thin clients have always been meant for business, so they charge a premium for them so suppliers can give big discounts for large orders.
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That makes sense, but even at say $249 (OK, we'll give you a hundred off per unit! What a bargain!) that is too much to spend for this. Taking all the expensive parts off a laptop somehow makes it more expensive?
Re: $249 too much (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in my day we called these a terminal. And the cloud "timesharing".
Yes they are different, but is this all we got after 50 years? (TSS 360/TOPS 10/Multics/RTS11/TSS8 all date from the mid 70's.)
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And "somebody else" means it is not a server that's in a different department in the home office; it means a different company, probably a competitor, most likely watching what you're doing.
We got the knowledge, based on experience (Score:2)
Back in my day we called these a terminal. And the cloud "timesharing". Yes they are different, but is this all we got after 50 years?
We got the knowledge, based on experience, that not everything needs to be distributed. That something things are better centralized.
Imagine that, different tools for different jobs.
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Remember when computing was all about thin clients, the X Windows model? That died because a lot of people hated it, they wanted to control their own computer on their own desk, not rely upon some IS priesthood who were in charge behind the scenes, so the PC model grew and flourished. Now big corporations are trying to take everyone back to those old days, except instead of the IS cabal it will be the Microsoft/Amazon/Google cabal controlling how you work.
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Soon enough someone will come up with a 'locally hosted cloud' or some other kinda nonsense wording.
All the cloud services were sold as easier, cheaper, faster...and, well, they aren't in most cases. For a small business who doesn't have the expertise, it's an option but it gets very pricey - often outside of the budget, even if is 'worth it' for the security and patching. For larger companies, the cost delta for cloud is large once you layer on all the extra security of trusting someone else with highly
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Yup. We had all our repos local, avoiding github/gitlab like the plague for security reasons. Then we get acquired and are told to shove everything on Azure. Sure, sure, github is iffy because it's a small entity, but Microsoft would _never_ have downtime, security issues, spy on us, because they said so! Did we save money? Not sure. Even under the Azure DevOps we kept some in-house servers for some things.
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Remember when computing was all about thin clients, the X Windows model? That died because a lot of people hated it, they wanted to control their own computer on their own desk, not rely upon some IS priesthood who were in charge behind the scenes
That battle never happened. Companies didn't move from thin clients to thick because users hated IS controlling everything. IS drove that decision. Terminals, like today, were a lot less expensive than a tricked out workstation, but were, and still are, on par or more expensive than the cheapest desktops. And companies still controlled the desktop experience and locked them down, so there was little practical difference for most employees.
IMO, the challenge here is convincing your average home user to move
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Google has already proven many users will accept the limitations - chromebooks don't offer a whole lot more than a thin client.
That was true initially, but now there are plenty of applications to run on them directly. On a true thin client or terminal this is not possible, they don't have the space and/or they don't allow you to load applications.
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Google has already proven many users will accept the limitations - chromebooks don't offer a whole lot more than a thin client.
That was true initially, but now there are plenty of applications to run on them directly. ...
Really? I have one, and I have a couple Android apps on it (though I don't remember the last time I used them), and some stuff in the Linux VM, but I don't recall seeing any applications you can install and run native. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure seems like Google has proven people are accepting the limitation of not being able to install any normal applications. Can you point me to some of them?
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Really? I have one, and I have a couple Android apps on it (though I don't remember the last time I used them), and some stuff in the Linux VM, but I don't recall seeing any applications you can install and run native.
So what you're saying is that you know that you can install Android Applications on the machine and run them, but you don't recall seeing any applications you can install and run? "Native" is irrelevant.
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Heheh, so I guess you're saying that you don't actually know of many applications that run "directly" on Chromebooks? :-)
FWIW, I didn't say that Chromebooks were literally thin clients; I said they don't offer a whole lot more than a thin client.
... there are plenty of applications to run on them directly.
Android apps don't get installed to the native OS; They go into the Android VM. Same with anything in the Linux container/VM on them. And the Android apps are often wonky or just don't work. They're not running on them directly. In a thin client world, those could
Chromebook for banking (Score:2)
That's one reason why I don't really care for chromebooks. The experience is too locked down for me.
Different tools for different jobs. And super locked down Chromebooks have their place. For example, online banking. Don't do your banking on your phone or regular computer. Get a dirt cheap Chromebook and do two things, and only two things, on it. (1) Do software updates. (2) Your online banking.
Re: $249 too much (Score:2)
A NUC or RPi are already suitable candidates, given the right software.
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Re: $249 too much (Score:2)
You can get the same experience by having a PC which boots to a remote access client. As a bonus you can set it up to still be able to do some work when you can't reach the application server, AND it has resale value.
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I wonder how hard they will try to lock them down so people don't repurpose them as Linux workstations.
Won't work... (Score:3)
This failed when OnLive tried to do it.
This failed when Google tried to do it.
This too will fail, as no one wants to actually upgrade the underground copper into fiber.
Not saying cloud services aren't successful, but at this point people who aren't "power-users" still don't have the bandwidth for this kind of crap
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Re: Won't work... (Score:2)
Modern attempts at thin clients suck ass even when you have gigabit wireline connections to on-prem virtualization servers.
If there's some theoretical security or management cost savings to be realized with these things, it is swamped by the lost productivity of personnel waiting minutes to even log in to a terminal while the VM is loaded. And waiting more to load applications.
Back in college, we had some x11 thin clients in some of the campus computer labs. These were there for you to check email or (gasp!
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That was true back then. Alas, this is now and the definition of "likety split" has changed.
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X Windows, as inefficient as it is, is still vastly more efficient than "streaming", more efficient than RDP, etc. The snag is that you need to design software to use it efficiently, and "efficient" is a forbidden word at Microsoft, and writing software is something of a taboo with all the no-code/low-code mantras being chanted.
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I can barely use a web site on my phone or tablet over my home wifi, on the road it would be vastly worse because cellular. Heck, Teams barely works as it is now on the fastest PC I have ever used on the corporate network.
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I can barely use a web site on my phone or tablet over my home wifi, on the road it would be vastly worse because cellular. Heck, Teams barely works as it is now on the fastest PC I have ever used on the corporate network.
You're doing it wrong then. Either you live in the boonies and refuse to get starlink or have some kind of wacky PEBCAK issue.
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Probably because they're too slow. But they work infinitely better with wifi than they do with cellular data. And starlink isn't roaming is it, since the GP said "hotspot while a car is moving", which I was referring to. I don't even get good cellular at work, and were smack in the middle of San Jose, and had to stick a cellular repeater on the roof since we seem to be in a weak signal location.
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I can barely use a web site on my phone or tablet over my home wifi, on the road it would be vastly worse because cellular. Heck, Teams barely works as it is now on the fastest PC I have ever used on the corporate network.
It's not the same type of traffic, so don't expect the same result.
MS Teams. I opened "Developer Tools" in Chrome. Then hit "CTRL+SHIFT+R" to force reload of all elements.
648 separate requests!!!
65.7MB of resources
20.7MB transferred (so it was still using my cached versions for 2/3rds of that traffic)
If, instead, I had streamed that from MS, then it would just be one stream of data. A lot less latency and far fewer round trips. Those requests would get sent to/from the MS server running the VM to the MS Tea
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Of course it will, it's why they waited so long to do it.
MS already streams games... and for a lot of people they work fine... streaming games was the test for streaming desktops, and it worked.
Your prediction of doom as no logical basis given the current state of the technology to be used. You're just an outlier, your experience does not denote the average experience.
windows 365 priceing will kill the idea 2 vCPU 4 (Score:4, Informative)
windows 365 pricing will kill the idea
2 vCPU 4 GB RAM 64 GB Storage USD$32.00 user/month
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You could get that for $349 and do without Windows 365...
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Windows365 pricing is aimed at enterprise where fast, secure, and scalable deployments are the primary concern. It's very expensive compared to purchasing hardware as a consumer would and still has a higher TCO in enterprise.
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Nobody choosing Microsoft for security reasons knows enough to be concerned about security.
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People don't use Windows 365's low tier pricing option because they need to run Windows. They do so because they need to provide access. Got a contractor coming? Spin up an windows 365 environment within your virtual network for them and let them bring their own devices. Spending $32 / month is far cheaper than dedicating your IT to provide them hardware and tech support.
As for the rest of it, the value here isn't the 2v CPU and 4GB RAM, it's users who need a powerful workstation that is rarely used without
Re: windows 365 priceing will kill the idea 2 vCPU (Score:2)
It's all an accounting shell game. You can't rent a computer in the cloud for less than it costs to run your own equipment.
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You can't rent a computer in the cloud for less than it costs to run your own equipment.
Yes you can. That's exactly what the post you replied to even outlined!
I think you may have meant, "you can't rent a computer in the cloud for 24x7 use for less than it costs to run your own equipment." It's like a timeshare.
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windows 365 pricing will kill the idea
2 vCPU 4 GB RAM 64 GB Storage USD$32.00 user/month
That's $385 per year. And you still have to purchase hardware nearly the cost of a cheap PC; because, well, you just can't reduce a "thin client" very far below an actual useful computer, and still have enough hardware to actually paint images on the display, accept mouse and keyboard input and communicate with the intarwebs.
I fail to see the value.
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Microsoft Remote Desktop Services have been working well for enterprises for like 30 years.
Most high end VFX houses doing the work for blockbuster films have substantial Virtualized Desktop infrastructure (mostly from Teradici and less Parsec).
"Won't work" is silly. Especially because most of these will be going to people who just use an internally hosted extremely basic win32 application where latency could be measured in seconds and nobody would notice. And the vast majority of these will be deployed to
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Probably. I have seen one successful deployment for "streaming" Win10, but that was with a very fast internal corporate network and their own servers in their DC. Also worked reasonably well for home-office if you had really good Internet and a good link to them.
Re: Won't work... (Score:2)
No, you don't understand - when a slashdot user has a poor internet connection, the entire U.S. internet infrastructure is bad. Additionally, it only takes one mention of state subsidized internet access anywhere outside of the U.S. is proof that EVERYONE has better internet access than anyone in the U.S.
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You have a 5 gigabit connection?
I know it when I see it... (Score:2)
Reality check - a new Dell laptop is $229.99 ... (Score:5, Funny)
... directly from Dell, without any coupons, just like that. It's a usable 6-core 12 Gen Intel, of course with its own RAM and storage but besides that a 120 Hz display, battery and everything.
AND it comes with a regular Windows license (non-subscription, although they do try to blur the lines more and more).
If it's a client for (surely paid) "Windows 365 cloud service" free (as in the price of the device) is too much.
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Depends. If you want to do work on a $230 machine then the Dell laptop is a better choice. If on the other hand you want to spin up a high performance workstation in the cloud for a quick job then $250 is a bargain.
I have both. I regularly use a shit laptop for work, and every so often when I need to do something truly heavy like simulation work I flip to a Windows 365 desktop.
High performance? (Score:2)
If you are running real HPC to do some backend processing, ssh will work on your mobile phone for the connectivity you need.
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I have both. I regularly use a shit laptop for work, and every so often when I need to do something truly heavy like simulation work I flip to a Windows 365 desktop.
Do you actually? Windows 365 allows for on-demand provisioning but it is not a 'metered usage' model where you can pay by the hour/day/etc. If you provision x number of workstations, you're on the hook for them until your next EA renewal.
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You can buy a mini PC running windows for $200. Sure it's not something you're going to run a ton of VMs on or do heavy calculations with, but it certainly can then remote into a more powerful PC when you need to. Your email and word processing can happen locally while your simulations happen remotely on the powerful machine.
The return of the mainframe (Score:5, Insightful)
is now complete. You don't own anything anymore, just the right to access software as long as you pay (too much) and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.
It's maddening for people my age who have known the mainframe era and how liberating the personal computer revolution was. Now we've gone full circle and we're right back to the same pile of vomit.
Oh well, I guess people one day will have enough of the abuse once again, will wrestle computers away from Big Tech monopolies - again - and the pendulum will swing back the other way, long after I'm gone.
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Mainframes are still here rumbling away. 90% of banks still use them. Are they expensive? Yes. Do they run forever and run decades old binaries without failure? Yes. The new technology behind mainframes is fascinating.
This is the thin client fat server model that never goes away and never quite takes off. Some of the thin clients show up cheap on ebay and make handy low power systems. $25 for a tiny pc that uses a few watts of power.
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I agree with you, but there is definitely still some hope. I'm noticing a lot of people tired of all the Microsoft shenanigans, be it Recall, forcing MS user accounts, sticking stuff on OneDrive, and all the other "nudging" that is being done. All the cost of these subscriptions add up, and people and companies are starting to go back to having stuff on-prem or running locally.
I know in red states, there is a segment of the population that does not trust cloud apps for their "cronjobs" that deal with spaw
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lot of people tired of all the Microsoft shenanigans
Most people have been tired of Microsoft's shenanigans for the better part of 50 years and Microsoft is still here. At this point, it's almost certain people are either too apathetic to fight the relentless onslaught of abuse, incompetence and mediocrity, or they like it.
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Well, at least we've got Resolve on Linux now, it may not be OSS but at least it's here and small-f-free.
More recently what's been driving Linux adoption has been the improved ability to run Windows software, especially games. Games and porn have always been big important sellers of home computers.
KDE has made big strides in quality, however one feels about the UI decisions (which almost everyone can agree were superior to GNOME at most points) it used to be very fragile and is now mostly very good. I am us
GPU plans don't even have an listed price any more (Score:2)
GPU plans don't even have an listed price any more but an vm with the same baseline cpu + ram + storage (No gpu) is at least $101/mo per user.
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is now complete. You don't own anything anymore, just the right to access software as long as you pay (too much) and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.
It's maddening for people my age who have known the mainframe era and how liberating the personal computer revolution was. Now we've gone full circle and we're right back to the same pile of vomit.
Oh well, I guess people one day will have enough of the abuse once again, will wrestle computers away from Big Tech monopolies - again - and the pendulum will swing back the other way, long after I'm gone.
For businesses I really don't care one little iota. Management has decided it's "better" to have no infrastructure on prem, and now they're deciding it's better to not even have PCs on prem for anything but design folks. Fair enough. Let 'em learn the hard way. Again.
But the trickle-down effect that businesses using PCs had on consumer hardware is gonna disappear. I'm planning on buying myself a really nice system here in the next few weeks/months to hold onto for a good long while while we go through this
Re:The return of the mainframe (Score:4, Interesting)
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(Most) people aren't this stupid. At my workplace (scientific research) IT provides Mac, Windows and Linux machines.
Most people don't work for a research lab, and most businesses don't give you a choice of machine. It's unclear what your anecdote has to do with most people. Look around, most people are stupid AF.
How awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
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You will embrace the latency and love it!!!!!!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAH
Re:How awesome (Score:5, Funny)
Now every single OS action - every keyboard press and mouse click, will have the same 200ms latency that I get while cooperatively editing a MS365 word file or a Google doc over the internet.
Every key you press,
and every click you make,
you'll have latency.
You belong to me,
I'll be watching you
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Methinks you're exaggerating a bit.
I re-played Fallout Vegas via Amazon Luna over the last several months and didn't have any pervasive latency issues despite it being a FPS. Occasional something would get wonky and lag but that was almost certainly my ISP being stupid. For the most part it was smooth gaming.
Not the same as looking at ultra res 3d CAD on an 8k screen...but perfectly fine for the vast majority of office computer use.
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Cash registers and employee kiosks (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the way this is being discussed sounds like it could be for home users, this isn't for home users.
The purpose of this device is to get large businesses even more hooked on Microsoft's ecosystem. It's to attempt to suck even more of the org's IT into Microsoft's cloud. MS is attempting to take the workstation virtualization model where orgs run a Citrix-type or X11-type experience on-premises or at least hosted within hardware within their own datacenters and instead putting it up in the cloud, in this case, Microsoft's cloud.
I can see where there could be appeal from a business perspective, if you're a huge organization with hundreds of thousands of point of sale terminals then the more of that you take out of the branch offices the less you have to pay for IT work in those branch offices. You can now eliminate most of your regional desktop support staff, just swap-out devices if something goes wrong with one, and what desktop services you do have to provide are now all about tweaking the VM templates that your client sessions spawn off of.
Cash registers that need an outside network + data (Score:3)
Cash registers that need an outside network + an data center.
And it's not like each location has good fiber internet.
Some location may have to deal with cell data (the caps can make remote desktops not work that well)
Others may have XDSL that can range from 25-200 down and lower up
Cable can be good or just ok.
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I wonder... (Score:2)
"Windows 365 Link is a $349 device that acts like a thin client PC"
Think it runs on Linux?
Power requirement (Score:2)
Think it runs on Linux?
It's something entirely doable on 15 bucks Raspberry Pi Zero 2.
So:
- Either, it's running Linux, they are over selling it roughly by $334
- Or, it costs $349 because that's how much processing power you need to pack into a small machine so it can run a Windows-based thin client stack (some "Windows 11 Core/Embed/whatever" + kiosk mode that boots microsoft's RDP Client full screen) because Microsoft wants to run some stupid things locally to enable logging into the remote VM (biometrics like Wi
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Not for home use... (Score:2)
This is a thin-client for businesses to deploy to access Windows 365, I imagine. Windows 365 is a subscription service, with its cost based on storage/ramsCPU core count, available in Businesses/Enterprises and Personal/Family plans:
Business pricing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]
Personal/Family plans: https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]
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VT100 (Score:2)
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We're back to the days of big iron and dumb terminals as a model.
Of course.
Because if they don't compel everyone to completely replace all of their computing infrastructure every few years, then their business cashflow dries up.
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We're back to the days of big iron and dumb terminals as a model.
Of course.
Because if they don't compel everyone to completely replace all of their computing infrastructure every few years, then their business cashflow dries up.
This is even better, because you get locked not a subscription model that can run form several hundred to several thousand per user; price points where a desktop could easily be bought. Yes, managing everything is easier and in theory you can cancel seats as needed; but what happens if you decide to migrate back to desktops? How easy will it be to replicate everything in the cloud on the desktop, as well as migrate all your data. You could windup locked in simply because of such scenario.
It might make man
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I'm not actually worried about the data replication issues, one should already be performing site-survivability backups to offsite datacenters or to entirely independent services so that a fault or attack against one doesn't immediately mean everything's gone, but I could see it being a PITA to go back to desktops if the old domain model is sunsetted.
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I'm not actually worried about the data replication issues, one should already be performing site-survivability backups to offsite datacenters or to entirely independent services so that a fault or attack against one doesn't immediately mean everything's gone, but I could see it being a PITA to go back to desktops if the old domain model is sunsetted.
One should, but how many companies will just assume MS will handle everything? "I mean, it's all in the MS cloud so we should be OK, why do we need to spend money duplicating it?" said no CFO ever.
It's déjà vu all over again Yogi (Score:2)
Nov 1997 [edge-op.org]: “They [Intel] did 2 things that amaze me
This is what M$ wants for EVERYONE (Score:2)
MicroSoft WANTS you have to pay them licenses for EVERYTHING. WIndows, Office, Gamepass..... Instead of a three hundred dollar cable bill, it will now be a $300.00 MS365 bill. No thanks Linux, Libre office and Steam work fine..
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Linux, Libre office and Steam work fine..
Make that Linux, Libreoffice, and GOG work fine for me.
I own games, not rent them by the grace of a corporation's whims.
cost (Score:2)
one more billion will fix it (Score:2)
First we spent one billion converting all the applications to JavaScript and make them run on a distant server
Then one more billion to integrate the webserver in the browser and make them run in electron
One more billion to have electron run on a server, but this time it's different because it'll send back pictures instead of text
For that price it better include a screen/monitor. (Score:2)
Something that expensive could run Windows (Score:2)
Why? At that cost, and even at $120 [amazon.com] or less, people could buy something that can both run Windows directly and stream it too. You can even get a Dell Optiplex Mini PC running Windows for less than $150.
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All your (data)base ... (Score:2)
... are belong to us. And your spreadsheets, documents, photos, browser history, online purchases, porn habits, etc. Ain't it great to "own nothing, and be happy"?
If I was a Windows user and I saw this latest nail being driven into the coffin in which my computing independence was going to be buried, this would be my personal YoLotD. Happily, I embraced that event for myself circa 15 years ago and never looked back. I wish others both the sense and the good fortune to enjoy a similar emancipation.
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The year 1992 called (Score:2)
Thin client, fat price (Score:2)
There future is here. It sucks. (Score:2)
Welcome to 1970s timesharing. The computer is down.
How is this different from Citrix (Score:2)
This just sounds like running Citrix on any old thin client or desktop PC.
MS Chrome OS? (Score:2)
I definitely see this as meant for large corp's.
Breaking News from 1996 (Score:2)
I'm glad Larry's Network Computer [wikipedia.org] is finally getting another go of it. Still surprised Apple hasn't tried again [wikipedia.org].
VM or terminal? (Score:2)
Can the virtual machine run SAP client, Oracle client, Lotus Notes, Google Chrome? "Virtual machine" suggests so but I see Microsoft demanding MS store software only, allowed: That doesn't interest big corporations.
This isn't a thin-client, this is a terminal for a Microsoft mainframe: Great security and x64 applications only. I say "great" but everything is now on Microsoft property; all data, authentication/access processes, forced updates, install files. Sole traders and SMEs still don't do accoun
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