Windows 365 Link is a $349 Mini PC That Streams Windows From the Cloud (theverge.com) 49
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.
$249 too much (Score:2)
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?
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It's called a thin client
Won't work... (Score:2)
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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But let us not pretend this technology has no useful clients who use a work PC for... well... work. It will even stream Youtube and run
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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Sounds like a Florida problem. I live in the northeast and pay $40 for a contract free 300Mbit symmetric connection. I could get a full gigabit for $70 but don’t feel the need.
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?
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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:3)
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...
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.
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.
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
How awesome (Score:3)
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You will embrace the latency and love it!!!!!!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAH
Re:How awesome (Score:4, 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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You must be on dialup. The last time I saw 300ms ping times was at 56k. I did a quick ping to 1.1.1.1 and the average was 20ms.
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.
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
Nope..... (Score:1)
...nope...nope...nope...
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]
Going for gold (Score:1)
in the olympics of bad ideas
I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole
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
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.
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.
The year 1992 called (Score:2)