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Microsoft's Miniature Windows 365 Link PC Goes On Sale (theverge.com) 40

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's business-oriented "Link" mini-desktop PC, which connects directly to the company's Windows 365 cloud service, is now available to buy for $349.99 in the US and in several other countries. Windows 365 Link, which was announced last November, is a device that is more easily manageable by IT departments than a typical computer while also reducing the needs of hands on support.

Microsoft's Miniature Windows 365 Link PC Goes On Sale

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  • no it isn't (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday April 03, 2025 @05:52PM (#65279587) Homepage Journal

    "Windows 365 Link, which was announced last November, is a device that is more easily manageable by IT departments than a typical computer"

    Thin client grade mini PCs already exist and are typical, so no it isn't.

    • Thin clients keep getting rediscovered every decade or so. Dumb serial terminals from the 70s and 80s. Then actual X terminals that were diskless and booted over the network. The Sun Ray which was pretty slick with a smart card so your desktop moved with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Then Nvidia and Google tried it with streaming games doing the heavy graphics processing on their end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      "Thin clients" still turn up today and they're incredibly handy and cheap if you n

      • I create MAME and DOSBox machines out of discarded thin clients. Like you said, about $25 each, and loads of fun when connected to a big screen television. However, a thin client devoted to Microsoft's cloud ... no thanks, no joy to be found there.

      • My problem with most thin clients is that they are artificially limited in the memory department. Even a machine with a single SODIMM slot can be expanded far more than most of them allow. I get that's not their point and they fear that they will cannibalize sales and so on, but that still leaves them irritating to me. I don't like to have swap space, I find it offensive. Having lived through the time when the memory was the expensive part of the computer, I would rather live in the now, where I can have 64

    • "Windows 365 Link, which was announced last November, is a device that is more easily manageable by IT departments than a typical computer"

      Thin client grade mini PCs already exist and are typical, so no it isn't.

      But this one has the "Added trust and Security of the Microsoft name." Which is actual ad-slick I've seen quite a bit recently. Probably shouldn't point that out to the iT guys, though I suppose the managers that make the purchasing decisions might see it as a good thing.

    • Yes, but thin clients are not typical computers. Those are your standard laptops and desktops. I wouldn't even go so far as to say thin clients are at all typical, I very rarely see them in use.
      • I wouldn't even go so far as to say thin clients are at all typical, I very rarely see them in use.

        They are installed in massive numbers in a variety of industries, like fast food to run registers and so on. Also, most of them totally are typical computers, in that they have compatible processors, compatible BIOS, can be loaded with Windows (if you can fit it in the storage which is usually 8GB or less, though I have seen counterexamples) or Linux, etc etc. It would actually be more work to make them not typical computers, because you'd have to reinvent and support a lot of functionality, while typical P

        • I think that because "Microsoft" is in the title, you reacted with reflexive negativity rather than read what you were reacting to. Yes, this is a thin client, it says so explicitly in the article. No, thin clients are not what you typically see in offices, which is the environment that these target.

          This whole page is lousy with people saying the exact same thing, and clearly not one person doing so did anything more than glance at the abstract and react. I get it. You don't like Microsoft. You shou

  • They’re only 15 years late to that market. Eyeroll.
  • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday April 03, 2025 @05:57PM (#65279601)

    Anyone assuming there’s anything “miniature” about a $350 price tag needs to take a Raspberry Pi to the fucking face.

    Oh and stop pretending your 21st Century “thin” client is some kind of new invention. Citrix had to license their way into existence via Microsoft for fucks sake.

  • by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Thursday April 03, 2025 @06:00PM (#65279609)

    after tariffs kick in?

  • by Gleenie ( 412916 ) <simon.green@p o s t e o .com> on Thursday April 03, 2025 @06:02PM (#65279613)

    Just what everyone around the world will want now: another, deeper tie to US-based cloud services. What a brilliant idea.

  • ignore the clueless marketing.

  • Time is a flat circle, we are trapped in a cyclical hell of corporate schemes that will repeat itself until the heat death of the universe!
  • by buzz_mccool ( 549976 ) on Thursday April 03, 2025 @06:22PM (#65279645)
    It's not US$365 ? Or even better US$365.25?
  • They want their NetPC back.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I thought they said "Miniature Windows 386 Link PC" and balked at the price given everyone else's mini 386 PCs are more like $200 [aliexpress.us].

    Of course, given recent announcements, I'm not sure how much a $200 item costs imported from China now, so maybe Microsoft's is good value after all?

  • It would be nice if this had support for RDP servers so this appliance can be used for local stuff, as opposed to just a cloud terminal. Perhaps even allow stuff like xrdp to work, so I can use it like an X-station and allow users to connect to a Linux based virtual desktop server.

    Overall, I like the idea of thin/zero clients, and I'm not sure if this is more of a zero client than a thin client. However, in my experience, thin clients can get pricy. Very pricy, just because there is always proprietary st

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      It would be nice if this had support for RDP servers so this appliance can be used for local stuff, as opposed to just a cloud terminal. Perhaps even allow stuff like xrdp to work, so I can use it like an X-station and allow users to connect to a Linux based virtual desktop server.

      Ah, but then companies would deploy VMs with browsers over RDP, and the users would use some cheap or free solution, and that would defeat the purpose of this category of product, which is to sell more Office 365 subscriptions.

    • This whole thing seems like it relies on you being all-in on 'new' Microsoft. Unless $350 is just an icebreaking joke between you and the rep who tells you what it actually costs at your level of azure spend it has nothing going on to distinguish it from normal PC OEM thin clients that support a more or less agnostic set of options, except intune management being both available and mandatory.

      It's also somewhat weirdly placed in how thin it actually is: it's presumably using a custom shell and an even mor
  • Windows 365 Link PC will be discontinued soon. .... obviously.
  • I'd be curious about a miniature version of Windows.
    It might be the first decent OS they'd have made.

  • A Raspberry Pi 4 with a screen, memory, Debian Linux ("Raspbian"), LibreOffice, and WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) will do better because:

    1. IT EXISTS

    2. IT's NOT MICROSOFT

    3. It's a third the cost.

    Microsoft - find a long trail, get your watter bottle handy, and take a hike. The fork in your forehead is clear -- you're done.

    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      Thin clients are terrible ideas but surface every 10-15 years or so because people think they're a genius for thinking of it again.

      There is a product out there called nComputing. It's - quite literally - a RaspberryPi, in a box, with rdesktop. It boots connects to a session and lets you use whatever it's connected to (e.g. a cloud-based Windows desktop if that's what you want).

      They are something like 20 years old or more, and migrated to RPi when they became more viable than their own custom kit. But tha

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