17 ms·

Windows 365 Cloud PC

236 points by WalterSobchak 5y ago

dariusj18 5y ago
A feature I think would make this a killer app is to be a truly hybrid experience. Similar to how Parallels can make it seem like apps from a Windows VM are running as OS-X apps, MS needs to create a more seamless experience. How great would it be to just have a shortcut link to open Photoshop on my powerful high memory optimized Cloud VM and other apps from my corporate provided VM. Secondly, when I hit Start I should be able to tab through my connected VMs, or see an aggregate list of all start menus of all my VMs and local PC.
CRConrad 5y ago
Huh... So this comes only now? I must admit, I thought they'd already had this for years. Oh well, at least now we know why they've dropped the "Windows as a service" moniker for Windows 11: Because this is Windows as a service.
metalliqaz 5y ago
This seems like a natural product to come out of MS's cloud strategy. Especially considering the cloud gaming they're building with Xbox Game Pass. Also notable that it's at the same time they decided to turn a Windows 10 upgrade into Windows 11.
esens 5y ago
This makes sense. It is a competitor to Amazon's Windows Desktop environments. Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing. I can see this working for a lot of places where you want good information security. You can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  > good information security > You can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot. pick one
  - GordonS 5y ago
    100% guaranteed, cast-iron, watertight security is impossible - but VDIs could potentially prevent whole classes of attack. It's about increasing the barrier against realistic threat models.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
      I completely agree - many attack vectors are more difficult, and some are impossible. However, saying "you can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot" is, first of all, untrue, as other means exist, and second, preventing access to data is not the most important security aspect of such a system.
- gexla 5y ago
  > Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing. Not necessarily. They have already had a similar service. This seems to be a simplification of that service? Maybe it's sort of like Amazon offering Lightsail as an alternative to EC2? After clicking around the site for a half hour trying to figure out pricing for Azure Virtual Desktops, I gave up. I figured if you have to ask how much it is, then I can't afford it. Now they are launching a service seemingly directed to users like me, but they still can't give us prices. I assume they will in time for launch, but I'm getting really sick of hunting for prices on Azure. Every minute I have spent on that site has been wasted. I doubt they would beat AWS on pricing. The AWS instances appear to be really well priced relative to what you could get if you tried to do the same with EC2. I couldn't see MS being as cheap. From what I remember, Azure is generally more expensive across the board.
  - easton 5y ago
    Microsoft's secret weapon here is that if you subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business/Enterprise (which is a prereq for this according for what they've said), they include a Windows license that can be ran on Azure for VDI. On AWS, you have to buy CALs and licensing for the instances (Windows VDA licenses? I last looked into that years ago). Or you can buy the licenses from AWS but I'm sure that's not the rate you'd pay getting them directly from Microsoft (and then you often have to use Windows Server which doesn't have things like WSL2). That's not a gigantic barrier if you're an enterprise, but figuring out licensing for Workspaces if you don't have a couple smart Microsoft admins and money to burn is really hard. This is easy, since all of the license entitlements are enforced through their portal. (if you can start an instance you are licensed)
    - gexla 5y ago
      If you want an AWS instance, it's not much more complicated than pick your instance and go. Of course, we're talking about the AWS console here, which is not so easy if you aren't used to it. If you know your way around, then it's about the same as getting anything else AWS. You don't have to deal with licenses at all. The pricing is really cheap. Looking at the pricing of instances on EC2, I don't know how they get so cheap. I'm sure the answer is in the details if I were to go digging (different hardware) but it's cheap. I don't think the Asure alternative will be even close. While AWS makes Workspaces easy and affordable for just about any individual, that person is probably still not the target for MS. I'm guessing this new offering is simply the same service as they already offer, for businesses which want systems for less than 100 people, and are still able to dish out a load of cash. The benefit to Azure is that it's Microsoft. They aren't going to compete on pricing for anything. If pricing is your main concern, then you don't to Azure (or even Google Compute.) If your boss says you have to use Azure, then that's when Azure has the advantage. ;)
- viraptor 5y ago
  > Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing. I don't see the obvious connection here. Software is easy to install. But Azure is not really close in scale of deployment to AWS.
  - dboreham 5y ago
    It is the "next closest" right?
    - viraptor 5y ago
      Sure - they won't be much disadvantaged. But I meant that if they went Azure only or tried to be the only provider, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. I completely expect them to want a good experience on AWS hosted desktop. Maybe not the best, but I don't expect them to have a significant advantage. (apart from possible integrations)
- pwarner 5y ago
  And until now at least, workspaces seemed nicer than Microsoft VDI. I presume this changes it. Look forward to testing
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Back when people were predicting Microsoft porting Windows to the new ARM based Macs I thought this was a much more likely solution.
- fortran77 5y ago
  Windows already runs on ARM.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    Where can I buy a copy of Windows for my new MacBook Air?
    - fortran77 5y ago
      Right here: https://www.theverge.com/22383598/parallels-desktop-mac-windows-10-install-m1-macbook https://www.theverge.com/22383598/parallels-desktop-mac-wind... > Parallels is releasing an update to its Desktop virtual machine software that allows M1 Mac owners to install Windows 10 on Arm. Parallels Desktop 16.5 now includes the necessary native support to run the Arm version of Windows on M1 chips, following Apple’s decision not to support Boot Camp on M1 Macs. I'm very sorry that you bought a computer that doesn't support any third-party operating systems, by design. (Apple won't support boot-camp on it.) If this feature is important to you, perhaps you should return your M1, and go to Best Buy and purchase one of the many other choices.
      - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        From the article: "The main drawback is that you’ll need to run a preview version of Windows to make this all work. Microsoft only currently licenses the Arm version of Windows 10 to PC makers, so there’s no official way to buy a copy yet."
steinskeeper 5y ago
OSception. Your OS runs a browser and your browser runs a OS. Proves the point as to how important browsers truly are.
- anthk 5y ago
  Sorry, web developer, but you are wrong. Half of this is backed by libvirt/kvm/hyper-v and protocols like RDP and VNC/Spice. The Web it's just reimplementing the clients, badly, requiring twice the requeriments.
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
Over my dead body.
andybak 5y ago
Any pricing details?
- hulitu 5y ago
  It's free just like win 10. You can even encrypt your data (they have the key). Be sure to read the EULA before you use it.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    If I read the EULA first I might still be reading it by the time the product is discontinued.
dmux 5y ago
I wonder if native apps will regain some of their lost popularity if the whole OS and app itself can just be streamed to any device.
- pmontra 5y ago
  Only if developers want to build and distribute native apps. I don't see why they would change their attitude. Web apps are basically multiplatform and updated on the server.
- emptyparadise 5y ago
  Turning on my PC to boot into an OS to open a web browser to turn on a virtual PC to start an OS to open a web browser.
mrtweetyhack 5y ago
haha, that's a security nightmare
number6 5y ago
ssh -x
alphachloride 5y ago
Oh no! What is you doing? This looks interesting on second thought. A good way to consolidate workplace systems for low-bandwidth display applications where consistently low latency is not a big concern. I hope that this is not the beginning of the next iteration of Windows for the general consumers. I like the OS, and I'd like it to remain on my hard drive.
- basch 5y ago
  It's also infinitely easier for Microsoft to improve and protect world security by controlling all network data going into and coming out of a device. A framebuffer delivered to your monitor means Microsoft can run all its advanced threat detection magic with no regard for what network a monitor is plugged into. The millions of unprotected businesses of the world can skip zerotrust / firewall / antivirus / network redesigns and jump right to pc-aas with azure-ad. For all the "I dont want big brother controlling my device" there should be an equal "I dont want teams with millions of dollars carelessly building infrastructure that can be weaponized against society."
  - hulitu 5y ago
    It is also a "say good bye to your data". Next MS innovation: backups in the cloud.
    - anthk 5y ago
      Ah, yes, dumb terminals. They are like 50 years late.
  - lars-b2018 5y ago
    It can really come down to a business case. What are the chances or risk of a virus or ransomware occurring? And what are the potential costs and challenges of dealing with that? If I can reduce my exposure to information, legal and operational risk, which is hard to directly quantify and yet is ever-present, plus some anticipated reduction in operating expenses, it can start to look good for a large portion of businesses with office operations.
temp8964 5y ago
It will be available at Aug 2nd. No price info. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365
BluePen8 5y ago
I'm excited for this, my wife is an accountant and often asks me to help her with VBA macros. Which means that for this reason alone I have to dedicate 40GB of my laptop's hard drive to a Windows partition with office, adobe, and other stuff installed. And if she's not physically near me, I have no way of getting the script to her with any guarantee it'll behave the same or work at all on her work computer. Having worked within unix for so long, I'd started taking it for granted how everything is either portable, or can be easily containerized, Windows and accompanying products are incredibly environment finicky and janky overall. To be able to just do the remote version of "handing over the laptop" will be a godsend.
- movedx 5y ago
  Like using, say, an AWS Workspace? This isn't new, I don't believe.
  - dboreham 5y ago
    Citrix existed in the 90s
- pwarner 5y ago
  I hope they open it to consumers soon. I need a personal VDI to keep personal stuff off my work laptop. AWS workspaces is OK, but they seem to charge for the directory now, so it's kinda expensive
- cptskippy 5y ago
  40GB seems cramped for a Windows install, I usually do 80-100GB boot drives. That being said Windows will happily exist as a VM, issues only arise when you need a dedicated GPU or OpenGL.
  - booi 5y ago
    since it's gotta be shared with, i assume a mac or linux VM, he's probably trying to cut it as close as possible
- 5y ago
mandeepj 5y ago
How it's different than a VM running in their cloud?
- solarkraft 5y ago
  It's a VM running in their cloud. Just a bit nicer to use (productized), which is important.
  - Anunayj 5y ago
    yup, even though this has been done forever, you could always setup a computer at home and RDP to it. Most products I have seen have targeted corporations with IT departments that could set stuff up. This seems more like a easy to use personal/small company product based on their Azure infrastructure. Niche imo. And not that bad tbh, I've have had a couple of instances where I've had to use a Windows for something, and having a quick deploy VM would have been nice. Setting up VMs locally is a pain, so is deploying VMs on many cloud providers.
    - solarkraft 5y ago
      We all remember the famous Dropbox comment [0], right? I think the same holds true in this case. Even when there's an IT department to set things up, that still takes effort to set up and maintain. If it's available as a product, easily used and with a support hotline, I can even see medium sized businesses using it - depending on the price, of course. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
ksec 5y ago
I am assuming this will be aiming for Enterprise niche in certain segment? Or will Microsoft start selling Windows OS that only does Remote Connection to OEMs? i.e Only used for Windows 365? Basically Microsoft version of ChromeOS.
GordonS 5y ago
> Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience Unless they mean it'll instantly show a loading screen, I'll bet it doesn't. I've used various VDI implementations over the years, and they've all been pretty slow to get to a working desktop. I also wonder about latency. I have a 100/20 FTTC connection at home, which I find to be fast. Most recent VDI I used was Citrix, where I was expected to code in a VDI hosted in Netherlands (I'm in the UK) - the latency when typing drove me fucking NUTS! It was mostly just long enough to be intensely irritating and distracting, but occasionally latency would increase to a few seconds too.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Just use TRAMP/VSCode remote.
- ampdepolymerase 5y ago
  They can keep it hot in memory similar to serverless. If everyone uses the same base copy of Windows, then they can easily fork from one parent copy. A copy on write network filesystem + some Windows Registry and Explorer tricks can take care of the remaining 20%.
  - dijit 5y ago
    > then they can easily fork from one parent copy. Ironically windows does not implement fork()
    - vbezhenar 5y ago
      AFAIK Windows kernel is advanced enough to implement fork if necessary. WSL 1 uses it.
    - marwis 5y ago
      Think at hypervisor level. Most VM solutions support some form of memory deduplication. VM level cloning wouldn't be too far from that model IMO.
GordonS 5y ago
Will be interesting to see pricing - I wonder if there will be any kind of discount for orgs that already have most of their people on Windows, or indeed for employees using their own Windows devices. I could see this being a big security bonus for a lot of companies, especially with the shift to WFH - I'd think a lot of companies had to rather hastily deploy VPNs etc, and that's not the kind of infrastructure you want to rush... Also, I can imagine some unscrupulous companies seeing this as a money-saving exercise, forcing employees to use their own devices instead of providing one for them.
- Shadonototro 5y ago
  Leaks indicates it will be starting at $59.99/month This way too expansive, I'm not sure that'll find a place in IT places, most professionals already know how to work with a VPS.. Unless some tech illiterates management makes decisions, I fail to see how this can be successful
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    Considering there is probably going to be discounts for large integrators, and that price adds up to $720/year - if this actually does replace upgrade costs - it might be worth to some companies.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    $720.00 per year including the hardware and availability everywhere there is an internet connection. It's $2,160.00 in 3 years, a professional level laptop. The local device could be very cheap and light. I wonder what are the hardware and bandwidth requirements.
    - stkdump 5y ago
      If you need 4k60 or more, then your local device can't be a potato either.
Shadonototro 5y ago
Linux should have got the lead here, what happened? Lack of app ecosystem in Linux? i think that's the problem..
- nly 5y ago
  X11 forwarding is slow and shitty and Wayland didn't acknowedlege the value of remote desktop for far too long. Also remote desktop is about way more than mouse, keyboard and graphics.these days people expect usb device forwarding and audio too
  - bpye 5y ago
    Does Wayland even have a good remoting solution today?
    - alexeiz 5y ago
      I use Xpra to remote individual apps. It's not as good as RDP, but better than other remoting solutions like forwarding X11 over ssh, Nomachine or X2go.
    - snuxoll 5y ago
      No, because like everything else it has to be done by the compositor. I’m not going to pretend it’s super simple to make Linux work in a modern VDI environment, there’s a lot that needs to be done to match what Citrix, VMWare and Microsoft do - but it kind of shows that nobody actually thinks Linux on the desktop makes sense when nobody has even tried to make it work.
beervirus 5y ago
Congratulations, you have invented Citrix.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  You're being unnecessarily snarky for some reason. They aren't suggesting that this is new technology, but I do believe it's a new product - I don't think I've been able to sign up for a service with this kind of convenience before.
- atatatat 5y ago
  lol, have you overseen a Citrix deployment?!
- pimlottc 5y ago
  Congratulations, you have eliminated a middleman.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  Remote Desktop (Terminal Services) was licensed from Citrix in 1998. And that was developed with Citrix licensing OS/2 from Microsoft and then Microsoft investing in them after switching to Windows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrix_Systems#Rise_in_popularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrix_Systems#Rise_in_popular...
LeoPanthera 5y ago
It looks like this is just an RDP-style solution which is disappointing, it would be really interesting if things still ran locally but everything - apps and data - were synced in real time to the cloud, allowing you to login anywhere on any Windows PC and get all your stuff, without worrying about subsequent users of that hardware from seeing it once you logged out. That would be pretty amazing, but it looks like it's just all running in the cloud.
- phamilton 5y ago
  Vscode Remote strikes a very good balance IMO. The client running completely locally with a server running on the remote machine.
  - stkdump 5y ago
    So it is a client-server app? Aren't clients always running completely locally and the server always running remotely? Not trying to be smart, I would like to understand where the line is for vscode remote? What is running remotely (on the server) exactly?
    - phamilton 5y ago
      Yes, my statement does sound tautological. In vscode a full copy of the vscode backend runs on the remote machine. All running of tests, running the app, type checking and Intellisense, etc. all run on the remote machine. But the UI/client runs on my machine. The result is a very seamless native feeling experience, much more so than RDP or Citrix or any other display forwarding technology I've used. My claim is that client/server applications actually work very well and much better than a "streaming desktop experience".
- marwis 5y ago
  Sounds like one could sort of make it with KVM+DRBD or perhaps zfs send/receive
catmanjan 5y ago
I guess Microsoft is giving up on porting full Word, Excel, etc to the browser...
dzonga 5y ago
this will be easy money for microsoft. we're now back to the day of thin clients. with a full OS streaming from the cloud, Enterprises can reduce costs. And with 0 trust, it means data is more secure either ways i.e prevent future hacks due to incompetent IT policies. However, as a consumer I get worried about how ownership is slowly being chipped away. slowly we're renting everything.
- roody15 5y ago
  slowly? Seems to be moving quickly to rent a model in just about everything :/
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    Outsourcing something that is not a core competency (like running virtual machines) is cheaper and safer for all but the largest organisations.
  - baal80spam 5y ago
    Well, then all is going according to plan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBBxWtKKQiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBBxWtKKQiA https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the...
topicseed 5y ago
Interesting to see if Mighty App sees this as competition to their Chrome streaming.
- ChrisArchitect 5y ago
  Gah, was waiting for this to come up: now whenever I hear about some kind of 'app streaming' or whatever I just think of smug Mighty bro
desktopninja 5y ago
Finally! 7$ a month ... make it the same price as netflix subscription but with access to xbox live and windows 365 RE: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-touts-7-per-user-monthly-pricing-for-windows-subscriptions.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-tout... AWS Workspaces is actually pretty good too.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  It's a different license. There's no way VM could cost $7/month. More like $70/month/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - desktopninja 5y ago
    I think they could do it.
- joenathanone 5y ago
  That article is from 2015.
  - desktopninja 5y ago
    Yes. They've talked about Windows As A Service for a while.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cmxch 5y ago
So this is what Microsoft wants the PCs to run that can't run Windows 11. That said, it is a nightmare for privacy, security, and openness. A nightmare for privacy and security given that they have the data (and likely the means to unlock it). A nightmare for openness given that data interchange will be discouraged in favor of the walled garden.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  It is technically possible to encrypt VM in a way that even host can't decrypt it. AMD Epyc CPUs supports encrypted memory.
  - crvdgc 5y ago
    > Finally, encryption is used across the board. All managed disks running Cloud PCs are encrypted, all stored data is encrypted at rest, and all network traffic to and from your Cloud PCs is also encrypted. That being said, this level of deep integration means that the moment you boot the cloud PC, all of the data are potentially very vulnerable on the software level.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    That's not the audience for this.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but I have to challenge this. > A nightmare for privacy and security given that they have the data (and likely the means to unlock it). 365 customers' data is fully encrypted and MS cannot just decrypt it with a click of a button, it is also sharded across multiple storage silos, so that it cannot even be copied out of your tenant unless you are the customer. They also have a 'high encryption' option where the encryption key can be held on-premises and not in any MS data-centre. > A nightmare for openness given that data interchange will be discouraged in favor of the walled garden. I have no idea where you got this idea from, or what you even mean. 365 is a platform. If you want to run Linux VMs in it, you can. If you want to reach out and exchange data with non MS services like other cloud apps outside of 365 (or even on-premises apps) you can. Picture your own personal datacentre full of kit but run by someone else. That is the 365 experience. I'm not someone who drinks the MS Kool-aid, but I do know the facts as I work in a MS partner company. If you'd said something similarly wrong about AWS, I would defend that too.
adamparsons 5y ago
Lipstick on a pig
- version_five 5y ago
  Haha yeah I was just sending instructions to a team today on how to set up some software and I wasn't sure what OS they were using. I wrote up the linux and mac instructions and when I got to windows i had to think for a minute if i really thought there was a chance someone would have a windows machine. I ended up including instructions, but I know that at least for (edit: modern) development stuff, windows is just an afterthought, nobody is really expecting people to be using it.
  - adamparsons 5y ago
    In this case I mean, VDI has existed for literally decades now. Are we supposed to congratulate MS for doing what every other cloud provider did more than 10 years ago?
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      It hasn’t been a very convenient solution though. I suspect the key here is the managing of everyone’s data and machine in the company. Instant-on personal clients with the company directory would be great for administration.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    I assure you huge number of developers do their development stuff on windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a majority (given how big the majority is for windows on the desktop overall). Edit: indeed after some quick googling it does indeed seem to be the clear majority desktop OS even for people identifying as software developers, for example in the StackOverflow developer survey.
  - baal80spam 5y ago
    > at least for (edit: modern) development stuff, windows is just an afterthought, nobody is really expecting people to be using it. What? I don't know where you are from but in Europe (read: outside US) I estimate that over 90% of software development is done on MS stack.
cenourinhapt 5y ago
Thank you, but nope.
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  I had recently a webinar from Siemens Automation, where they talked about such licence models, just everything in the cloud. I asked myself how they would do that, but now it looks much more clear I guess. But I have to agree with you. Thank you, but nope.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
    This is what we were telling Adobe when they first announced CC.
user3939382 5y ago
I read the whole announcement. Sounds like RDP which we’ve had for 20+ years. I’m assuming it’s different but this doesn’t explain how. “We’ve created a cloud PC” So a thin client?
- glitchcrab 5y ago
  I got a few sentences in and thought 'thin client' too.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Which is newspeak for “terminal” ;-)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  And Dropbox is just rsync, right?
  - Macha 5y ago
    Hasn't this ultimately been the downfall of Dropbox? Not that consumers are doing it themselves, but Microsoft, Google, etc. all spun up competitors and turned their main product into a feature. Their one selling point is being the independent option, and I'm not sure the people who care about that are actually large enough to sustain them long term...
    - Spivak 5y ago
      Eh? Kinda. Storage still costs money and they’re all about the same. Dropbox loses because of preferential integration and defaults.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
inetknght 5y ago
This is utter trash. Microsoft should go back to selling products instead of selling subscriptions.
- glitchcrab 5y ago
  It's all about that MRR figure.
martin_henk 5y ago
Brought to you from the creators of Teams
- rbanffy 5y ago
  And SharePoint!
  - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
    And Skype for Business.
    - antaviana 5y ago
      And EDLIN.
- Bluecobra 5y ago
  But this could (theoretically) finally fix the performance/battery issues by having a dedicated cloud VM that only runs Teams! :)
Cilvic 5y ago
I'm actually looking forward to this, making it more mainstream than RDP and better pricing? Buying my last laptop I'm torn between gaming = GPU vs. noise & form factor = on the go vs. CPU/RAM for local developing/PowerBI. For gaming the future looks god with streaming. Also I'd prefer to keep business and private machine apart, but still have them both always with me, no matter the device.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
whalesalad 5y ago
Perfect for my use case where I need the occasional place to test random Windows stuff or temporarily need a computer with a different IP. I have a Win 10 eval VM here at home but I don’t really like maintaining it.
hpoe 5y ago
This was of course the logical end of the cloud expansion. Why pay for users to have a beefy machine when all their apps live in the cloud anyway. Also now it is so much easier to enforce policies prevent users from installing things they shouldn't, recover lost data, etc. Of course it brings with it all the same issues. Hopefully we can figure out how to move back to private computing before they make all endpoints dumb terminals.
nonfamous 5y ago
The commentary here so far is technical — “it’s just RDP” — but I suspect the real story here is on the business side. The fact that no pricing is available is telling - this isn’t for consumers. But for big companies who get this as part of their enterprise agreements, I bet this is a big deal for their IT departments.
- user3939382 5y ago
  If it's a business service RDP that would be Azure Virtual Desktop. Again, it very well may be something different. But this announcement doesn't make clear what that would be.
  - sciurus 5y ago
    The announcement explicitly says that this is Azure Virtual Desktop. "Windows 365 is built on Azure Virtual Desktop, but it simplifies the virtualization experience—handling all the details for you. "
    - user3939382 5y ago
      Ah, I missed that. I guess we just have to wait and see some details. "Simplifies the experience" I don't know what that means.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        Azure Virtual desktop was like a low level API… Citrix and VMWare sell brokering/provisioning solutions that instrument the Azure desktop. Now that Citrix and VMWare brought this business to Azure, Microsoft is launching a competing offering. Nice guys they are lol.
      - mattowen_uk 5y ago
        There's a full video out there for 365 admins somewhere on the MS site (I'm sorry, the URL is on my other machine). "Simplifies the experience" means, that with just 3 provisioning checkboxes against a user object in 365, you can grant that user a Windows 365 machine including all the 365 apps and your standard policies. It takes about 20 minutes from enablement for the VM to be ready, and the VM remains persistent for the lifetime of it's provisioning. The cost model is a fixed fee per provisioned user, per month.
geocrasher 5y ago
At first I thought "another RDP solution" but then I saw this line: Windows 365 also creates a new hybrid personal computing category called Cloud PC, which uses both the power of the cloud and the capabilities of the device... Does that mean it makes use of local hardware past the capabilities it would need as a thin client? GPU acceleration, etc? It'll be interesting to find out.
- gruez 5y ago
  I think you're reading too much into it. Sure, it's possible that they have some sort of RDMA technology that allows you to automagically offload work from your local machine to a cloud GPU/CPU, but I doubt it. My guess is that it'll be something lame like "having a synced workspace (aka onedrive) and being able to edit documents on it locally and have it synced to your cloud workspace"
  - sascha_sl 5y ago
    It's probably something like the Teams integration VMWare shipped in Horizon (in collaboration with Microsoft). https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/microsoft-teams-optimization-vmware-horizon https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/microsoft-teams-optimiz...
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised to see cloud auth (AD) so you can pay every month to use the capabilities of your local PC that you already paid for. Buy a PC so you can remote into a crappier cloud PC? Pass. Lol.
- okareaman 5y ago
  Maybe this will help... What is hybrid cloud? https://www.netapp.com/hybrid-cloud/what-is-hybrid-cloud/ https://www.netapp.com/hybrid-cloud/what-is-hybrid-cloud/
- user3939382 5y ago
  Windows Server has had something like this for a while, it's called RemoteFX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX I guess we'll have to wait to see if this is just a rebranding of the same thing or something new.
CountDrewku 5y ago
Is the cloud to butt extension still a thing? Seems really appropriate here.
bhauer 5y ago
This technology needs to be something one can enable on their own PCs, and reach via their own private VPN. It should not require using a public cloud such as Azure.
hanselot 5y ago
All your data are belong to us. I guess the ms devs finally figured out that their powershells can run ssh
MarcScott 5y ago
Is this just Active Directory over the internet, or am I misreading the post?
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  No this has nothing to do with AD. Off-prem cloud AD is already being done via Azure.
- shubb 5y ago
  If you think about a big microsoft based corp who are now using azure - they have an on prem AD and are using all kinds of AD magic to administrate their real hardware. Then they have an Azure AD that manages their servers and other resources and controls access to all their cloud stuff. Now a local domain user needs rights on some cloud asset with single sign on - consulting around I've seen company sholve this a bunch of ways and it's a mess. So if one thing MS are doing here is adding an elegant official way of doing that - that would be nice.
shadilay 5y ago
This is a much bigger deal than HN realizes. The PC experience hasn't changed much in a long time. The future of windows in the corporate world is cloud first and access to your 'session' and files from any device. This is to the corporate world what chromebooks were to schools. Yes RDP/Network drives exist but if you have to train users it's a non starter for mass adoption. No one wants to explain to the computer illiterate the difference between local files and shared drives.
desc 5y ago
Ugh, when will they learn. I actively DO NOT WANT this stuff. * Not 'I want something else they haven't built yet and this is irrelevant'. * Not 'I don't understand this and just want something they think it already does'. I mean: the entire concept of a universal Cloud account sharing an 'experience' across multiple devices is something I will gladly pay to avoid, as will the majority of people I know who aren't in IT (and can't necessarily afford the time/money/attention it takes to get away from this shit these days). The people pushing this shit are either stupid or malicious, and either way they need to be removed from any position of control as soon as possible.
- jensensbutton 5y ago
  Windows is literally the last consumer OS to get on this train. Seems they have learned. From their competitors.
  - taejavu 5y ago
    How do I do this with MacOS?
    - jdshaffer 5y ago
      There appear to be several options, but here is one just as an example: https://www.macincloud.com/ https://www.macincloud.com/
      - banana_giraffe 5y ago
        I'm confused. If that counts as an option for Mac OS, surely, well, pretty much any Windows server option out there, like AWS, whatever VPS service that offers Windows counts as well?
      - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
        That's not first-party.
- misterbwong 5y ago
bokohut 5y ago
This will be significantly interesting to follow from a revenue generation perspective and how they are going to abuse users and then ask for forgiveness. Monthly billing will need a valid payment instrument "on file" and over time they are certain to nickel and dime users for features. So you want to print on your home printer from your M$ cloud hosted Window$ in$tance, that will be 5¢ per page or we can send it to your local Staples* for pickup at 1¢ per page. A microtransaction chargeback for a failed print from a paper jam will be interesting to review. This is certain to go in the direction most know it will and has the potential to redefine the term pay-per-click. Just look past the security implications and the die-sasters that are certain to occur from making Windows available from anywhere "easy" for the non-technical crowd. *By agreeing to any savings through our third party vendors you are hereby informed that we SharE aLL your information with these vendors in order to recoup the savings extended to you.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Using $ with Msft feels kitschy and unnecessary. No one reading and grokking the reason for $ over S doesn’t know that Microsoft isn’t a money printing company that does mostly whatever they can to make money. Do you think Staples is any different? Yet the S there was not replaced.
  - lkramer 5y ago
    I love it, as a throwback to the 90s. Also bring back the Bill Gates Borg image please.
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      Coincidentally the 90s was when (I imagine) most of us were kids. I'd rather not have my dumb memes, Slashdot copypastas and the like guide our technical discourse today.
      - bitwize 5y ago
        Somebody doesn't like the feel of hot grits down their pants...
seanalexander 5y ago
With today's broadband standards being so slow, this is a nightmare waiting to happen.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Much of the world has high speed internet now. Almost every city has gbit or faster. Why hold back tech from people who can use it? This stuff will also drive demand for faster internet.
  - seanalexander 5y ago
    What cities have gbit upload speeds on a consumer plan?
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      You don't need fast upload for this. You are just sending keyboard and mouse controls up and getting some kind of video feed down.
k12sosse 5y ago
BYO image, too. This is being overlooked.
elteto 5y ago
Interesting, this will allow Microsoft to still run Windows AND all existing Windows software on ARM. It seems like the way of least resistance to get ready for the incoming ARM onslaught.
Valkhyr 5y ago
Most dystopian shit I've seen in a while.
m1el 5y ago
> This approach creates a fully new personal computing category, specifically for the hybrid world: the Cloud PC. Cloud computing is the antithesis of "personal computing", you lying asshole.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  The idea is that your "personal" computer at work follows you from the office to a laptop, not that this is for consumers (I hope).
throwaway888abc 5y ago
or Meet Webtops A Linux Desktop Environment In Your Browser https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2021-05-05-meet-webtops-a-linux-desktop-environment-in-your-browser https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2021-05-05-meet-webtops-a-li... https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop
hedora 5y ago
They say it’s appropriate for industrial designers. I wonder if that implies GPU support. The only use case I have for windows is a few steam games that don’t run on Linux. Make the setup seamless, and charge by the hour, and… maybe?
TrevorJ 5y ago
The only reason I use Windows at all is that it's the best way to run the applications I need as close to the metal as possible. If it wasn't for that, I'd be in Linux or some virtualization flavor. If all the applications I use daily were available natively on some other OS I'd switch tomorrow. Given that, I don't really see the utility in this for me, and it makes my nervous about what I DO depend on Windows for. I feel like MS is gonna try to push us all into this cloud model, which is 100% the opposite of what I need from Windows.
- stu2b50 5y ago
  It's very much not a product for you. It's aimed at large corporate IT departments that want a painless way to provision equipment and deal with all the malware their employees inevitably download.
9front 5y ago
Years ago before Oracle swallowed Sun Microsystems, Sun's motto was "The network is the computer." MS could use "The cloud is the computer" now!
- emptyparadise 5y ago
  The world now uses a universal ^Java.*? virtual machine and a smarter windowing server which does not require pushing images over the wire. Thin clients are slowly but surely becoming the norm. Companies rent out computing power by the hour. x86 is declining. Microsoft is embracing Unix. Have we been cursed by the ghost of Sun Microsystems?
  - dontblink 5y ago
    I always think SUN was too early. I find chromeos to be the successor to their intent with Google actually even occupying their buildings today.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
_carbyau_ 5y ago
And Citrix VDI sites in corporate businesses all over the world suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
- maliker 5y ago
  My company just shut down citrix in favor of Azure VDI. Seems Microsoft is competing on price. And I have to admit the user experience is a tad better.
russellbeattie 5y ago
I've been (incorrectly) predicting forever that Microsoft would start selling Chromebook-like devices which used remote Windows like this, or even an inexpensive consumer tablet that runs mostly in the cloud. They've literally been working on this stuff since the Mira tablet in 2002.
CodeWriter23 5y ago
Cloud PC: when you absolutely positively want your workstation to be just as oversubscribed as your servers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Sophistifunk 5y ago
I get that none of us want this stuff. No end user wants any of this stuff. It's for big business, who get to tell their employees what computers to use and how, despite their employees also not wanting this stuff. It's where the money is, so it's not going away.
osigurdson 5y ago
As many have indicated: it is not that this is possible or even unique, it is simply the price at which it can be achieved. Not including this in the announcement misses the only point that anyone cares about.
dustinmoris 5y ago
As someone who is sometimes forced to use Azure and Sharepoint I can hardly imagine something worse than Microsoft 365.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
On the plus side, this might force some ISPs to get their shit together and add some nines to their 90% uptime.
davidbanham 5y ago
Neat! Modern thin-client life is actually pretty good. Connectivity of some kind is ubiquitous enough these days that my computer for the last couple of years has been an Arch VM in a local Linode datacenter. I don't need to fuss with file syncing solutions because I only ever access them from the one machine, I just happen to access that machine remotely. Backups are seamlessly handled by Linode snapshotting my disk every so often. I can happily run little webservers, etc, with pretty decent availability. The thing that sits on my desk is a second hand, small form factor ThinkCentre I picked up dirt cheap when some corp was done with it. All it needs to do is run a terminal ssh'ed into a Tmux session and a local instance of Firefox. I get basically the same experience whether I'm at my desk, on my iPad or using Blink on my phone. It's actually made me _less_ concerned about my unreliable broadband connection. If my main link goes down, I just hotspot to the 4G on my phone. The latency is a little worse but the bandwidth isn't actually relevant. All my chonky uploads like build artifacts, docker images, etc, all go direct from my Linode to wherever they need to go. Very civilised.
- edwinyzh 5y ago
  What web server software you run in your VPS, and what resources/control/files your local firefox can access/manage?
  - davidbanham 5y ago
    Oh all sorts of things. Mostly it's just a development instance of whatever I'm working on, which is usually something in Go these days. I use Caddy to route to various internal services based on the domain the request comes in on. I use Cloudflare to have a wildcard DNS such that I can just start using anything.vps.example.com and have the traffic show up at my machine. Also other bits and bobs like a Discourse server, photo gallery, etc. My local firefox doesn't do anything fancy back to the VPS. It's just a browser, but it does spend a lot of time accessing the dev instances I'm running on the server. It's nice to be able to easily access my in-progress code over a proper domain, over the proper internet, with proper TLS rather than localhost. Browsers handle localhost differently than real domains and it's handy to shake out those errors early on in a project.
- 5y ago
numlock86 5y ago
Anyone else thinks that "Zero Trust" is a really bad choice of words for what it is supposed to actually mean?
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  It meant not having network trust when Google/BeyondCorp made the concept popular, seems fine?
RalfWausE 5y ago
Aaaand there we are: The days of a dumb terminal hooked up to a Mainframe are back again
- EugeneOZ 5y ago
  Some big corporations are using it right now, they will not notice the change. Especially often in retail and banks.
  - jdhzzz 5y ago
    I among them using a VM over Citrix as my "work machine". Other than being under powered (typical one size fits all) it is _wonderful_. Always logged in with everything up and available. Sign my company up.
EugeneOZ 5y ago
Hope it will be shipped without IE11 inside, just Edge. Otherwise IE11 will never die.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
I kinda do this already. I have a "server" machine running zerotier. Then, anywhere I can take a device, plop zerotier and rdp right in. Its only limited to "100Mbps" but rdp is native like even at a fraction of that speed. I have around a dozen people remoting into this server and do 8 hours shifts for the last two years now. Microsoft now wants to be "server" in this case. Rest is the exact same thing except by doing windows 365 cloud PC, you are now giving ownership of your software, files stuff over to micrsoft who can hold it for ransom or outright ban you for stuff like "user from Iran signed in like github did some time ago" or "this govt wants data of this journalist. Here is your court order. Like india does right now. " I cannot live with that. Maybe a lot of people might but not me.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
HAHAHAHA, no goddamned way. After Microsoft's attempt to ram their asinine online accounts down your throat when all you want to do is run Windows or an office application, they can keep their "thin client" retread.
utf_8x 5y ago
Yeah... Makes sense for corporate use. But for a personal computer - fuuuuuuuuck no.

236 points by WalterSobchak 5y ago

A feature I think would make this a killer app is to be a truly hybrid experience. Similar to how Parallels can make it seem like apps from a Windows VM are running as OS-X apps, MS needs to create a more seamless experience. How great would it be to just have a shortcut link to open Photoshop on my powerful high memory optimized Cloud VM and other apps from my corporate provided VM. Secondly, when I hit Start I should be able to tab through my connected VMs, or see an aggregate list of all start menus of all my VMs and local PC.

CRConrad 5y ago

Huh... So this comes only now? I must admit, I thought they'd already had this for years. Oh well, at least now we know why they've dropped the "Windows as a service" moniker for Windows 11: Because this is Windows as a service.

metalliqaz 5y ago

This seems like a natural product to come out of MS's cloud strategy. Especially considering the cloud gaming they're building with Xbox Game Pass. Also notable that it's at the same time they decided to turn a Windows 10 upgrade into Windows 11.

esens 5y ago

This makes sense. It is a competitor to Amazon's Windows Desktop environments. Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing. I can see this working for a lot of places where you want good information security. You can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot.

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
> good information security > You can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot. pick one
- GordonS 5y ago
  100% guaranteed, cast-iron, watertight security is impossible - but VDIs could potentially prevent whole classes of attack. It's about increasing the barrier against realistic threat models.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
    I completely agree - many attack vectors are more difficult, and some are impossible. However, saying "you can never get the data out of the cloud except via screenshot" is, first of all, untrue, as other means exist, and second, preventing access to data is not the most important security aspect of such a system.
gexla 5y ago
> Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing. Not necessarily. They have already had a similar service. This seems to be a simplification of that service? Maybe it's sort of like Amazon offering Lightsail as an alternative to EC2? After clicking around the site for a half hour trying to figure out pricing for Azure Virtual Desktops, I gave up. I figured if you have to ask how much it is, then I can't afford it. Now they are launching a service seemingly directed to users like me, but they still can't give us prices. I assume they will in time for launch, but I'm getting really sick of hunting for prices on Azure. Every minute I have spent on that site has been wasted. I doubt they would beat AWS on pricing. The AWS instances appear to be really well priced relative to what you could get if you tried to do the same with EC2. I couldn't see MS being as cheap. From what I remember, Azure is generally more expensive across the board.
- easton 5y ago
  Microsoft's secret weapon here is that if you subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business/Enterprise (which is a prereq for this according for what they've said), they include a Windows license that can be ran on Azure for VDI. On AWS, you have to buy CALs and licensing for the instances (Windows VDA licenses? I last looked into that years ago). Or you can buy the licenses from AWS but I'm sure that's not the rate you'd pay getting them directly from Microsoft (and then you often have to use Windows Server which doesn't have things like WSL2). That's not a gigantic barrier if you're an enterprise, but figuring out licensing for Workspaces if you don't have a couple smart Microsoft admins and money to burn is really hard. This is easy, since all of the license entitlements are enforced through their portal. (if you can start an instance you are licensed)
  - gexla 5y ago
    If you want an AWS instance, it's not much more complicated than pick your instance and go. Of course, we're talking about the AWS console here, which is not so easy if you aren't used to it. If you know your way around, then it's about the same as getting anything else AWS. You don't have to deal with licenses at all. The pricing is really cheap. Looking at the pricing of instances on EC2, I don't know how they get so cheap. I'm sure the answer is in the details if I were to go digging (different hardware) but it's cheap. I don't think the Asure alternative will be even close. While AWS makes Workspaces easy and affordable for just about any individual, that person is probably still not the target for MS. I'm guessing this new offering is simply the same service as they already offer, for businesses which want systems for less than 100 people, and are still able to dish out a load of cash. The benefit to Azure is that it's Microsoft. They aren't going to compete on pricing for anything. If pricing is your main concern, then you don't to Azure (or even Google Compute.) If your boss says you have to use Azure, then that's when Azure has the advantage. ;)
viraptor 5y ago
> Microsoft should beat AWS's offering here because well, they make the OS that they are virtualizing. I don't see the obvious connection here. Software is easy to install. But Azure is not really close in scale of deployment to AWS.
- dboreham 5y ago
  It is the "next closest" right?
  - viraptor 5y ago
    Sure - they won't be much disadvantaged. But I meant that if they went Azure only or tried to be the only provider, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. I completely expect them to want a good experience on AWS hosted desktop. Maybe not the best, but I don't expect them to have a significant advantage. (apart from possible integrations)
pwarner 5y ago
And until now at least, workspaces seemed nicer than Microsoft VDI. I presume this changes it. Look forward to testing

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

Back when people were predicting Microsoft porting Windows to the new ARM based Macs I thought this was a much more likely solution.

fortran77 5y ago
Windows already runs on ARM.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Where can I buy a copy of Windows for my new MacBook Air?
  - fortran77 5y ago
    Right here: https://www.theverge.com/22383598/parallels-desktop-mac-windows-10-install-m1-macbook https://www.theverge.com/22383598/parallels-desktop-mac-wind... > Parallels is releasing an update to its Desktop virtual machine software that allows M1 Mac owners to install Windows 10 on Arm. Parallels Desktop 16.5 now includes the necessary native support to run the Arm version of Windows on M1 chips, following Apple’s decision not to support Boot Camp on M1 Macs. I'm very sorry that you bought a computer that doesn't support any third-party operating systems, by design. (Apple won't support boot-camp on it.) If this feature is important to you, perhaps you should return your M1, and go to Best Buy and purchase one of the many other choices.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      From the article: "The main drawback is that you’ll need to run a preview version of Windows to make this all work. Microsoft only currently licenses the Arm version of Windows 10 to PC makers, so there’s no official way to buy a copy yet."

steinskeeper 5y ago

OSception. Your OS runs a browser and your browser runs a OS. Proves the point as to how important browsers truly are.

anthk 5y ago
Sorry, web developer, but you are wrong. Half of this is backed by libvirt/kvm/hyper-v and protocols like RDP and VNC/Spice. The Web it's just reimplementing the clients, badly, requiring twice the requeriments.

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago

Over my dead body.

andybak 5y ago

Any pricing details?

hulitu 5y ago
It's free just like win 10. You can even encrypt your data (they have the key). Be sure to read the EULA before you use it.
- shadilay 5y ago
  If I read the EULA first I might still be reading it by the time the product is discontinued.

dmux 5y ago

I wonder if native apps will regain some of their lost popularity if the whole OS and app itself can just be streamed to any device.

pmontra 5y ago
Only if developers want to build and distribute native apps. I don't see why they would change their attitude. Web apps are basically multiplatform and updated on the server.
emptyparadise 5y ago
Turning on my PC to boot into an OS to open a web browser to turn on a virtual PC to start an OS to open a web browser.

mrtweetyhack 5y ago

haha, that's a security nightmare

number6 5y ago

ssh -x

alphachloride 5y ago

Oh no! What is you doing? This looks interesting on second thought. A good way to consolidate workplace systems for low-bandwidth display applications where consistently low latency is not a big concern. I hope that this is not the beginning of the next iteration of Windows for the general consumers. I like the OS, and I'd like it to remain on my hard drive.

basch 5y ago
It's also infinitely easier for Microsoft to improve and protect world security by controlling all network data going into and coming out of a device. A framebuffer delivered to your monitor means Microsoft can run all its advanced threat detection magic with no regard for what network a monitor is plugged into. The millions of unprotected businesses of the world can skip zerotrust / firewall / antivirus / network redesigns and jump right to pc-aas with azure-ad. For all the "I dont want big brother controlling my device" there should be an equal "I dont want teams with millions of dollars carelessly building infrastructure that can be weaponized against society."
- hulitu 5y ago
  It is also a "say good bye to your data". Next MS innovation: backups in the cloud.
  - anthk 5y ago
    Ah, yes, dumb terminals. They are like 50 years late.
- lars-b2018 5y ago
  It can really come down to a business case. What are the chances or risk of a virus or ransomware occurring? And what are the potential costs and challenges of dealing with that? If I can reduce my exposure to information, legal and operational risk, which is hard to directly quantify and yet is ever-present, plus some anticipated reduction in operating expenses, it can start to look good for a large portion of businesses with office operations.

temp8964 5y ago

It will be available at Aug 2nd. No price info. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365

BluePen8 5y ago

I'm excited for this, my wife is an accountant and often asks me to help her with VBA macros. Which means that for this reason alone I have to dedicate 40GB of my laptop's hard drive to a Windows partition with office, adobe, and other stuff installed. And if she's not physically near me, I have no way of getting the script to her with any guarantee it'll behave the same or work at all on her work computer. Having worked within unix for so long, I'd started taking it for granted how everything is either portable, or can be easily containerized, Windows and accompanying products are incredibly environment finicky and janky overall. To be able to just do the remote version of "handing over the laptop" will be a godsend.

movedx 5y ago
Like using, say, an AWS Workspace? This isn't new, I don't believe.
- dboreham 5y ago
  Citrix existed in the 90s
pwarner 5y ago
I hope they open it to consumers soon. I need a personal VDI to keep personal stuff off my work laptop. AWS workspaces is OK, but they seem to charge for the directory now, so it's kinda expensive
cptskippy 5y ago
40GB seems cramped for a Windows install, I usually do 80-100GB boot drives. That being said Windows will happily exist as a VM, issues only arise when you need a dedicated GPU or OpenGL.
- booi 5y ago
  since it's gotta be shared with, i assume a mac or linux VM, he's probably trying to cut it as close as possible
5y ago

mandeepj 5y ago

How it's different than a VM running in their cloud?

solarkraft 5y ago
It's a VM running in their cloud. Just a bit nicer to use (productized), which is important.
- Anunayj 5y ago
  yup, even though this has been done forever, you could always setup a computer at home and RDP to it. Most products I have seen have targeted corporations with IT departments that could set stuff up. This seems more like a easy to use personal/small company product based on their Azure infrastructure. Niche imo. And not that bad tbh, I've have had a couple of instances where I've had to use a Windows for something, and having a quick deploy VM would have been nice. Setting up VMs locally is a pain, so is deploying VMs on many cloud providers.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    We all remember the famous Dropbox comment [0], right? I think the same holds true in this case. Even when there's an IT department to set things up, that still takes effort to set up and maintain. If it's available as a product, easily used and with a support hotline, I can even see medium sized businesses using it - depending on the price, of course. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

ksec 5y ago

I am assuming this will be aiming for Enterprise niche in certain segment? Or will Microsoft start selling Windows OS that only does Remote Connection to OEMs? i.e Only used for Windows 365? Basically Microsoft version of ChromeOS.

GordonS 5y ago

> Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience Unless they mean it'll instantly show a loading screen, I'll bet it doesn't. I've used various VDI implementations over the years, and they've all been pretty slow to get to a working desktop. I also wonder about latency. I have a 100/20 FTTC connection at home, which I find to be fast. Most recent VDI I used was Citrix, where I was expected to code in a VDI hosted in Netherlands (I'm in the UK) - the latency when typing drove me fucking NUTS! It was mostly just long enough to be intensely irritating and distracting, but occasionally latency would increase to a few seconds too.

908B64B197 5y ago
Just use TRAMP/VSCode remote.
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
They can keep it hot in memory similar to serverless. If everyone uses the same base copy of Windows, then they can easily fork from one parent copy. A copy on write network filesystem + some Windows Registry and Explorer tricks can take care of the remaining 20%.
- dijit 5y ago
  > then they can easily fork from one parent copy. Ironically windows does not implement fork()
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    AFAIK Windows kernel is advanced enough to implement fork if necessary. WSL 1 uses it.
  - marwis 5y ago
    Think at hypervisor level. Most VM solutions support some form of memory deduplication. VM level cloning wouldn't be too far from that model IMO.

GordonS 5y ago

Will be interesting to see pricing - I wonder if there will be any kind of discount for orgs that already have most of their people on Windows, or indeed for employees using their own Windows devices. I could see this being a big security bonus for a lot of companies, especially with the shift to WFH - I'd think a lot of companies had to rather hastily deploy VPNs etc, and that's not the kind of infrastructure you want to rush... Also, I can imagine some unscrupulous companies seeing this as a money-saving exercise, forcing employees to use their own devices instead of providing one for them.

Shadonototro 5y ago
Leaks indicates it will be starting at $59.99/month This way too expansive, I'm not sure that'll find a place in IT places, most professionals already know how to work with a VPS.. Unless some tech illiterates management makes decisions, I fail to see how this can be successful
- aaomidi 5y ago
  Considering there is probably going to be discounts for large integrators, and that price adds up to $720/year - if this actually does replace upgrade costs - it might be worth to some companies.
- pmontra 5y ago
  $720.00 per year including the hardware and availability everywhere there is an internet connection. It's $2,160.00 in 3 years, a professional level laptop. The local device could be very cheap and light. I wonder what are the hardware and bandwidth requirements.
  - stkdump 5y ago
    If you need 4k60 or more, then your local device can't be a potato either.

Shadonototro 5y ago

Linux should have got the lead here, what happened? Lack of app ecosystem in Linux? i think that's the problem..

nly 5y ago
X11 forwarding is slow and shitty and Wayland didn't acknowedlege the value of remote desktop for far too long. Also remote desktop is about way more than mouse, keyboard and graphics.these days people expect usb device forwarding and audio too
- bpye 5y ago
  Does Wayland even have a good remoting solution today?
  - alexeiz 5y ago
    I use Xpra to remote individual apps. It's not as good as RDP, but better than other remoting solutions like forwarding X11 over ssh, Nomachine or X2go.
  - snuxoll 5y ago
    No, because like everything else it has to be done by the compositor. I’m not going to pretend it’s super simple to make Linux work in a modern VDI environment, there’s a lot that needs to be done to match what Citrix, VMWare and Microsoft do - but it kind of shows that nobody actually thinks Linux on the desktop makes sense when nobody has even tried to make it work.

beervirus 5y ago

Congratulations, you have invented Citrix.

chrisseaton 5y ago
You're being unnecessarily snarky for some reason. They aren't suggesting that this is new technology, but I do believe it's a new product - I don't think I've been able to sign up for a service with this kind of convenience before.
atatatat 5y ago
lol, have you overseen a Citrix deployment?!
pimlottc 5y ago
Congratulations, you have eliminated a middleman.
jodrellblank 5y ago
Remote Desktop (Terminal Services) was licensed from Citrix in 1998. And that was developed with Citrix licensing OS/2 from Microsoft and then Microsoft investing in them after switching to Windows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrix_Systems#Rise_in_popularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrix_Systems#Rise_in_popular...

LeoPanthera 5y ago

It looks like this is just an RDP-style solution which is disappointing, it would be really interesting if things still ran locally but everything - apps and data - were synced in real time to the cloud, allowing you to login anywhere on any Windows PC and get all your stuff, without worrying about subsequent users of that hardware from seeing it once you logged out. That would be pretty amazing, but it looks like it's just all running in the cloud.

phamilton 5y ago
Vscode Remote strikes a very good balance IMO. The client running completely locally with a server running on the remote machine.
- stkdump 5y ago
  So it is a client-server app? Aren't clients always running completely locally and the server always running remotely? Not trying to be smart, I would like to understand where the line is for vscode remote? What is running remotely (on the server) exactly?
  - phamilton 5y ago
    Yes, my statement does sound tautological. In vscode a full copy of the vscode backend runs on the remote machine. All running of tests, running the app, type checking and Intellisense, etc. all run on the remote machine. But the UI/client runs on my machine. The result is a very seamless native feeling experience, much more so than RDP or Citrix or any other display forwarding technology I've used. My claim is that client/server applications actually work very well and much better than a "streaming desktop experience".
marwis 5y ago
Sounds like one could sort of make it with KVM+DRBD or perhaps zfs send/receive

catmanjan 5y ago

I guess Microsoft is giving up on porting full Word, Excel, etc to the browser...

dzonga 5y ago

this will be easy money for microsoft. we're now back to the day of thin clients. with a full OS streaming from the cloud, Enterprises can reduce costs. And with 0 trust, it means data is more secure either ways i.e prevent future hacks due to incompetent IT policies. However, as a consumer I get worried about how ownership is slowly being chipped away. slowly we're renting everything.

roody15 5y ago
slowly? Seems to be moving quickly to rent a model in just about everything :/
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Outsourcing something that is not a core competency (like running virtual machines) is cheaper and safer for all but the largest organisations.
- baal80spam 5y ago
  Well, then all is going according to plan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBBxWtKKQiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBBxWtKKQiA https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the...

topicseed 5y ago

Interesting to see if Mighty App sees this as competition to their Chrome streaming.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Gah, was waiting for this to come up: now whenever I hear about some kind of 'app streaming' or whatever I just think of smug Mighty bro

desktopninja 5y ago

Finally! 7$ a month ... make it the same price as netflix subscription but with access to xbox live and windows 365 RE: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-touts-7-per-user-monthly-pricing-for-windows-subscriptions.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-tout... AWS Workspaces is actually pretty good too.

vbezhenar 5y ago
It's a different license. There's no way VM could cost $7/month. More like $70/month/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- desktopninja 5y ago
  I think they could do it.
joenathanone 5y ago
That article is from 2015.
- desktopninja 5y ago
  Yes. They've talked about Windows As A Service for a while.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cmxch 5y ago

So this is what Microsoft wants the PCs to run that can't run Windows 11. That said, it is a nightmare for privacy, security, and openness. A nightmare for privacy and security given that they have the data (and likely the means to unlock it). A nightmare for openness given that data interchange will be discouraged in favor of the walled garden.

vbezhenar 5y ago
It is technically possible to encrypt VM in a way that even host can't decrypt it. AMD Epyc CPUs supports encrypted memory.
- crvdgc 5y ago
  > Finally, encryption is used across the board. All managed disks running Cloud PCs are encrypted, all stored data is encrypted at rest, and all network traffic to and from your Cloud PCs is also encrypted. That being said, this level of deep integration means that the moment you boot the cloud PC, all of the data are potentially very vulnerable on the software level.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  That's not the audience for this.
mattowen_uk 5y ago
I'm sorry, but I have to challenge this. > A nightmare for privacy and security given that they have the data (and likely the means to unlock it). 365 customers' data is fully encrypted and MS cannot just decrypt it with a click of a button, it is also sharded across multiple storage silos, so that it cannot even be copied out of your tenant unless you are the customer. They also have a 'high encryption' option where the encryption key can be held on-premises and not in any MS data-centre. > A nightmare for openness given that data interchange will be discouraged in favor of the walled garden. I have no idea where you got this idea from, or what you even mean. 365 is a platform. If you want to run Linux VMs in it, you can. If you want to reach out and exchange data with non MS services like other cloud apps outside of 365 (or even on-premises apps) you can. Picture your own personal datacentre full of kit but run by someone else. That is the 365 experience. I'm not someone who drinks the MS Kool-aid, but I do know the facts as I work in a MS partner company. If you'd said something similarly wrong about AWS, I would defend that too.

adamparsons 5y ago

Lipstick on a pig

version_five 5y ago
Haha yeah I was just sending instructions to a team today on how to set up some software and I wasn't sure what OS they were using. I wrote up the linux and mac instructions and when I got to windows i had to think for a minute if i really thought there was a chance someone would have a windows machine. I ended up including instructions, but I know that at least for (edit: modern) development stuff, windows is just an afterthought, nobody is really expecting people to be using it.
- adamparsons 5y ago
  In this case I mean, VDI has existed for literally decades now. Are we supposed to congratulate MS for doing what every other cloud provider did more than 10 years ago?
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    It hasn’t been a very convenient solution though. I suspect the key here is the managing of everyone’s data and machine in the company. Instant-on personal clients with the company directory would be great for administration.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  I assure you huge number of developers do their development stuff on windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a majority (given how big the majority is for windows on the desktop overall). Edit: indeed after some quick googling it does indeed seem to be the clear majority desktop OS even for people identifying as software developers, for example in the StackOverflow developer survey.
- baal80spam 5y ago
  > at least for (edit: modern) development stuff, windows is just an afterthought, nobody is really expecting people to be using it. What? I don't know where you are from but in Europe (read: outside US) I estimate that over 90% of software development is done on MS stack.

cenourinhapt 5y ago

Thank you, but nope.

_trampeltier 5y ago
I had recently a webinar from Siemens Automation, where they talked about such licence models, just everything in the cloud. I asked myself how they would do that, but now it looks much more clear I guess. But I have to agree with you. Thank you, but nope.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  This is what we were telling Adobe when they first announced CC.

user3939382 5y ago

I read the whole announcement. Sounds like RDP which we’ve had for 20+ years. I’m assuming it’s different but this doesn’t explain how. “We’ve created a cloud PC” So a thin client?

glitchcrab 5y ago
I got a few sentences in and thought 'thin client' too.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Which is newspeak for “terminal” ;-)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chrisseaton 5y ago
And Dropbox is just rsync, right?
- Macha 5y ago
  Hasn't this ultimately been the downfall of Dropbox? Not that consumers are doing it themselves, but Microsoft, Google, etc. all spun up competitors and turned their main product into a feature. Their one selling point is being the independent option, and I'm not sure the people who care about that are actually large enough to sustain them long term...
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Eh? Kinda. Storage still costs money and they’re all about the same. Dropbox loses because of preferential integration and defaults.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

inetknght 5y ago

This is utter trash. Microsoft should go back to selling products instead of selling subscriptions.

glitchcrab 5y ago
It's all about that MRR figure.

martin_henk 5y ago

Brought to you from the creators of Teams

rbanffy 5y ago
And SharePoint!
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  And Skype for Business.
  - antaviana 5y ago
    And EDLIN.
Bluecobra 5y ago
But this could (theoretically) finally fix the performance/battery issues by having a dedicated cloud VM that only runs Teams! :)

Cilvic 5y ago

I'm actually looking forward to this, making it more mainstream than RDP and better pricing? Buying my last laptop I'm torn between gaming = GPU vs. noise & form factor = on the go vs. CPU/RAM for local developing/PowerBI. For gaming the future looks god with streaming. Also I'd prefer to keep business and private machine apart, but still have them both always with me, no matter the device.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

whalesalad 5y ago

Perfect for my use case where I need the occasional place to test random Windows stuff or temporarily need a computer with a different IP. I have a Win 10 eval VM here at home but I don’t really like maintaining it.

hpoe 5y ago

This was of course the logical end of the cloud expansion. Why pay for users to have a beefy machine when all their apps live in the cloud anyway. Also now it is so much easier to enforce policies prevent users from installing things they shouldn't, recover lost data, etc. Of course it brings with it all the same issues. Hopefully we can figure out how to move back to private computing before they make all endpoints dumb terminals.

nonfamous 5y ago

The commentary here so far is technical — “it’s just RDP” — but I suspect the real story here is on the business side. The fact that no pricing is available is telling - this isn’t for consumers. But for big companies who get this as part of their enterprise agreements, I bet this is a big deal for their IT departments.

user3939382 5y ago
If it's a business service RDP that would be Azure Virtual Desktop. Again, it very well may be something different. But this announcement doesn't make clear what that would be.
- sciurus 5y ago
  The announcement explicitly says that this is Azure Virtual Desktop. "Windows 365 is built on Azure Virtual Desktop, but it simplifies the virtualization experience—handling all the details for you. "
  - user3939382 5y ago
    Ah, I missed that. I guess we just have to wait and see some details. "Simplifies the experience" I don't know what that means.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Azure Virtual desktop was like a low level API… Citrix and VMWare sell brokering/provisioning solutions that instrument the Azure desktop. Now that Citrix and VMWare brought this business to Azure, Microsoft is launching a competing offering. Nice guys they are lol.
    - mattowen_uk 5y ago
      There's a full video out there for 365 admins somewhere on the MS site (I'm sorry, the URL is on my other machine). "Simplifies the experience" means, that with just 3 provisioning checkboxes against a user object in 365, you can grant that user a Windows 365 machine including all the 365 apps and your standard policies. It takes about 20 minutes from enablement for the VM to be ready, and the VM remains persistent for the lifetime of it's provisioning. The cost model is a fixed fee per provisioned user, per month.

geocrasher 5y ago

At first I thought "another RDP solution" but then I saw this line: Windows 365 also creates a new hybrid personal computing category called Cloud PC, which uses both the power of the cloud and the capabilities of the device... Does that mean it makes use of local hardware past the capabilities it would need as a thin client? GPU acceleration, etc? It'll be interesting to find out.

gruez 5y ago
I think you're reading too much into it. Sure, it's possible that they have some sort of RDMA technology that allows you to automagically offload work from your local machine to a cloud GPU/CPU, but I doubt it. My guess is that it'll be something lame like "having a synced workspace (aka onedrive) and being able to edit documents on it locally and have it synced to your cloud workspace"
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  It's probably something like the Teams integration VMWare shipped in Horizon (in collaboration with Microsoft). https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/microsoft-teams-optimization-vmware-horizon https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/microsoft-teams-optimiz...
- donmcronald 5y ago
  Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised to see cloud auth (AD) so you can pay every month to use the capabilities of your local PC that you already paid for. Buy a PC so you can remote into a crappier cloud PC? Pass. Lol.
okareaman 5y ago
Maybe this will help... What is hybrid cloud? https://www.netapp.com/hybrid-cloud/what-is-hybrid-cloud/ https://www.netapp.com/hybrid-cloud/what-is-hybrid-cloud/
user3939382 5y ago
Windows Server has had something like this for a while, it's called RemoteFX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX I guess we'll have to wait to see if this is just a rebranding of the same thing or something new.

CountDrewku 5y ago

Is the cloud to butt extension still a thing? Seems really appropriate here.

bhauer 5y ago

This technology needs to be something one can enable on their own PCs, and reach via their own private VPN. It should not require using a public cloud such as Azure.

hanselot 5y ago

All your data are belong to us. I guess the ms devs finally figured out that their powershells can run ssh

MarcScott 5y ago

Is this just Active Directory over the internet, or am I misreading the post?

CountDrewku 5y ago
No this has nothing to do with AD. Off-prem cloud AD is already being done via Azure.
shubb 5y ago
If you think about a big microsoft based corp who are now using azure - they have an on prem AD and are using all kinds of AD magic to administrate their real hardware. Then they have an Azure AD that manages their servers and other resources and controls access to all their cloud stuff. Now a local domain user needs rights on some cloud asset with single sign on - consulting around I've seen company sholve this a bunch of ways and it's a mess. So if one thing MS are doing here is adding an elegant official way of doing that - that would be nice.

shadilay 5y ago

This is a much bigger deal than HN realizes. The PC experience hasn't changed much in a long time. The future of windows in the corporate world is cloud first and access to your 'session' and files from any device. This is to the corporate world what chromebooks were to schools. Yes RDP/Network drives exist but if you have to train users it's a non starter for mass adoption. No one wants to explain to the computer illiterate the difference between local files and shared drives.

desc 5y ago

Ugh, when will they learn. I actively DO NOT WANT this stuff. * Not 'I want something else they haven't built yet and this is irrelevant'. * Not 'I don't understand this and just want something they think it already does'. I mean: the entire concept of a universal Cloud account sharing an 'experience' across multiple devices is something I will gladly pay to avoid, as will the majority of people I know who aren't in IT (and can't necessarily afford the time/money/attention it takes to get away from this shit these days). The people pushing this shit are either stupid or malicious, and either way they need to be removed from any position of control as soon as possible.

jensensbutton 5y ago
Windows is literally the last consumer OS to get on this train. Seems they have learned. From their competitors.
- taejavu 5y ago
  How do I do this with MacOS?
  - jdshaffer 5y ago
    There appear to be several options, but here is one just as an example: https://www.macincloud.com/ https://www.macincloud.com/
    - banana_giraffe 5y ago
      I'm confused. If that counts as an option for Mac OS, surely, well, pretty much any Windows server option out there, like AWS, whatever VPS service that offers Windows counts as well?
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      That's not first-party.
misterbwong 5y ago

bokohut 5y ago

This will be significantly interesting to follow from a revenue generation perspective and how they are going to abuse users and then ask for forgiveness. Monthly billing will need a valid payment instrument "on file" and over time they are certain to nickel and dime users for features. So you want to print on your home printer from your M$ cloud hosted Window$ in$tance, that will be 5¢ per page or we can send it to your local Staples* for pickup at 1¢ per page. A microtransaction chargeback for a failed print from a paper jam will be interesting to review. This is certain to go in the direction most know it will and has the potential to redefine the term pay-per-click. Just look past the security implications and the die-sasters that are certain to occur from making Windows available from anywhere "easy" for the non-technical crowd. *By agreeing to any savings through our third party vendors you are hereby informed that we SharE aLL your information with these vendors in order to recoup the savings extended to you.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Using $ with Msft feels kitschy and unnecessary. No one reading and grokking the reason for $ over S doesn’t know that Microsoft isn’t a money printing company that does mostly whatever they can to make money. Do you think Staples is any different? Yet the S there was not replaced.
- lkramer 5y ago
  I love it, as a throwback to the 90s. Also bring back the Bill Gates Borg image please.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Coincidentally the 90s was when (I imagine) most of us were kids. I'd rather not have my dumb memes, Slashdot copypastas and the like guide our technical discourse today.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Somebody doesn't like the feel of hot grits down their pants...

seanalexander 5y ago

With today's broadband standards being so slow, this is a nightmare waiting to happen.

SilverRed 5y ago
Much of the world has high speed internet now. Almost every city has gbit or faster. Why hold back tech from people who can use it? This stuff will also drive demand for faster internet.
- seanalexander 5y ago
  What cities have gbit upload speeds on a consumer plan?
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    You don't need fast upload for this. You are just sending keyboard and mouse controls up and getting some kind of video feed down.

k12sosse 5y ago

BYO image, too. This is being overlooked.

elteto 5y ago

Interesting, this will allow Microsoft to still run Windows AND all existing Windows software on ARM. It seems like the way of least resistance to get ready for the incoming ARM onslaught.

Valkhyr 5y ago

Most dystopian shit I've seen in a while.

m1el 5y ago

> This approach creates a fully new personal computing category, specifically for the hybrid world: the Cloud PC. Cloud computing is the antithesis of "personal computing", you lying asshole.

throwaway3699 5y ago
The idea is that your "personal" computer at work follows you from the office to a laptop, not that this is for consumers (I hope).

throwaway888abc 5y ago

or Meet Webtops A Linux Desktop Environment In Your Browser https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2021-05-05-meet-webtops-a-linux-desktop-environment-in-your-browser https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2021-05-05-meet-webtops-a-li... https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop

hedora 5y ago

They say it’s appropriate for industrial designers. I wonder if that implies GPU support. The only use case I have for windows is a few steam games that don’t run on Linux. Make the setup seamless, and charge by the hour, and… maybe?

TrevorJ 5y ago

The only reason I use Windows at all is that it's the best way to run the applications I need as close to the metal as possible. If it wasn't for that, I'd be in Linux or some virtualization flavor. If all the applications I use daily were available natively on some other OS I'd switch tomorrow. Given that, I don't really see the utility in this for me, and it makes my nervous about what I DO depend on Windows for. I feel like MS is gonna try to push us all into this cloud model, which is 100% the opposite of what I need from Windows.

stu2b50 5y ago
It's very much not a product for you. It's aimed at large corporate IT departments that want a painless way to provision equipment and deal with all the malware their employees inevitably download.

9front 5y ago

Years ago before Oracle swallowed Sun Microsystems, Sun's motto was "The network is the computer." MS could use "The cloud is the computer" now!

emptyparadise 5y ago
The world now uses a universal ^Java.*? virtual machine and a smarter windowing server which does not require pushing images over the wire. Thin clients are slowly but surely becoming the norm. Companies rent out computing power by the hour. x86 is declining. Microsoft is embracing Unix. Have we been cursed by the ghost of Sun Microsystems?
- dontblink 5y ago
  I always think SUN was too early. I find chromeos to be the successor to their intent with Google actually even occupying their buildings today.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

_carbyau_ 5y ago

And Citrix VDI sites in corporate businesses all over the world suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

maliker 5y ago
My company just shut down citrix in favor of Azure VDI. Seems Microsoft is competing on price. And I have to admit the user experience is a tad better.

russellbeattie 5y ago

I've been (incorrectly) predicting forever that Microsoft would start selling Chromebook-like devices which used remote Windows like this, or even an inexpensive consumer tablet that runs mostly in the cloud. They've literally been working on this stuff since the Mira tablet in 2002.

CodeWriter23 5y ago

Cloud PC: when you absolutely positively want your workstation to be just as oversubscribed as your servers.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Sophistifunk 5y ago

I get that none of us want this stuff. No end user wants any of this stuff. It's for big business, who get to tell their employees what computers to use and how, despite their employees also not wanting this stuff. It's where the money is, so it's not going away.

osigurdson 5y ago

As many have indicated: it is not that this is possible or even unique, it is simply the price at which it can be achieved. Not including this in the announcement misses the only point that anyone cares about.

dustinmoris 5y ago

As someone who is sometimes forced to use Azure and Sharepoint I can hardly imagine something worse than Microsoft 365.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

On the plus side, this might force some ISPs to get their shit together and add some nines to their 90% uptime.

davidbanham 5y ago

Neat! Modern thin-client life is actually pretty good. Connectivity of some kind is ubiquitous enough these days that my computer for the last couple of years has been an Arch VM in a local Linode datacenter. I don't need to fuss with file syncing solutions because I only ever access them from the one machine, I just happen to access that machine remotely. Backups are seamlessly handled by Linode snapshotting my disk every so often. I can happily run little webservers, etc, with pretty decent availability. The thing that sits on my desk is a second hand, small form factor ThinkCentre I picked up dirt cheap when some corp was done with it. All it needs to do is run a terminal ssh'ed into a Tmux session and a local instance of Firefox. I get basically the same experience whether I'm at my desk, on my iPad or using Blink on my phone. It's actually made me _less_ concerned about my unreliable broadband connection. If my main link goes down, I just hotspot to the 4G on my phone. The latency is a little worse but the bandwidth isn't actually relevant. All my chonky uploads like build artifacts, docker images, etc, all go direct from my Linode to wherever they need to go. Very civilised.

edwinyzh 5y ago
What web server software you run in your VPS, and what resources/control/files your local firefox can access/manage?
- davidbanham 5y ago
  Oh all sorts of things. Mostly it's just a development instance of whatever I'm working on, which is usually something in Go these days. I use Caddy to route to various internal services based on the domain the request comes in on. I use Cloudflare to have a wildcard DNS such that I can just start using anything.vps.example.com and have the traffic show up at my machine. Also other bits and bobs like a Discourse server, photo gallery, etc. My local firefox doesn't do anything fancy back to the VPS. It's just a browser, but it does spend a lot of time accessing the dev instances I'm running on the server. It's nice to be able to easily access my in-progress code over a proper domain, over the proper internet, with proper TLS rather than localhost. Browsers handle localhost differently than real domains and it's handy to shake out those errors early on in a project.
5y ago

numlock86 5y ago

Anyone else thinks that "Zero Trust" is a really bad choice of words for what it is supposed to actually mean?

sascha_sl 5y ago
It meant not having network trust when Google/BeyondCorp made the concept popular, seems fine?

RalfWausE 5y ago

Aaaand there we are: The days of a dumb terminal hooked up to a Mainframe are back again

EugeneOZ 5y ago
Some big corporations are using it right now, they will not notice the change. Especially often in retail and banks.
- jdhzzz 5y ago
  I among them using a VM over Citrix as my "work machine". Other than being under powered (typical one size fits all) it is _wonderful_. Always logged in with everything up and available. Sign my company up.

EugeneOZ 5y ago

Hope it will be shipped without IE11 inside, just Edge. Otherwise IE11 will never die.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

I kinda do this already. I have a "server" machine running zerotier. Then, anywhere I can take a device, plop zerotier and rdp right in. Its only limited to "100Mbps" but rdp is native like even at a fraction of that speed. I have around a dozen people remoting into this server and do 8 hours shifts for the last two years now. Microsoft now wants to be "server" in this case. Rest is the exact same thing except by doing windows 365 cloud PC, you are now giving ownership of your software, files stuff over to micrsoft who can hold it for ransom or outright ban you for stuff like "user from Iran signed in like github did some time ago" or "this govt wants data of this journalist. Here is your court order. Like india does right now. " I cannot live with that. Maybe a lot of people might but not me.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

HAHAHAHA, no goddamned way. After Microsoft's attempt to ram their asinine online accounts down your throat when all you want to do is run Windows or an office application, they can keep their "thin client" retread.

utf_8x 5y ago

Yeah... Makes sense for corporate use. But for a personal computer - fuuuuuuuuck no.