> including one at the top end that includes eight vCPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $158 per month > Why is it so popular? I can't understand the ec

> including one at the top end that includes eight vCPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $158 per month > Why is it so popular? I can't understand the economics of it. Can someone explain? Why would I pay ~$10k over 5 years for something that's similar to the laptop I'm typing on which costed me $700 used? It's probably not similar to the PC you're typing on in many ways, including the following: - Probably significantly higher bandwidth to the internet - Astonishingly high bandwidth to Azure resources (fiber) - Outstanding security: cameras, carefully controlled access, 24x7 physical security - Hardware reliability automatically serviced - Multiple sources of power (usually more than one power utility company connected, plus generators) - Multiple network connections typically, for redundancy - Backups managed for you - Can push a button and make a clone of your PC that your friend can log in to for a couple days then delete it when you're done - If someone wanted to steal your hard drive by breaking into your house, they totally could. But getting your cloud PC hard drive image is going to take more determination than breaking through a window. For many users, none of the above things matter. But for a lot of users, having all those things taken care of is a big win. Have you ever had a fan or a hard drive die on your pc? Or deal with the pain of migrating data off a dead PC onto its new replacement? Maybe that sort of thing happens only once every few years to you. But if you're managing, say, 25 pc's, every month you're going to be dealing with 1-3 problems in your fleet.