> Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience<p>Unless they mean it'll instantly show a loading screen, I'll bet it doesn't.<p>I've used various VDI implementations over the years, and they've all been pretty slow to get to a working desktop.<p>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 <i>intensely</i> irritating and distracting, but occasionally latency would increase to a few seconds too.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
So this is what Microsoft wants the PCs to run that can't run Windows 11.<p>That said, it is a nightmare for privacy, security, and openness.<p>A nightmare for privacy and security given that they have the data (and likely the means to unlock it).<p>A nightmare for openness given that data interchange will be discouraged in favor of the walled garden.
I'm excited for this, my wife is an accountant and often asks me to help her with VBA macros.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>To be able to just do the remote version of "handing over the laptop" will be a godsend.
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.
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.<p>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.
At first I thought "another RDP solution" but then I saw this line:<p><pre><code> 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...
</code></pre>
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.
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?
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!
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.
It looks like this is just an RDP-style solution which is disappointing, it would be really interesting if things still ran locally but <i>everything</i> - apps and data - were synced in real time to the cloud, allowing you to login anywhere on any Windows PC and get <i>all</i> your stuff, without worrying about subsequent users of that hardware from seeing it once you logged out.<p>That would be pretty amazing, but it looks like it's just all running in the cloud.
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.<p>Its only limited to "100Mbps" but rdp is native like even at a fraction of that speed.<p>I have around a dozen people remoting into this server and do 8 hours shifts for the last two years now.<p>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. "<p>I cannot live with that. Maybe a lot of people might but not me.
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.
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?
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.
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.<p>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...<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Also now it is so much easier to enforce policies prevent users from installing things they shouldn't, recover lost data, etc.<p>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.
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.
Finally! 7$ a month ... make it the same price as netflix subscription but with access to xbox live and windows 365<p>RE: <a href="https://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-touts-7-per-user-monthly-pricing-for-windows-subscriptions.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-tout...</a><p>AWS Workspaces is actually pretty good too.
I'm actually looking forward to this, making it more mainstream than RDP and better pricing?<p>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.<p>Also I'd prefer to keep business and private machine apart, but still have them both always with me, no matter the device.
Oh no! What is you doing?<p>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.<p>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.
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.
Huh... So this comes only now? I must admit, I thought they'd already had this for years.<p>Oh well, at least now we know why they've dropped the "Windows as a service" moniker for Windows 11: Because <i>this</i> is Windows as a service.
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.
I am assuming this will be aiming for Enterprise niche in certain segment?<p>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.
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.
It will be available at Aug 2nd. No price info.<p><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365</a>
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.
or Meet Webtops A Linux Desktop Environment In Your Browser<p><a href="https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2021-05-05-meet-webtops-a-linux-desktop-environment-in-your-browser" rel="nofollow">https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2021-05-05-meet-webtops-a-li...</a><p><a href="https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop</a>
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.
> This approach creates a fully new personal computing category, specifically for the hybrid world: the Cloud PC.<p>Cloud computing is the antithesis of "personal computing", you lying asshole.
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.<p>*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.