The Windows 365 Link is a small black box that connects over the internet to a Windows 365 Cloud PC running in the Azure cloud. Microsoft has priced it at $349 (£349), and its real utility is to those fully invested in Microsoft’s cloudy vision.
The Windows 365 Link is a small black box that connects over the internet to a Windows 365 Cloud PC running in the Azure cloud. Microsoft has priced it at $349 (£349), and its real utility is to those fully invested in Microsoft’s cloudy vision.
aka a thin-client
The circle of computing: thin-thick-thin-thick-thin
Yeah I love how people are panning it and laughing, but thin clients are bread and butter to most enterprises. I think we have around 1,800 deployed at last count. The price is competitive and if you’ve gone all in on the Microsoft ecosystem it makes sense.
What is their endgame here? Why do people want this also
25 years ago we were using SUN thin clients connected to a single huge server on campus. Shortly after they were replaced with thick Dell PCs running XP.
Priced it out for my company, and I don’t understand where this makes sense in any way. You spend a shit ton more for the server you get less for end users and thin clients are still expensive. Plus, bonus, you now have a single point of failure. Or at least a small handful if you duplicate properly.
Converting that cost into a perpetual monthly bill isn’t going to change it magically
Well they make a lot of sense if you can’t trust your clients.
My high school’s computer lab were all thin clients. I was told each cost like 20$ (wouldn’t be surprised if he exaggerated the cheapness a bit), and the server was being used for more than just the thin clients, anyway.
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Huh. My first rule of IT was “No, I will not give you free tech support during my time off from work”.
There was an exception if I was sleeping with you at the time. 😂
“can you look at my phone? I can’t pair my Bluetooth earbuds and-”
“since this is a new relationship, you have not met the minimum requirement of fucking me yet. ticket postponed.”
The server for this product is Microsofts cloud, so there is no server cost, you’re just bought into their ecosystem and maybe a slightly higher subscription cost.
It also means little to no hardware maintenance and streamlined IT processes.
I’m bot saying it’s my kind of approach, but there are definitely a lot of companies that could benefit (given most people are really just using a browser and maybe some word/PowerPoint software).
What makes you think people want it at all?
I would want it hadn’t the the divded states recently gone full fascist regime: as a software developer, I wouldn’t want to have windows dirt on my hardware, but I could test software for windows users. I had been looking in vain for a Windows+Office VM subscription before. Ship has sailed though, now I can just say fuck Windows.
They are (can be) cheap. Dependent on whatever remote desktop service you use, though.
For simple office work, you don’t really need much to stand up a set of thin clients other than a good network and peripheral hardware.
A Dell thin client goes for like $300-500 while a full desktop is $1000-1500 from them (actual prices may vary by company contract), so it’s typically less upfront cost, especially if your company is already using a remote desktop service.
The remote desktop aspect is nice in a few ways, can use whatever thin client and all your stuff is there, but you lose out on stuff like GPU acceleration and at least where I worked where we mainly used thin clients, can be very laggy compared to native.
If they knew what they wanted, they wouldn’t use Windows.