Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#31

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

DollarGuru wrote: post #24
slimsag wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, if you want to drive companies to offer broadband everywhere -- having services people want to use everywhere that require broadband is pretty damn important.

It will have the reverse effect of drawing more people to where they can access those services and away from the areas where access to those services are limited due to inadequate internet services which will erode the motivation to provide broadband to those places.

One of the many reasons urbanisation is trending upwards.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_c/popups/mod...

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#32

Post by throwaway8941 »

DollarGuru wrote: post #24
slimsag wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, if you want to drive companies to offer broadband everywhere -- having services people want to use everywhere that require broadband is pretty damn important.

It will have the reverse effect of drawing more people to where they can access those services and away from the areas where access to those services are limited due to inadequate internet services which will erode the motivation to provide broadband to those places.

I don't know about that. Here in Kazakhstan many villages gained relatively high-speed ADSL (up to 8 Mb/s, usually 4 Mb/s) in the past 4-5 years. Most of them are not exactly flourishing either: imagine something like Detroit (from what I've seen), but on a much smaller scale. At least it didn't stop them from streaming the trendy Hollywood crap everyone talks about.

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#33

Post by EvanAnderson »

belltaco wrote: post #9
Cyder wrote: post #2

There's still large areas just 35 miles from DC that don't have high speed internet. The cloud is STILL just for people who never leave the range of high speed internet.

For what it's worth I used to use remote desktop from across the world on dialup, and it was certainly usable.

I use RDP pretty heavily in low-bandwidth and high-latency scenarios. In the last couple years I've seen a lot more software and websites using "fade in/out" effects that are utterly excruciating. Aside from those the performance is great.

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#34

Post by snagglegaggle »

crazygringo wrote: post #23
Cyder wrote: post #2

There's still large areas just 35 miles from DC that don't have high speed internet. The cloud is STILL just for people who never leave the range of high speed internet.

First of all, offices virtually always do have high speed internet, which is the primary use case here. But even if you're working from somewhere else, remote desktop doesn't need "high speed" anyways. It sends intercepted OS-level draw commands rather than bitmaps, so as long as you're not doing Photoshop it's closer to terminal bandwidth than YouTube bandwidth. For the vast majority of business apps over remote des…

RDP quit forwarding rendering commands some time ago,[1] it turns out to be faster to just send a compressed image. On very low bandwidth links effects are turned off and a limited color pallet is used.

You're still right -- the performance is good, and using normal UI controls you will typically not notice even a very poor connection. But this is because UI changes are an "eventually consistent" deal, and although the Windows terminal services implementation does send bitmaps it optimizes drawing for sending the resulting bitmap. Contrast to scrolling text on a terminal that may not update in a manner that allows you to react to it.

[1]: Somewhere on the FreeRDP mailing list. Sorry :(

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#35

Post by dboreham »

cinaboniver wrote: post #6
Cyder wrote: post #2

There's still large areas just 35 miles from DC that don't have high speed internet. The cloud is STILL just for people who never leave the range of high speed internet.

I live within 15 miles of the main Microsoft campus in Redmond and only have access to shitty DSL. Microsoft has always taken the bet that everyone in the future will have access to high speed internet, but without ever raising a finger to make sure that future actually happens.

Shitty DSL is fine for remote desktop.

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#36

Post by wzdd »

rb808 wrote: post #7

I have a friend who works at a big Corporation (100k employees) where everyone has a thin dumb client and windows desktop running on a server. It works great, except video stutters if not small sized. Way of the future? Its an efficient way to pool resources, and prevents people physically stealing data.

I worked for a while at a company which did this and, while it worked, everything was slightly worse (for me as a programmer -- I'm sure support was much easier). Noticeable latency while doing normal things like scrolling through code or switching windows. Every so often there would be a latency spike which, because it happened infrequently but unpredictably, was surprisingly disconcerting. I ended up having to retrain myself to use "low bandwidth" actions, like pgup/pgdn rather than using a scrollwheel. I don't think it significantly impacted my performance, but I often found myself wishing I had a local desktop.

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#37

Post by Godel_unicode »

thrower123 wrote: post #13
russellbeattie wrote: post #3

If Stadia and xCloud really do solve the latency issues inherent in client/server computing - and show that it's economical - one could almost imagine Microsoft launching a consumer version of this with a "terminal" that was little more than a screen, keyboard and network connection... Like Sun Microsystems reborn. The whole concept would, of course, enrage certain sections of the populace including most of HN's read…

How do you beat the speed of light? That's ultimately what we're up against here. High-frequency traders lay down special fiber lines between the exchanges to get the absolute fastest possible ping times, at enormous expense[1]. That gets a 13 ms ping time from NYC to Chicago. My experience with a Steam Link, hardwired on a local ethernet makes me skeptical that any of these cloud gaming platforms will really be prac…

Stadia isn't for shooters or esports though, it's for Age of Empires and Civ.

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#38

Post by notzuck »

dboreham wrote: post #35
cinaboniver wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live within 15 miles of the main Microsoft campus in Redmond and only have access to shitty DSL. Microsoft has always taken the bet that everyone in the future will have access to high speed internet, but without ever raising a finger to make sure that future actually happens.

Shitty DSL is fine for remote desktop.

That depends on your definition of shitty ADSL. My old ADSL wasn't just slow, it was unstable and would regularly starting lagging out / having massive pings which would then go away and come back. Three years of talking to the ISP and I got nowhere. I now live in an NBN area and get Fibre to the Curb with 80MBPS down, I can now truly work from home.

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#39

Post by beamatronic »

jki275 wrote: post #15
selectodude wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh, where? The middle of the Chesapeake bay?

The area around DC, outside of the suburbs, is quite rural actually.

That’s pretty darn far. Are you trying to say Chantilly? Leesburg? Or more like Front Royal?

Re: Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available

#40

Post by beamatronic »

ape4 wrote: post #12
chooseaname wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Way of the future? Why not? Everything old becomes new again at some point.

Like X Window

The first time I ran a program on a remote computer, and used its UI over the Internet, was 1992. In fact that’s how I discovered Mosaic. Running random executables in the bin directory of lab machines.
Post reply on HN