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Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

workstream.paperspace.com

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Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#211

Post by GlenTheMachine »

xupybd wrote: post #209
spiritplumber wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm old and operate in a space where most things run at single Mhz speed (but have to work underwater, in a vacuum, and other interesting places). What does your service do? Is it like VNCing into my dev box in the shop, except (I hope) more responsive?

That sounds really interesting. Where do you work?

I’d guess he’s a spacecraft engineer who does work in a neutral buoyancy tank. In the Us that usually means NASA/Johnson. That or he’s a spacecrqft engineer at a contract firm that picks up side projects doing underwater automation work, which is not that uncommon in this small field. Oceaneering Space Systems, for example.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#212

Post by ericd »

rvnx wrote: post #122
atian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also can't recommend them. Service is operational when working, but the times it isn't working as expected I don't have the patience to message support. Things just aren't straightforward. This was 2 years ago when I used them to run a couple of Windows apps for work.

I had issues with Paperspace too, switched over to Shadow. I pay +/- 14 USD per month for a computer with 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz, 12 GB RAM, GTX 1080, 256 GB SSD. No commitment. I'm not sure where is the good deal with Workstream ?

How does that pencil out? Is that shared?

If it's dedicated, assuming a 3 year useful life, that comes out to ~$504, which barely covers the graphics card.

I guess the 1080 is kind of old now, maybe that helps.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#213

Post by cscurmudgeon »

CJefferson wrote: post #3

Was going to try their Free account, until I signed up and the discovered the big black "Free" had a tiny light grey "+ Machine Utilization Charges" beneath it. Everything is "Free + Charges".

https://www.paperspace.com/pricing

Dark UI pattern.

More annoyingly, they don't see what those charges are.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#214

Post by KMnO4 »

ericd wrote: post #212
rvnx wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had issues with Paperspace too, switched over to Shadow. I pay +/- 14 USD per month for a computer with 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz, 12 GB RAM, GTX 1080, 256 GB SSD. No commitment. I'm not sure where is the good deal with Workstream ?

How does that pencil out? Is that shared? If it's dedicated, assuming a 3 year useful life, that comes out to ~$504, which barely covers the graphics card. I guess the 1080 is kind of old now, maybe that helps.

A couple points:

1. It advertises itself as a gaming service, not a 9-5+overtime service. Granted, some people do game for >8 hours per day, but those people probably own their own hardware. Which leads into...

2. Many people used cloud gaming services for casual play. It doesn’t make sense for someone to buy a gaming computer when all they want is the occasional PUBG match or to play a grand total of 15 hours of Far Cry.

With those two assumptions, you can oversell the machines because the average user will be offline for the majority of the time.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#215

Post by mistahchris »

tonyhb wrote: post #205
fataliss wrote: post #132

Anybody used it for gaming? I was a beta user of the Nvidia service which is dedicated to gaming and while overall acceptable, lag spikes would render the use of the platform really frustrating. Everything would be smooth for 30s and then "lag" or freeze for up to 1-2s and then resume. Fine if playing the sims, but when you are in a fight in fast paced games it's a deal breaker. To my knowledge, so far, no platform h…

Yeah. I use it for work (healthcare, 3D simulations, GPU, our own custom apps for treatment planning) and also for gaming. Would recommend with Parsec.

I agree. Parsec makes it excellent. I really like the Paperspace vm combo there. Super easy to setup and I've noticed no issues. It's more expensive than Nvidia's service (to which I also subscribe), but you can play whatever game you want or do anything else you want.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#218

Post by TACIXAT »

I really like the idea of Paperspace and I've tried to get going a few times on the free plan but I hate notebooks. I didn't fully understand the server + gpu offerings, which is what I want. I would love it if I could just get an IP to scp some scripts to, then ssh in and run them. I don't think it's possible to get billed only for GPU time when you're running it this way though, so it would be pricey to keep the server up.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#219

Post by fred123 »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #203

I was pretty excited to give this a try because it might be a good fit for some frustrations I've had with running a GPU-dependent task on my laptop without discrete graphics. Onboarding experience is terrible. Registered for an account from the Workstream page linked here, and was taken to a console with absolutely no mention of Workstream. Went back and forth a few times trying to figure out if auth provider had re…

A few weeks ago I tried to subscribe to their machine learning product but their payment processor only accepts US credit cards and I’m Europe based.

While support says it will work with non-US credit cards as well, I could not get it to work. Tried about 20 suggestions made by their support over the course of 1 week what to put into the payment form; nothing worked.

I gave up and chose Google Colab.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#220

Post by zaptheimpaler »

marbogast40 wrote: post #208
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #206

As a computer-savvy dev, i feel like its hard to beat building your own given how cheap & powerful desktops are today, and how good software is. Workstream specs are - 6 CPU, 16GB RAM, 2GB graphics card, 256GB SSD. You could build a desktop beating that for around $800 today - including a Ryzen 3600, motherboard, case, better GPU etc. At $0.18/hr for Workstream, that means after just 44 hours you breakeven on buildin…

$800 / $0.18 per hour = 4444.4 hours I think you did: $800 / $18 per hour = 44 hours Pretty big difference! Curious, does this change your value assessment?

Oh good catch! That works out to 185 days so it won't change anything, my pc will last a lot longer than that.

But then again, even a much lower cost wouldn't change things for me. For one I completely own my pc and can do anything I want on it, second I know it's secure & private and my data won't be used in ways i might not know about, and third there's no internet latency on input/output which is nice for gaming etc. I could go on but yeah I feel like it's clear owning is generally better than renting for many reasons

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