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Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

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Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#11

Post by imwillofficial »

donmcronald wrote: post #10

> 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? I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with tooling or something that makes management eas…

CapEx vs OpEx

On the books this can be a boon for the bean counters.

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#12

Post by JumpCrisscross »

donmcronald wrote: post #10

> 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? I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with tooling or something that makes management eas…

> Is data security so important that some companies are willing to pay 5x hardware costs and 2x maintenance costs for it?

Yes. Also, maintaining a fleet of hardware is a resource suck. Being able to provision everyone with something like this lets them use their personal hardware without much compromised in the way of security. (It should also make onboarding much smoother.)

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#13

Post by iso1210 »

donmcronald wrote: post #10

> 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? I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with tooling or something that makes management eas…

I work for a large corporation. I can spend 50k a month in AWS and it will barely register a flag.

Try to buy a keyboard though and forget it.

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#14

Post by imwillofficial »

iddan wrote: post #2

With fibber internet increasingly becoming standard around the world and 5G it makes perfect sense people will use their computer as a terminal for a more powerful computer in the cloud than buying powerful computers

> fibber internet increasingly becoming standard around the world and 5G it makes perfect sense

Absolutely not, the average connection speeds for 99% of the globe are nowhere near offering a solid desktop experience.

Plus, chips are plenty fast days. Rarely do typical uses need to upgrade because of new software.

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#15

Post by Someone1234 »

mongol wrote: post #7
timdorr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365/all-pricing

seems quite expensive?

Looks like they tried to match Amazon Workspaces prices. That doesn't mean it isn't expensive though.

I'd call them both niche products that I'd be more interested in developing on if it wasn't so expensive to do so (at 16 GB of RAM). I'm not entirely sure I can describe what the normal deployment scenario looks like (e.g. traveling salesman doesn't work because you'd need too high of internet quality on the road, developer doesn't work as RAM pricing, and in a lot of scenarios you need on-prem hardware to connect to it anyway).

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#17

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12
donmcronald wrote: post #10

> 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? I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with tooling or something that makes management eas…

> Is data security so important that some companies are willing to pay 5x hardware costs and 2x maintenance costs for it? Yes. Also, maintaining a fleet of hardware is a resource suck. Being able to provision everyone with something like this lets them use their personal hardware without much compromised in the way of security. (It should also make onboarding much smoother.)

> lets them use their personal hardware without much compromised in the way of security

How do they protect against an attacker compromising this client, waiting until the employee is asleep or away for a few minutes, then using the employee's session to compromise the remote machine?

Even if session establishment requires 2FA, the attacker could keep the session alive after the user attempts to close it.

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#18

Post by Animats »

donmcronald wrote: post #10

> 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? I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with tooling or something that makes management eas…

Who the heck is buying these VMs that cost 5x real hardware?

Right. This has already been tried in the "game streaming" business. There have been multiple services where you rent a PC in "the cloud" by the hour, or for some number of hours per month. Either they cost too much, and fail for lack of customers, or they are underpriced as a loss leader, and get shut down after losing money. Google Stadia and NVidia Cloud Gaming are currently live, but Stadia is likely to join Google's list of discontinued products, and NVidia's offering involves being kicked off if you stay connected too long.

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#19

Post by [deleted] »

donmcronald wrote: post #10

> 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? I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with tooling or something that makes management eas…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’

#20

Post by mnkypete »

donmcronald wrote: post #10

> 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? I know it's for businesses, but even then, does it come with tooling or something that makes management eas…

You have an 8core laptop with 32gig RAM for $700? That's not super common though, I think usually you'd spend more like $2500-$3000k for it. Count in the reduced maintenance and hardware support + having your whole stuff in one place.. Might make sense if you are not super low on money
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