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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’

#41

Post by hallway_monitor »

iso1210 wrote: post #13
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.

This does not surprise me; culture and processes in large corporations are usually entirely dysfunctional.

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

#42

Post by ssully »

formerly_proven wrote: post #35
cptskippy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you use a lot of contractor developers, being able to provision out devices for temporary work is powerful. A lot of time is spent provisioning machines, white listing ips, setting up VPNs, and getting the contractor to the point where they can work. In some cases I've seen it take 2 or 3 weeks to get a contractor up and running on a 6 month contract. Being able to give them credentials to a machine that's ready…

Okay, now I'm just laughing out loud. My org has an internal/external reputation for not exactly being fast moving and having convoluted IT processes, yet we can onboard people within a few days. If it takes you 2-3 weeks to onboard ANYONE please realize that your IT processes are complete, unmitigated garbage. Paying Microsoft for some Windows VMs through the nose isn't going to change anything about that.

I assure you, they know their IT processes are garbage.

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

#43

Post by ehutch79 »

betaby wrote: post #29
cptskippy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you use a lot of contractor developers, being able to provision out devices for temporary work is powerful. A lot of time is spent provisioning machines, white listing ips, setting up VPNs, and getting the contractor to the point where they can work. In some cases I've seen it take 2 or 3 weeks to get a contractor up and running on a 6 month contract. Being able to give them credentials to a machine that's ready…

I still didn't get how bare Windows VM can speed up a new developer on-boarding. In all my jobs slowest part was always familiarization with a new build/deploy environment. OS/Laptop setup was always trivial and took 1-2 day max, even in orgs with 20k employees.

"No one told us about a new hire... when do they start... what do you mean a week ago?" is a big delay in new employee onboarding

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

#44

Post by skeeter2020 »

cptskippy wrote: post #22
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…

When you use a lot of contractor developers, being able to provision out devices for temporary work is powerful. A lot of time is spent provisioning machines, white listing ips, setting up VPNs, and getting the contractor to the point where they can work. In some cases I've seen it take 2 or 3 weeks to get a contractor up and running on a 6 month contract. Being able to give them credentials to a machine that's ready…

Beyond the ease it also converts all of your technology capital expenses (typically with 3 year depreciation schedules) to operating expenses that can be deducted immediately.

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

#45

Post by greenbush »

notthedroids wrote: post #16

Anyone else developing on a Mac/Linux desktop, and looking at Windows 365 to run/test/prototype windows applications?

For this use case, you might be better off using Windows VPS providers. For about $6/mo, you'll get a VM pre-installed with Windows 2019 server. Just google "Windows VPS" and you'll find tons of providers.

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

#46

Post by skeeter2020 »

Animats wrote: post #18
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…

selling dekstop pcs to businesses is totally different than selling gaming to consumers.

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

#47

Post by tw04 »

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're assuming that a physical desktop or laptop is the alternative. Likely this is an alternative for people using vmware horizon or citrix for virtual desktops. In which case you'll be spending almost half that on just the software, not including any hardware at all.

I'd need more info on the service, but I'd imagine this is very cost competitive. As to "why?" - because for things like HIPPA data, I'd MUCH rather have my doctors/IT staff logging into a remote desktop session that I can lock down so if their laptop gets stolen from their car I don't have to worry about whether or not some day someone will be able to crack drive level encryption. Or worry that an employee didn't have drive level encryption for some reason. Same for financial institutions/etc.

Furthermore a doctor or insert staff can connect from home, and I don't have to worry about whether or not they properly secured their home desktop. Yes there is still some attack surface there, but far, far less than them storing files locally on their home PC.

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

#48

Post by aksss »

mnkypete wrote: post #20
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

I think you can get the Dell XPS 13 , 32GB RAM, 11th gen i7 for about $2100 or sometimes less, but yeah. Definitely not seen these specs for $700.

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

#49

Post by Marsymars »

cowsup wrote: post #25
notthedroids wrote: post #16

Anyone else developing on a Mac/Linux desktop, and looking at Windows 365 to run/test/prototype windows applications?

Windows 365's lowest tier, with only 2GB of RAM, works out to $288/year. If you're on a Mac, you can grab the Pro version of Parallels for $99USD/year and run it locally, and spin up an instance of any version of Windows you need, along with guaranteed uptime and availability. I really don't see Windows 365 as a viable option for most developers, when there are so many better -- and cheaper -- alternatives readily av…

Does Parallels still show ads to paying customers?

I’d pay extra for Windows 365 to avoid ads.

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

#50

Post by edoceo »

ehutch79 wrote: post #43
betaby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still didn't get how bare Windows VM can speed up a new developer on-boarding. In all my jobs slowest part was always familiarization with a new build/deploy environment. OS/Laptop setup was always trivial and took 1-2 day max, even in orgs with 20k employees.

"No one told us about a new hire... when do they start... what do you mean a week ago?" is a big delay in new employee onboarding

That seems really far along the process to recognize the mistakes.
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