>includes eight vCPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $158 per month
>for something that's similar to the laptop I'm typing on which costed me $700 used?
lol? I'd want to see benchmark difference because I don't believe it
Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
101–110 of 198 posts
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If I would have to pay $100-$200 for the software subscriptions for my Windows VM (windows license, office) it gets close? Especially if Microsoft is also throwing in some hardware so my local computer is taxed less? Of course streaming a cloud desktop introduces its own problems (latency, unreliability, etc) but also advantages (portability, reproducibility, etc)
You don't really need to pay to license windows if you're just using it for testing.
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
When it comes to policies from frustrating departments, people tend to find workarounds, especially if there is no easy way to enforce the rules. At a prior company, one of the only reasons we adopted anything SaaS was that IT didn't have to know it existed.
Ohhh man/woman. I'm a security person. I often work with my customers' central IT. I'm not going to have an opinion or judge you, but consider: You're giving people nightmares. I've seen it go very wrong (front-page news wrong). And then the threads commenting on "how incompetent can they be, blabla". I've worked with the people stressed, sad and disappointed that they got pwned because of shadow IT. It's a ticking t…
It usually goes something like this:
We need software to do X.
Call IT, they give you software that sort of does part of X, but it's some enterprise garbage where you quit your job if you have to use it.
Call IT and tell them that's not a good solution. We have this other realistic solution instead.
IT, not wanting to be bothered, laughs and hangs up the phone. Sometimes they'll throw in an excuse that everyone knows doesn't make any sense.
The workers that need to do their job pay for an actually working solution out of other funds (or use their personal software).
Things go wrong and they call you. It's the ineffectiveness of IT to help people get their work done that's the source of the problem.
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#104Azure can't scale? I can't imagine this happening with AWS, what a horrible PR
If AWS started offering resources for free, then they'd have to pause it within 4h since announcement and I'm pretty optimistic I think
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
When it comes to policies from frustrating departments, people tend to find workarounds, especially if there is no easy way to enforce the rules. At a prior company, one of the only reasons we adopted anything SaaS was that IT didn't have to know it existed.
Ohhh man/woman. I'm a security person. I often work with my customers' central IT. I'm not going to have an opinion or judge you, but consider: You're giving people nightmares. I've seen it go very wrong (front-page news wrong). And then the threads commenting on "how incompetent can they be, blabla". I've worked with the people stressed, sad and disappointed that they got pwned because of shadow IT. It's a ticking t…
I've also see shadow IT be the only part of the IT operation which is safe because it was run by people with security expertise, the cloud provider has a stronger security foundation than on-premise (not uncommon), and central IT's security group was primarily a compliance shop which had lots of Word documents and not much in the way of technical skills.
The way I read shadow IT is as the requirements analysis central IT hasn't done. People aren't taking on all of that extra expense because they want two jobs, they're doing it because central IT is making it hard to do their jobs. When security policies conflict with productivity, it has a direct cost from inefficiency but often a greater one by training people to think of central IT as an obstacle to be bypassed rather than an ally. That inevitably causes other problems and takes a considerable amount of work to improve.
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes it does, because then you don't need to deal with IT but can just deal with accounting and your budget. At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with. We spent tons and tons of money to only have to deal with accounting and not co…
> At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with.
You built a better IT. Shouldn't they replace your existing legacy IT dept?
Seriously, IT shouldn't impede dev teams.
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#107> 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…
> A lot of time is spent provisioning machines, white listing ips, setting up VPNs
That sounds as if the person dealing with it would be completely incapable of replacing a failing dev. system in a timely manner. Keep a few replacement systems ready and your IT has all the time in the world to deal with those issues without blocking anything important.
I can just imagine the people responsible for that mess dealing with cloud services: I am sorry but we used up all the cloud licenses management signed of on, we will push for more licenses on the next quarterly budget meeting until then have these leftover sheets of paper and this dried out pen from our office supplies.
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes it does, because then you don't need to deal with IT but can just deal with accounting and your budget. At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with. We spent tons and tons of money to only have to deal with accounting and not co…
Yeah - the reality is that actually getting good IT is not so simple these days. The setups are complicated - you are doing WFH, so you have network, login (domain vs local), federated AD etc etc.
Now if they can simplify this a bit into the cloud, the key for business is to DOWNSKILL this so basically an office manager can do it, then you are golden. If they can even save ONE it salary - amazing. And if users can self service a bit more - also amazing.
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I would have to pay $100-$200 for the software subscriptions for my Windows VM (windows license, office) it gets close? Especially if Microsoft is also throwing in some hardware so my local computer is taxed less? Of course streaming a cloud desktop introduces its own problems (latency, unreliability, etc) but also advantages (portability, reproducibility, etc)
You don't really need to pay to license windows if you're just using it for testing.
Because Microsoft permits testing without a license? Or because you believe, in practice, Microsoft will not assert its intellectual property rights against someone who is only testing? (I am personally OK with the first, not the second.)
Re: Microsoft pauses free Windows 365 cloud PC trials after ‘significant demand’
#110Anyone 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…
Is Windows usable with _anything_ on 2GB of RAM? I recall even back on Windows 7, that 2GB machines could barely manage a web browser and no multitasking with anything else.