I love my Amazon Workspace • Hacker News Board

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#41

Post by 6stringmerc » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

Quite a convincing description! I can really dig the overview and description of transition and use case scenarios. Kind of makes me chuckle to see a Dummy Terminal return, I mean, cough, Zero Client. The more things change, right?

As a quite satisfied user of Amazon's StoryWriter program online I can really agree the ease of access and stability of the resource provides value. I've moved from CelTx at this point, and will probably even import to Amazon from that.

A friend is experimenting with Amazon's VideoDirect system as well, so I hope to hear about that experience. He did mention the need for Closed Captioning took some effort to find a suitable online tool (there are some good free ones) and the large file uploads for HD video isn't the most fun, but so far, so good.

For some reason, Amazon has targeted some of the creative sector in ways that Google and Facebook I don't think quite understand how to set up. Sure, both have some dominant platforms and tools (YouTube, "Artist Pages") but these new-ish developments by Amazon seem to be sticking the landing pretty often.

Gotta say though, I like seeing this admission:

>I do still run PowerPoint locally, since you can never know what kind of connectivity will be available at a conference or a corporate presentation.

Nice. Every little defense against Murphy's Law in presentation/performance is a wise move in my experience.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#42

Post by AJRF » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:21 PM UTC

commandshift90 wrote: post #36

AJRF wrote: post #12

Is there something like Workspaces for consumers? The homepage[1] makes it seem very enterprise heavy. [1]- https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/

Definitely targeted at the enterprise, but it's entirely possible to provision and operate a single instance without any kind of enterprise-level agreement.

Was there any work done around OS X support or are there licensing issues there / not enough support from Enterprise?

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#43

Post by Diederich » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

Funny thing, I need to use an amazon workspace from time to time for my job. I've managed to keep 100% Linux (for my personal boxes) professionally and at home for a good long time now, but a specific (and thankfully rare) access requirement was solved by using a Windows Amazon workspace.

Guess what? No Linux workspaces client.

So now to gain network access to a particular resource (a web address), I run the Windows workspaces client under Wine under Linux, which gives me access to a properly virtualized Windows workspace, which gives me access to a web address that is hosted on Linux.

It would be a comic tragedy except that it was so damn easy to make it work, and it works very well.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#44

Post by andrew_wc_brown » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

I dunno, as a dev you can just docker your environment and if your Macbook air dies, you buy a new one, and simply pull your images and your back to work in minutes.

Even setting up a mac from scratch for me only takes an hour, and I run an array of different web-apps.

An hour lost at worst once a year isn't worth much to me.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#45

Post by machbio » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:24 PM UTC

- Q: What Operating System does a WorkSpace run?

- WorkSpaces provide users with the Windows 7 Experience, provided by Windows Server 2008 R2.

Suits only a windows user - lets say you need a ubuntu machine; the EC2 m3.large similar to the "Performance" workspace bundle. The difference between AWS Workspace and AWS EC2 is huge ($48), while AWS Workspace will cost you $60, EC2 Machine with same configuration will cost you $108.

But the advantage with the EC2 machine - is you should be able to shutdown the machine when not in use, so a 50 Hour/Week will cost you only $39, that is $21 less than the AWS Workspace. So any AWS workspace single user who can use Linux Machine does not benefit from AWS Workspace.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#46

Post by dalacv » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

I checked out Amazon Workspace a few months to see if I could get rid of one of my laptops. Alas, my client's VPN caused issues. I opted for creating a vm and accessing it through the web via Guacamole. I can get to my machine from anywhere. http://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#47

Post by commandshift90 » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

AJRF wrote: post #42

commandshift90 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely targeted at the enterprise, but it's entirely possible to provision and operate a single instance without any kind of enterprise-level agreement.

Was there any work done around OS X support or are there licensing issues there / not enough support from Enterprise?

OS X licensing for off-prem machines is a tricky thing, and the technology being used for streaming complicates it further, if I recall.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#48

Post by ebbv » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

History truly does repeat itself. Shall we go over the shortcomings and problems with thin clients again?

Network problems mean you are screwed. Even short of full on connectivity loss, if you're suffering congestion or packet loss for whatever reason, a thin client can quickly become unusable. Right now I work remotely a lot, from accessing remote git repositories to doing work on c9.io (which I love.) But if I do suffer network problems, I can work locally. It's not a full on loss of productivity.

Yes network ubiquity, reliability and speed has never been better than it is today. But it is not 100%. Especially if you live in a rural area like I do.

Datacenter problems mean you're screwed. Datacenter suffer outages too. Even AWS. Again, with a traditional client you can cope with it. With a thin client you are totally hosed.

As with network issues, there are lots of datacenter problems that aren't full on outages. Hardware and otherwise.

Even Thin Clients suffer obsolescence. One of the tried and true dreams of thin clients is that they don't go obsolete. Anyone who has been on this rodeo before knows that's just not true. Network connectivity gets better, display connectivity gets better, power usage improves, etc. And with today's desktop and laptop speeds improving at the snail pace they do, a thin client really isn't offering any bonus here. If you buy a good laptop or desktop today it's going to last you years and years. (The MacBook I'm typing on now is 4 years old and showing no signs of age.)

It is slower. Despite this raving endorsement (totally unbiased I'm sure.) Thin clients that have to reach out across the network for every action are always going to be slower than a machine that doesn't. The network is always adding latency. Whether that bothers you or not largely depends on your own tolerances and what you are doing.

There's a reason thin clients always make a comeback and people are excited for a while and then realize "Oh wait I want a traditional machine again please." This cycle has happened so many times.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#49

Post by rorykoehler » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

Is this Amazon astroturfing on hackernews?

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#50

Post by nickysielicki » Wed, May 18, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

jeffbarr wrote: post #15

nickysielicki wrote: post #9

> One morning I sent the team an email with the provocative title “My WorkSpace has Disappeared!” They read it in a panic, only to realize that I had punked them, and that I was simply letting them know that I was able to focus on my work, and not on my WorkSpace. "Jokes on them I was only pretending!" Do people actually do this in a corporate setting? I'll assume that this is just fluff for the sake of being able to…

I wrote the post and I can assure you that I actually did this. Our internal slogan is "Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History." I try my best to do all three. This was not fluff, it was my actual story. Also, this is a corporate blog and I am part of the marketing department.

Every workplace has their dynamics, and I don't know what your team is like. I didn't think you'd read that comment, but you did, and unfortunately it took your comment for me to realize the degree to which that comment is mean-spirited. I'm sorry for that, and it doesn't reflect well on me.

I do stand by what I'm saying there, though. One of my first bosses treated email as sacrosanct, and that rubbed off on me. His workflow was centred around his email queue, and email was the official ledger. If we talked about an idea, the first thing I did afterwards was put it into writing and email it. He had a newborn and was busy as hell, but he always got his job done.

With conversations that touch several separate groups, and with people who are responsible for a lot of different things, email becomes the common denominator. All it takes is one "URGENT!!!!" subject line to throw someone off-kilter. If that turns out to be a joke, you've interrupted them for nothing. And for very busy people, that can add up and be the difference between catching their bus home to see wife and child. It probably seems a bit melodramatic to liken it to directly taking away time spent with family, but I think it's a reasonable common courtesy to leave all jokes outside of the most formal form of written communication.

Not a big deal for a rare joke or an email that stays within a couple people, and that's what this sounds like. But the principle is something that I appreciate.