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Good morning, I have a little bit of experience with AWS and VDI. I did some work for a company last year that had VDI provisioning automated. They would assign me a job, which included checking out specific code modules from SVN and then automatically provisioning a virtual desktop. You could choose if you needed this to run on Windows or Linux -- depending on what the code was. For example, if the code was a c# desktop application then I would auto-provision a Windows host in the amazon cloud. If the code was anything else (e.g. Ruby, Java, etc) then I would provision a Linux host.

This scheme worked really well the entire time that I was engaged on their projects. For your situation, you might not be able to provision a VDI because you have specific hardware requirements (RS232 interface). The virtualized storage might just fit your needs and seems cheap enough.

The Windows Azure cloud is another option(albeit more expensive). You can provision Windows or Linux images and allocate them by time slice or permanently, etc. I have about 5 projects running in Windows Azure and it seems very reliable.

Ask yourself one question. How vulnerable would I be if the company folds and everything just goes away or it sells the data in the cloud to a foreign country?

Once something goes into the cloud, you have lost control of it.

I’ll keep from creaming about ‘Cloud’ (I won’t use it).. but, as for your older laptop, since you already have experience on Linux, I would highly suggest you using XFCE on it. Very low resource use...

As for your current PC that is running 12.04 LTS, I think you meant 32 Bit instead of 64 Bit (has nothing to do with your RAM, but a x32 will not go over 3.95 Gig of your RAM, if you have more).

As for a Virtual... you should be able to find and install Oracle’s VirtualBox on your Ubuntu. I have Win 7 on 1 screen (running in Virtualbox) and my normal Mint KDE on the other.

Personally I think the cloud concept is just full of pitfalls to stay away from... nothing you access over a WAN link will ever be as fast, secure and reliable as something over your local LAN link and your local system will even better yet..
so think of it as tiers..your own personal system will always be the most reliable and secure with fastest for data access and retrieval (depending on how well you maintain it and if its with you).local LAN is 2nt, WAN /Cloud s 3th.for lower cost and convenience access at any time ...reverse the order Engineering is a game of trade off there's no free lunch...

One last thing.. you mentioned trying out Mint.. wait until around June/July; The next Mint LTS should be released around then.. (Mint is now 16... the last LTS was 13). The Mint LTS is 5 years, if I remember correctly.. but I always looked forward to testing the updates in-between, so I am using 16. Gave me a good excuse to do a fresh install each time ;^)

The only setback I ever had with Mint, was if you are using a Broadcom Wireless (I just went from wireless to Ethernet (direct/wired)) to my router; I personally prefer direct (wired) for the security and since I no longer have kids running around that may trip over the wires, haven't had a problem WITH the wires (all of them >.<)

There are workarounds, but you may either have to ask on here, or research (there are workarounds). Other than that, all needed Linux drivers were installed before even the first reboot.... and I can't remember ANY updates in the last couple of years that required a reboot :)

(Also, one of the easiest Linux installs I have ever used.)

This pic is not necessarily for you... it is for the peeps that question Linux ;^)
These are my 2 screens up at the same time.. OS is Linux and other screen is obviously Windows7 ;^) The screen-cap did not capture the Windows taskbar at the bottom (was replaced by the KDE one.. but it is there).

Apologies Mark for throwing this in here..

I have a question:
“What happens if there were some kind of electronic ‘glitch’, and your automated payment that most businesses want, somehow gets backlogged, causing you to be ‘missing a payment’?

Can you still get to all that stuff you put up there?

I don’t have that level of care-free confidence, with my business or personal information, to put them in some ‘galactic bitbucket’ that can disappear.