Microsoft Announces Windows 365: a Desktop PC in the Cloud

How-To Geek ^ | Jul 14, 2012 | Chris Hoffman

[upchuck]

What if you could use a Windows desktop PC without actually running Windows on your hardware? Microsoft has a solution for you: Windows 365, a cloud-based Windows desktop you can access from any device, including Macs, iPads, Chromebooks, Android phones, and Linux PCs.

To use a Windows 365 “Cloud PC” after the service launches on August 2, 2021, you just need a device with a modern web browser. Your Windows desktop in the cloud retains its current state even when you disconnect. If you’re editing an Excel spreadsheet and switch from a Mac to an iPad, for example, you’ll instantly see the desktop state right as you left it when you reconnect so you can get right back to work. It’s just like waking a PC from sleep mode.

The benefit is clear: You can run Windows applications without running Windows on your hardware. This means access to a full Windows 10 desktop on Macs, iPads, Chromebooks, and more—just as long as you have an internet connection. (When Windows 11 launches, you’ll be able to access a Windows 11 desktop in the same way.)

At launch, Windows 365 will only be available to businesses, and it will have a per-user monthly subscription cost. Microsoft offers a variety of different hardware configurations at different price points, all hosted on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing service. Businesses will be able to easily spin up cloud PCs, manage them, and control access.

At launch, single-person businesses are eligible. It’s not just for large corporations with thousands of employees—and it’s easy to imagine Microsoft offering the service to consumers in the future, too.

Other services already offer cloud-based desktop PCs you can access in a browser for everything from gaming to productivity, but now Microsoft is offering its own solution.

[central_va]

Does anyone remember X-stations?

[ro_dreaming]

Yes, and it’s a pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth - forever getting clients to buy more hardware or software, to keep IT nerds like me in a job.

Hopefully, I can last another 15 years (been doing IT stuff, originally SCO Xenix and Unix, now routing/switching/wireless/firewalls/VPN/MPLS/DWDM/IoT) since 1993. I’m looking to retire in the next 10 - 15 at the MOST.

[Mariner]

What makes them idiots?

[upchuck]

Does anyone remember X-stations?

I do. Never had one, but I remember them.

[upchuck]

:) Clackity clack Bump.

[central_va]

In the beginning the computer world was complexity centralized around a main frame and everyone logged into it with dummy terminals, modems and/or ran batch jobs. We are coming full circle back to that

[minnesota_bound]

Microsoft Linkedin was hacked a few weeks ago. 92% of the accounts. Some 700 million of them.

I ain’t getting this cloud pc.
Anyone including the democrats would be spying on you and/or placing files on your pc to entrap you. They tried this with the cbs reporter Sharyl Attkisson.

[dfwgator]

How long until Apple follows suit?

[zeugma]

So, now the plebes won’t even own their own desktop. Obviously, that also implies you don’t own your own documents, or really anything else related.

All your passwords, documents, and anything else would now exist in some ‘cloud’ (which is really just someone else’s computer).

The best part (/sarc) is that you’ll get to pay for it all monthly, forever!

Uh, thanks, but no thanks. I do believe that I’ll keep my Linux desktops that work just fine for me.

[zeugma]

The mainframe is back, with a new name. Does anyone remember the client server holy war? All the software processing was to be done on the client desktop.

Oh yeah. Tech seems to move in cycles, like many other things. I've worked on hardware that was just a generation or so from having tubes in it. The HP-1000 had 16 rockers on the front panel so that you could actually program the bootloader and other things in binary.

[StAnDeliver]

Interesting that this was always the destination for sharing multi-license enterprise when dial-up was just barely giving way to ISDN and very early cable.

The payoff that you can now "work" in some remote place via Starlink and Office365 is as palpably funny as the setup of the joke above.

"Why, yes, it's a lovely day here in Port-au-Prince, let me run this new Excel spread you sent me ... OMG THEY ARE BREAKING DOWN THE DOOR [ "Ungawa! Ungawa! Nous sommes venus vous couper la tête!" ] ..."

L. O. F. F'in. L.

[StAnDeliver]

"Our HQ/DC ISP pipes have been at 80% or more (98% was the highest sustained) since as people TRY to do normal work while also downloading 5+ Gb Outlook PST files."

Why on earth is it necessary to physically exchange tomes when that is not only the raison d'etre of Microsoft Exchange but remarkably the sub rosa of the actual article up top.

You don't have to answer, of course, respect the security, but genuinely puzzled.

[usconservative]

If you're using O365 why are you backhauling all that traffic across your corporate network to the end user?

Split-tunneling is your friend with O365. Let that traffic go out their local internet connection and stop backhauling it across the corporate network.

That's what we do. Works great and your end users will thank you.

[ro_dreaming]

Because I’m a contract worker, for one - and because our InfoSec team does not want that to happen.

[ro_dreaming]

I honestly don’t know - I’m a network guy, not an O365 guy (I’ve done SOME O365 work, but not a SME).

My understanding is that those splitting off are going to a completely different company (*@abc.com to *@xyz.com), and that entailed migrating *.pst files from one domain to another - so when everyone logged in Monday morning, opened Outlook, it started doing the okay - we’re taking everything from abc.com away, and making you xyz.com now.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Openurmind]

Because they just continue to follow each other off the cliff when they should just say no. They have no forethought of what the true cause and effect will be in the end. Look at where we are now... Directly related to sheep following sheep off the cliff with idiotic trends that just enslave us more.

[usconservative]

Clearly that infosec team doesn’t know what they’re doing and is costing the organization unnecessary $$$ at this point.

[ro_dreaming]

I would say they haven’t analyzed the risks properly, especially since we have both on prem and cloud proxy services.

But, it’s a boneheaded move regardless to try to migrate 93000 or so employees in 1 day. Some sites have bonded T1’s as their primary ISP link (4.5 Mbps), or even 4G/LTE. Even 3 employees with 3-4 Gb Outlook *.pst files would make that unworkable.

We’re MOVING to SDWAN which would help address the issue you point out, but with hundreds of sites (if not a thousand+), that’s going to be a multi-year project, of course.

[usconservative]

We’re MOVING to SDWAN which would help address the issue you point out, but with hundreds of sites (if not a thousand+), that’s going to be a multi-year project, of course.

Curious to know who's solution you're using for SDWAN? We're a SilverPeak shop. Their partnership with Microsoft is outstanding. We've received excellent support from both.

[ro_dreaming]

Cisco, the 800 lb gorilla.