- Railcar8095@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
What in the name is the flying spaghetti monster is Windows 365? An even less private version of windows that won’t work is you don’t have internet?
6 monthsThe OS is fully running on the cloud. You will be given a VM. Everything stays there. You may have to take permission to download a file from the VM onto your local device. You don’t get any choice about telemetry.
- 6 months
Am I interpreting this wrong, or do the specs look like absolute crap? I would expect a thin client would need hardware this good:
2 vCPU
4 GB RAM
64 GB Storage
- Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
Walk into any office or business that runs off the cloud or a local server and they will likely have dozens… I mean dozens of these lying around.
I know the gaming community looks at these like a vampire looks at a rosary but it isn’t new tech or even a new concept.
Back 25 years ago the company I worked for was looking into changing the computers for thin clients, then powered by JAVA, aaand of course dynamic workplaces that gets reinvented every seven years or so.
In the end they decided not to because people wanted to feel that they had their desk with their computer and not a floating office limbo as daily reminder that they are replaceable labour.
But most of all, their stationary computer had a CD ROM so they could listen to their own music while working and the thin clients couldn’t even customise your wallpaper.
- MIDItheKID@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
The only real case I can think of where people like thin clients is when they move between stations. I worked at a hospital that used them and it was a fantastic solution. A doctor/nurse/whatever could walk up to any station, beep their ID, and a couple second later their session would load up. It was a huge pain in the ass to build and maintain though. These new devices might actually have a benefit there. Managing W365 through Azure/Intune is leagues easier than managing Citrix with Windows VM pools.
- brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
Businesses will adore this. I can guarantee a lot of us will be forced to use these at work, like Teams and CoPilot, as a further mega deal with Microsoft.
…But honestly, I think “home” buyers who don’t really care about PC stuff, aka most people, would pick tablets over this.
- Tiger Jerusalem@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
Well, when the AI market crashes they will have lots of unused datacenters… Guess they found an use for that after all.
- MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish6 months
Goodbye local Windows, you mean. Except I said goodbye two years ago and never looked back or missed it. Windows does nothing I need, and does it poorly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still petty enough to hope this effort is a miserable failure, but ultimately I don’t care all that much.
Assuming the bootloader is not super locked down or even nonexistent, think Wyse thin client levels of locked down.
- OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish6 months
I’m still petty enough to hope this effort is a miserable failure
I hope this is effort is a miserable failure … because if it catches on, it could spell the end of desktop PCs in general as a consumer product.
Desktops will always exist, because you need the local processing power (and the cooling to support it) for certain professional workloads. But if everyday computing and even gaming becomes mostly done on thin clients fully dependent on internet servers, then desktops will become more and more of a niche, professional product. Which means they’ll become more expensive and harder to get. Replacement parts will become more expensive and harder to get. A desktop PC will be an expensive industrial machine, hard to justify the upfront price of for an average consumer. (Especially when a cheap thin client with a “cheap” monthly subscription can do essentially all the same things.)
It may also slow the adoption of open-source software because these thin clients are likely to be locked down and not able to install any other software without putting up a fight, if it ends up being possible at all. And if most people get used to the paradigm of renting their computing power from the cloud, they’ll be resistant to change that and go back to locally run software on their local machine that they then have to buy because their old thin client hardware can barely run anything, even if you do manage to install other software on it. (Imagine how hard it will be to convince someone to install Linux instead of using Windows if the first step of installing Linux is that they have to replace all their hardware with much bigger and more expensive hardware…)
- 6 months
(Especially when a cheap thin client with a “cheap” monthly subscription can do essentially all the same things.)
Right now, one year of Microsoft 365 costs a full hundred dollars… and there is still a strong desktop market.
If you’re right that the tech industry is willing to price consumers out of personal computers - and it looks like they are - I can only imagine what will happen to those subscription prices.
- obz3n@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
If you think about it: It is very wasteful for all of us to have local computation power at home. So many wasted resources as most people use their PCs only the fraction of the time. Same can be said for cars and many other appliances.
Maybe the solution are shared cloud resources, but obviously not owned by those big corporations, but owned by the people on a local, regional, national level?
- WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish6 months
now that you say this, it is also so wasteful for all of us to leave our homes empty while we go to work! we need to illegalize homeownership, and we need to require all landlords to host multiple families in their properties! It’s not only the empty space, the empty beds and toilet, but also the fridges that keep consuming power, even though nobody is actively using them!
- Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.clubEnglish6 months
Goodbye local Windows with Linux having a 3% market share means entirely different market & society too, regardless of our Linux desktops that can’t get new parts.
- MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish6 months
I’ll just point out that 3% market share is still bigger than the entire market when started building PCs. And that’s assuming they can make this attractive to anyone. Single point of failure for your entire company? Single supplier who has you over a barrel when they want to raise prices? Who in their right mind would go for that.
We’ll see. The fact that it’s on offer doesn’t mean people will bite. I’ve seen the industry try so much stupid shit that people said no to. Free computer full of ads? No. Scan cat? No. Packing LEDs into things that don’t need to light up or be hotter? Well… they got us there.
- WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish6 months
Free computer full of ads? No.
people are paying for that nowadays. they call them smartphones. even the operating system and base apps show ads.
- Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.clubEnglish6 months
Yes, good points, but what can make financial sense doesn’t need to make economical sense.
Perhaps in such events we can transition to smaller, maybe RISK-V boards with components from various manufacturers.
But yes, I too keep hoping consumers would speak up & stop bs practices. Then again, if we kill a consumer industry you can’t just bring it back in a year, and megacorps can weather in the meantime by offering consumers short-term incentives if they make the switch. It’s how all the personal data collection by private corps started, why eg Google had free services (and no ads) & yet was already being valued in the billions.
I’m really worried about this, I don’t think it’ll become a universal standard by all means but I can see Microslop forcing this onto people as a kinda next step from all the hardware limitation bs.
They would finally have total control over your OS.
- brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
Especially for businesses. At work you’ll have no choice but to use something like this.
They’ve been pushing the thin client for years and it’s never taken off. You and I wouldn’t be the target for this machine and neither would gamers or content creators. This is for business or grandparents.
- 6 months
It’s never taken off because of relatively inexpensive and abundant hardware. But these will be attractive to people who need something now and want something inexpensive.
Grandparents are the immediate target but eventually if they force the hardware supply shortages soon some people will need something.
Imagine students with low budget.
The next 5 years are going to be really interesting.
- MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish6 months
Grandparents don’t want to rent shit. They want to buy it and be done. Source: this old fuck right here.
- 6 months
Fair. But what if they completely eliminate the ability to buy hardware? like only selling to the AI fucks? Do grandparents not get phone plans for example?
- pastermil@sh.itjust.worksEnglish6 months
Ah yes, it’s around the time for thin clients of this cycle.
- wendigolibre@lemmy.zipEnglish6 months
Buy all the ram, inflating prices. Sell thin clients and access to computing power/ram. What a scam.
It’s funny because we switched from thin clients to fat clients some 30-40 years back.
- GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
Back in 2008-2009 I shared this crazy idea with my peers that Microsoft was moving towards an “always connected” OS that would probably be hosted on their servers, because you can make more money charging someone for access to their data than charging them once for their OS.
they laughed it off and told me that nobody would fall for that.
…who’s laughing now assholes?
It was never crazy and people were predicting this since the 90s. It’s essentially a return to the dumb terminal & mainframe paradigm that was in use prior to desktop pcs.
Yes. You run windows remotely, probably through that 2.5G ethernet.
I’d rather be struck by lightning than use cloud computing through Wi-Fi.
- Hozerkiller@lemmy.caEnglish6 months
Sorry I meant that along the lines of “this is already a thing just marketed differently.” Hyping up something that already exists as something new just feels odd and forced. Like if I made a car but called them “vroom vrooms” and marketed them for driving down Young street only.
- CaptPretentious@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
My guess for the only difference is that it’s locked to Azure
- Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
This is horrifying in that it signals a concerted push towards getting consumers on cloud computing.
But in terms of self hosting your own compute these actually look great, especially if they’re subsidized to get you into a subscription fee. As long as we can break into the bootloader and run Linux on these, they look to be very capable and efficient small compute boxes. 2.5Gbps Ethernet ports, DDR5 memory, and Intel N series processors?
Self hosters and homelabbers will be licking their lips.
These fuckers themselves have increased the price of PC components and now they have the gall to release this cloud-only PC to “alleviate the problem of the current market scenario”.
I have a sneaking suspicion that these PCs will have some sort of protection so that nothing other than Win365 can run. Maybe a locked bootloader/secureboot?
- pinball_wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish6 months
I have a sneaking suspicion that these PCs will have some sort of protection so that nothing other than Win365 can run. Maybe a locked bootloader/secureboot?
Yes. Very probably.
Of course, no security mechanism lasts indefinitely in the hands of a persistent hacker with physical access.
And when your Internet goes down, you can’t even work locally.
Genius!
I’m sure CoPilot in the cloud already took that into account though and goes off on all sorts of tangents with the user disconnected.
What could possibly go wrong?
yes but how often does your internet go down? I agree with the sentiment and I hate this but we should think about this from an average user perspective when we make our argument. Internet doesnt go down, I’ve had more electricity outages than internet outages in the past 5 years. if you live in a city its a rare thing.
The reason why people shouldnt want this in my opinion is not because its day to day worse but because its worse long term. These companies will offer it at a low price to entice you then yank the rug out from under you. You will never be safe with an option like this because at any time it can be taken from you and one day there might not be an alternative market of computers to purchase.
yes but how often does your internet go down?
About once a month. Not for very long, but it is an annoyance. Xfinity usually does maintenance between 1am and 2am, and the Internet will be out for about 30 minutes to an hour. About once a year it goes down for at least half a day.
My OS hasn’t gone down at all in 20 years. I don’t want that to change. If an OS stops working for an hour once a month for maintenance, it’s a piece of refried shit.
“Now updating, please wait!”
I mean, technically not “down” but not exactly usable either. 😉
Given all the attempts at eroding tech freedom, this might end up being future computing, but the cloud is state-controlled.
- OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish6 months
Because an 8GB RAM stick costs $9,000 and hard drives literally can’t be had at any price, but this shitty thin client thing is only $49.95 + $10/month subscription. ($25 per month if you want it with
nofewer intrusive ads.)Coming soon, to a dystopian AI future near you.
Penny-pinching companies love to give the absolute bare minimum equipment to their employees
- Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.clubEnglish6 months
Enough capital can reshape even a somewhat free market into a non-free one - if we, the demand, have basically no other choice (except revolt, but we forgot/got that erased from our consciousness) we usually just try to survive.
The mythos about how things are getting better for each generation of humans is false.
I’m not using it even if someone is paying me (unless someone hacks the firmware, but that’s a different story)
- Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.clubEnglish6 months
After 20 years when your CPUs, RAMs, and at least SSDs don’t work anymore, and the PC supply never came back - how are you going to show/trick the government that you are a patriot that uses & supports one of the three big USA private AIs?
Something similar to this concept is great for enterprise environments. Imagine an employee at home using a basic thin client that just connects to a “mainframe” of a server that exists on premises and is running an individual VM or whatever for each employee’s thin client. That is already a widespread concept. But for a home PC, with that VM being run on the OS manufacturer’s servers? No, I don’t think anybody should want to pay for that.
- OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
God. I can’t believe it. I’ve lived long enough to see the return of the dumb terminal. FFS.
Someone will install Linux on them and use them as a cheap barebones computer. I’m sure with a bit of jiggery-pokery they can be repurposed to something useful.
- 6 months
These definitely could be pretty solid headless Linux serverboxes for microservices.
You say that based on 30-40 years of companies not really knowing what they were doing, but we live in a world where hardware manufacturers ABSOLUTELY know how to make nearly unhackable, locked down hardware. Smartphones are already like this - if the manufacturer decides you don’t get to install a custom OS, unless you’re lucky enough for there to be an exploit, you don’t get to. Same goes for game consoles. That knowledge can easily be applied to these to make these, if not completely unhackable, so unstable and inconvenient as to be almost the same.
We are absolutely entering this nightmare phase.
- anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
Our best hope is that companies outside the US stop buying Microsoft. People will need to produce computers for them. Then we in the US can import them and run Linux.
- stylusmobilus@aussie.zoneEnglish6 months
‘Someone, do something about our problem so we can take advantage of it’
Fuck this is exhausting
- anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish6 months
Do you say similar about all the corporations and governments who have relied on the US for decades? Hmmm?
