3d ago

Windows intros 365 Link, a black box that does nothing but connect to Microsoft's cloud

www.theregister.com

Gone all in on Windows 365? Microsoft has a box for you

The Windows 365 Link is a small black box that connects over the internet to a Windows 365 Cloud PC running in the Azure cloud. Microsoft has priced it at $349 (£349), and its real utility is to those fully invested in Microsoft's cloudy vision.

Hardware @lemmy.world

Alphane Moon @lemmy.world

3d ago

Windows intros 365 Link, a black box that does nothing but connect to Microsoft's cloud

www.theregister.com /2025/04/03/windows_365_link/

39 comments

aka a thin-client
- The circle of computing: thin-thick-thin-thick-thin
  
  Absolutely. These existed years ago, I remember putting them in for a client. I also put in Sun Java Stations for another client. Neither of these were "cloud" but they were both running what we now call commonly Virtual Desktop Environments (VDI) from on-premises servers.
- Yeah I love how people are panning it and laughing, but thin clients are bread and butter to most enterprises. I think we have around 1,800 deployed at last count. The price is competitive and if you’ve gone all in on the Microsoft ecosystem it makes sense.
- What is their endgame here? Why do people want this also
  
  25 years ago we were using SUN thin clients connected to a single huge server on campus. Shortly after they were replaced with thick Dell PCs running XP.
  
  They are (can be) cheap. Dependent on whatever remote desktop service you use, though.
  For simple office work, you don't really need much to stand up a set of thin clients other than a good network and peripheral hardware.
  A Dell thin client goes for like $300-500 while a full desktop is $1000-1500 from them (actual prices may vary by company contract), so it's typically less upfront cost, especially if your company is already using a remote desktop service.
  
  What makes you think people want it at all?
  
  If they knew what they wanted, they wouldn't use Windows.

It's a brilliant move on Microsoft's part. Idiot Veeps who can't install anything on their own computers will buy them by the truckload for their "technology enablement groups" to do "amazing AI things in the cloud" with.
There was a very, very brief point in human history when fucking chuds who smarmed their way over from Sales didn't run IT.
- 🤣 my last boss was the president of the consortium's IT company. He came from sales and didn't know shit about anything IT related. Dude was the worst boss I've ever had.

How i see this "box":
- Blessed by Stephen Hawking himself

They dont even want us to own computers anymore
- Impersonal computing

Sure, let's just move your personal desktop to someone else's computer where you don't even own the data. What could possibly go wrong?
- This isn't targeted at personal desktops. This is for enterprise use, where you didn't own the data in the first place.
  
  You're right. It's still stupid though.
  Companies should be at least as concerned with privacy and autonomy as individuals. Running everything on Microsoft Clouds, with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office makes you massively vulnerable to the whims of Microsoft. And many of the potential customers are actually Microsoft's competitors on some level.
  Thin clients may be a good model for some businesses, but this device particularly seems to be tailored to use only Microsoft's Azure cloud as opposed to self-hosting. Moving the computation to Microsoft's cloud doesn't make it inherently safer.
  
  I worked in (Canadian) government for a while and we used our desktops as thin clients in a way. That wasn’t the intended use of our desktops but the office internet was just so insanely locked down that nearly every site was blocked. Like trying to watch a YouTube tutorial? Blocked. Trying to read a forum thread to debug something? Blocked. It was stupid.
  We all just ended up RPCing into Azure VMs because we’d actually be able to do our work that way.
  Not super related but something I think about sometimes lol

350 bucks for a device that does no processing by itself?
ill go out on a limb and assume they want a subscription out of it too?
- Looks like we just found our new marketing VP!

They announced these at Ignite last year along with a swath of Copilot modules.
The goal is to provide low cost alternatives to either
Upgrading existing systems to win11, if the hardware supports it.
Offering a "low cost" alternative to an additional $30 for an extended year of win10 support.
Long term goal is to move Windows completely to a subscription model either way. Little Black Boxes are just initial way to present this as an overall savings to the Enterprise Market. And I believe it will work to some degree on the quarterly focused businesses that are already balls deep in Microsoft's ecosystem's. There is an unfathomable amount of win10 systems still in use across the globe and they are fast nearing EOS.
- This was the last straw for me, swapped to Linux Mint at the beginning of the year and I haven't had any major issues yet!

invested in
infested with.
FIFY

"Move Windows to the 'Cloud' "
Only $349 + whatever the Window Live subscription fee is, now. What an idiotic idea.

Hey I saw this episode of Silicon Valley!

Yawn. That compute model worked OK for some corporate setups 20 years ago. Granted RDP has improved.

Probably an ARM computer running skeleton Windows and RDP.
Why bother with such a thing when a NUC could do the compute locally in the same form-factor? Other than corpo data theft paranoia, but the risk of lost productivity from cloud failure seems a bigger risk than that.

Microsoft reintroduces the dumb terminal

so this is for me if i have a cloudy vision?

39 comments