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Comment by notthedroids | Hacker News Reader

Anyone else developing on a Mac/Linux desktop, and looking at Windows 365 to run/test/prototype windows applications?

Windows 365's lowest tier, with only 2GB of RAM, works out to $288/year. If you're on a Mac, you can grab the Pro version of Parallels for $99USD/year and run it locally, and spin up an instance of any version of Windows you need, along with guaranteed uptime and availability.

I really don't see Windows 365 as a viable option for most developers, when there are so many better -- and cheaper -- alternatives readily available.

If I would have to pay $100-$200 for the software subscriptions for my Windows VM (windows license, office) it gets close? Especially if Microsoft is also throwing in some hardware so my local computer is taxed less? Of course streaming a cloud desktop introduces its own problems (latency, unreliability, etc) but also advantages (portability, reproducibility, etc)

MS does offer W10 VM images that are good for 60 days (or 90, can't remember), to be used for development and testing.

Unless you're writing Office plugins, why do you need an office license for your test VM?

You don't really need to pay to license windows if you're just using it for testing.

Not sure on Windows licensing, but their major enterprise software such as SQL Server and SharePoint are free for dev use cases. When installing you have to provide a license. You can select a "Dev license" option, which gives you access to all the Enterprise Edition (or whatever name they're calling the full-featured edition) features for free for dev.

Because Microsoft permits testing without a license? Or because you believe, in practice, Microsoft will not assert its intellectual property rights against someone who is only testing? (I am personally OK with the first, not the second.)

> Because Microsoft permits testing without a license

Yes

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...

Functionally you can use it indefinitely without licensing and only have cosmetic issues in the form of a watermark and some inability to change appearance.

Whether this breaks their tos is a bit gray....

Not disagreeing with you, but just a note that with the M1's being ARM based, the Windows 10 will also be ARM based and may not run the necessary software for you to test with. For example, I know currently Visual Studio will not run on that.

> The Windows 10 will also be ARM based

Parallels is magic and runs both ARM and x86 windows apps

Does Parallels still show ads to paying customers?

I’d pay extra for Windows 365 to avoid ads.

Or you could use VirtualBox for free.

VirtualBox on the Mac is extremely slow. Also Parallels has much better integration with the Mac host (automatic shared folders, syncing program shortcuts between the host and the guest, etc.).

Can confirm that it’s slow. I tried so many different things, different GFX cards while trying to run Windows (xp, 7, 10) on my Mac Pro (2012, 2 x 6 core 3.4ghz, 128gb ram).

The only one that runs well in virtual box was XP. Everything else had extremely slow disk accès, graphics performance and cpu. It took like an hour to boot windows 10.

Parallels was what I would consider native speed with better features. That was really disappointing as I wanted to use OSS.

Running links in Vbox seems fine though and I run a few vms 24/7.

How does Parallels work? Why is it faster?

Is Windows usable with _anything_ on 2GB of RAM? I recall even back on Windows 7, that 2GB machines could barely manage a web browser and no multitasking with anything else.

If you're on Linux, you can use QEMU for free, which will yield better performance and compatibility than Parallels.

Or you can just use windows iso as is without activation on a VM and call it a day. Then, if you are adventurous, fire up that kms38 and you are off to the races

Are you advocating saving a few hundred dollars by avoiding license compliance in a professional setting?

I was ... until I saw the pricing then realized, ya know, VMWare is not as expensive.

You could, but with how inexpensive/frictionless a local hypervisor is, it seems like an expensive way to test.

For this use case, you might be better off using Windows VPS providers. For about $6/mo, you'll get a VM pre-installed with Windows 2019 server. Just google "Windows VPS" and you'll find tons of providers.

You’re not going to find that price at any reputable provider for 2019. There is BuyVM.net (very reputable), but they offer only up to 2012 I believe unfortunately.

If you are on a desktop, you might as well get a second desktop and gigabit ethernet between your machines.

Just use a vm, what is so hard about that? It would cost nothing.

Especially since MS provides a variety of testing-oriented virtual machine images.

I could see this if you needed better performance than that, I guess, or were developing on a machine that has trouble running x86 Windows very well under any circumstances (ARM).

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