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Comment by rob-olmos | Hacker News Reader

Maybe just me but the cloud desktops pricing still isn't all that attractive for some businesses to make a big shift to using them, but also not terrible for some businesses that could use the extra security or cloud environment benefits:

8hrs per workday for a 4 vCPU and 16 GB RAM = $217.36 per month[1]

1: https://cloud.google.com/workstations/pricing#pricing-exampl...

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The 4 vCPU 16 GB RAM range from 0.32-0.39 $/hour With 8 hours per day and 22 workdays per month its at most 68.64$.

Your price includes the "workstation cluster fee", whatever that includes. Anyways this fee is fixed and does not increase for more workstations.

1 Dev => 68.64 + 144

100 Devs => 100 * 68.64 + 144

I guess $70, or even $140 with better hardware, might be worth it in some szenarios.

Personally, I'd never want to work with a company that doesn't trust me with a regular notebook.

> I'd never want to work with a company that doesn't trust me with a regular notebook.

The value proposition has nothing to do with trust.

Not trusting someone with a regular laptop is common practice in enterprise consulting.

Either a VM accessible via citrix, RDP, X Windows, Bastille,.... or a throw away laptop locked down to the project.

The use case for this would be a cheap device that’s thin and light and has excellent battery life hooked up to a cloud machine that is very powerful.

It could also be used to do wfh without having to bring your company laptop or mix your personal data.

Also, that isn't exactly a powerful machine at 4 cores and 16GB of ram. Probably have to double it or what is the point? Security, maybe?

Aren't vCPUs only hyperthreads? So this is actually similar to a dualcore processor?

Cloud desktops move the numbers game from CapEx to OpEx.

“CFOs love this one cool trick!”

You can buy a better specced laptop in a year.

How many big corps in the US (I live in the US so that’s my reference) are doing engineering hardware rotation at sub-2 years? Most are likely to be 3.

The “frugal” FAANG is four…

"Most" companies in the USA are on a 5-year laptop replacement cycle because that's what the IRS set the MACRS depreciation schedule to for "consumer electronics" (really, category 00.12 in Table B-1 of Publication 946). Each year following the purchase they can write off the following on their taxes:

Year 1: 20%

Year 2: 32%

Year 3: 19.20%

Year 4: 11.52%

Year 5: 11.52%

Year 6: 5.76%

Why accountants are actually in charge of the rate at which laptops get purchased, instead of just the paperwork for the tax deductions caused by the rate of laptop purchases....I truly do not understand.

Yeah, but hardly companies want to do that for contractors working on delivery, for non software focused industries.

$217/month is absolutely nothing for any company of any size. It’s a rounding error.

Duh, but you wouldn't rent one instance, but one for every employee.

That's not chump change considering the measly specs.

And $217 per employee is still nothing once you consider the fully allocated expense of an employee.

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