Windows 365 Link is a $349 mini PC that streams Windows from the cloud | Hacker News Reader

Windows 365 Link is a $349 mini PC that streams Windows from the cloud

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30 pointsmarban39 comments

The timing of this is so poor for Microsoft after Apple delivered a savage beatdown with the new M4 Mini. As a former Windows camper, this is just so disappointing to see.

What beatdown with their 20% market share, and zero presence on server rooms?

Agreed, though if the price were $100 cheaper there could be an argument for it.

Network Computer says hello!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer

Maybe somewhere out there is a parallel universe in which everyone is running Oracle NCOS (Oracle’s OEM’d version of Acorn RiscOS which Oracle’s network computers used)

Yeah, that and plenty of others.

I guess Android is the closest to JavaStation nowadays.

I’m of two minds on this.

1. This is a great idea for really cash strapped offices (that somehow have great internet?) or super quick deployments. As long as you only use Windows.

2. This is basically a PCoiP box a few years later. But locked to a single backend…which is not the best value proposition. But it does help with reducing client side maintenance.

3. The base M4 Mac mini is a far better value proposition if you don’t fall exclusively into the above two categories. Fast local compute, workers don’t stop when the Internet goes out, and not tied to a single backend provider.

I feel like $350 is a pretty high price for a cash strapped office.

You can get an acceptable desktop pc from BestBuy for $250 [1]. It's not great, but it'll probably work. Yes, it's a clearance price, but there's always something on clearance.

[1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-envy-desktop-intel-core-i7-1...

An i7-13700 and 16 GB of DDR4-3200 seems pretty great to me. My i5-6600k is still way more than adequate, and that thing is ~6x more capable. Honestly a $160 N100 minipc is probably more than enough for office work.

There’s the other aspects though like security , management and hot desking that fall under my definition of cash strapped that I think would drive sales of this.

$350 gets some pretty awesome ex-office PCs. I've upgraded my friends/family/neighbors with them and only heard good things about them.

(1st/2nd generation ryzen towers from ebay - typically with 8gb ram and a ssd.)

Sure. Used PCs can be a great bargain.

But they're not new.

And that can be an important distinction for a buyer -- including one who is operating on a budget.

I think cash strapped offices won't be willing to pay $41/user/month for access to a dual-core system with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365/business/compare... You'd be able to get a refurbished office PC with better specs than that for around the $350 price point of the Windows 365 box.

I meant more cash strapped as in without a large IT resource to manage the systems versus just device cost.

Is the value proposition of this just the implied simplicity of setup? This doesn't look like the best value.

> that somehow have great internet?

We were running RDP and Citrix ICA over dial-up in the 90s. Unlike X or VNC, Windows protocols were designed to be low overhead. It wasn't great, but it worked.

This is streaming dual 4k video streams from the cloud. The windows protocols don’t really matter here.

> This is streaming dual 4k video streams from the cloud. The windows protocols don’t really matter here.

Compression was never an issue. Just look at youtube.

YouTube doesn’t have to deal with the same latency, or deal with representing lots of text.

Streaming like this is much harder than folks pretend it is.

I bet a lot of finance companies will love this. Many already make their developers use virtual development environments, and this takes away all management of physical machines.

It might be a bit more successful if there was also a laptop version that cost the same.

Monthly pricing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365/enterprise/compa...

Doesn't really make sense to me. The main benefit seems to be the desktop-as-a-managed-service bit. Aside from this, it would fail to make financial sense after about 6 months of paying for the Windows 365 subscription.

That's exactly who they are targeting, and you can be assured that there are organizations who would be willing to pay for this. Your dentist will be more than happy to pay Microsoft $40/month to manage their desktops.

Once digital records became a thing, my dentists have all had one desktop per chair, plus one for reception, maybe one for a finance person (ugh, that's a sign), and the private office for the doctor. $40/month/each adds up pretty quick.

Competent IT help also adds up pretty quick.

And this rental model also allows for hot desking by default.

A dentist looking X-rays in their comfortable office can use this system to bring their whole desktop state into the exam room with them to review with a patient without them having to do anything more than simply log in (just as they would do anywhere else).

The AWS thin client is only $200 which already feels expensive considering it's a relabeled $100 Fire TV box. $350 is way too much.

100mbps lan says it all

A thin client doesn't need more.

What's inside? This feels too expensive for what I imagine it is.

>What's inside?

"Microsoft Recall", or whatever they're branding their surveillance software as this week....

So the industry is now rediscovering thin clients?

You can most likely get a way cheaper wyse thin client, that comes with all the necessary stuff to run an rdp client.

Yes, that is what cloud is all about, we are back into timesharing.

I see no difference to X Windows, telnet, other than the protocols, and clients.

...and 40 years of technological advancement. Is there anything different between a 1984's Honda Accord and one from 2024? Yes, but also no.

Continuously being throw away by folks on their CLIs and TUIs.

It is like being offered the 2024 Honda Accord, and going on a bicycle instead.

> It is like being offered the 2024 Honda Accord, and going on a bicycle instead.

As somebody that uses emacs in screen on a remote machine for work... I mean... My "bicycle" keeps getting me where i need to go. Car brands and models come and go. Bicycle stays, and it's dirt cheap. No fuel needed. Easy to fix if/when something breaks. Easy to adapt to new terrains.

It's not that one does not like cars, it's that the bicycle is unreasonably effective and reliable.

This seems like a low value proposition. They claim think Xbox so it’ll depend just how powerful a machine you get.

I like the port selection. But for that price that’s pretty mediocre overall

Why can't we just do this with every modern mobile phone?

Because mobile phones don't have permanent or even reliable connectivity outside of the SV bubble.

Also it sounds like the absolute lowest tier of hell to be forced to carry a GPS-enabled Windows on the cloud device in your pocket.

Microsoft trying to do Guacamole!!! lol!!

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