Interesting. I already use an EC2 instance for exactly this (running Debian) and it has been a great way to work. My laptop only needs to be powerful enough to run an ssh client and X server and then the instance does all the heavy lifting of running applications (in this case, mostly compiling code). It is beyond cool being able to scale the hardware up/down depending on how nasty my current project's build is. Even better is that I can ssh in and do basic work from any computer than has an ssh client. Emergency one-line patch from my smartphone? Fuck yeah! Pricing of the new desktop instances looks a little high compared to reserved instances of similar power, but I imagine that is the MSFT tax at work.