Microsoft suggests businesses buy fewer PCs. No, really

At first flush it's an utterly bizarre argument for Microsoft to endorse, but the PC operating system giant has floated the idea that businesses buy fewer PCs. Yes, we're talking about that Microsoft – the company that's utterly synonymous with the PC, and which together with Intel set out to have one of the machines in every …

[Kev99]

Mictosoft wants business to use "cloud-pcs", eh? Let's see. The company that's synonymous buggy insecure products wants businesses to place their mission critical, proprietary, confidential data on a bunch of holes held together with vapor. There's nothing wrong with that. "Hey, give me candle. I can't see inside this shed owned by someone called TNT".

[big_D]

Also bring your own... Not here. No personal data on business PCs and no business data on private devices.

Most production systems are on their own network and can't see the Internet - PCs which monitor the PLCs and manufacturing equipment, for example. Can't really do that with a cloudy PC.

I previously worked for a company that designs plants (manufacturing facilities, not flora). Most of their customer contracts explicitly stated that all information would be stored behind the company firewall and explicitly forbade the data to be stored on the Internet.

[MachDiamond]

"Most production systems are on their own network and can't see the Internet "

Only my Macs and Linux machines can see the internet. My Windows boxes are thoroughly disconnected due to little need to do anything more than power them on for them to be infected via the internet.

When I was working in aerospace, the ITAR laws don't make any provisions for "accidental" release of regulated information so all of our files needed to stay in-house on our own machines. It was a small company and even needing to hire specialist attorneys to address enquiries would be a big drain on capital much less being found in violation and having to pay fines.

A company that adopts an IT plan that relies on an outside company for 100% of their computing is going to have issues. It's also easy to get trapped like with web hosts that offer very good 1st year subscriptions that triple at renewal. Yeah, they have really nice web page creation tools and templates, but those lock you in to their service. If you decide to go with somebody else, you have to rebuild your website from scratch. I'd not want to do that with my whole business.

[cyberdemon]

Bring your own Data

and let Microsoft slurp it up.

My theory is that they want to train an AI how to use a PC at the keyboard, mouse and Monitor level. (what could Possibly go wrong, eh)

That wouldn't be possible with the telemetry that they already collect from Windows 11 users (because someone would get suspicious if it was sending every frame of video to Microsoft along with their keyboard and mouse input). But with a Cloud PC, that's no longer a problem.

Privacy? Is that a new word because GPT says it hasn't heard it before.

[hoola]

They are missing the one crucial point......

A cloud PC is only any use when you have some sort of device that connects to a decent screen, keyboard and mouse to use it.

I wonder what that device could be?

[MachDiamond]

"A cloud PC is only any use when you have some sort of device that connects to a decent screen, keyboard and mouse to use it.

I wonder what that device could be?"

It could be a "thin client" box that's outsourcing the bulk of the computing and storage to another machine, somewhere else, locked up with somebody else's keys.

[Tomato42]

Except a typical thin client uses about as much are your typical laptop anyway, so it's not like there's much difference in power draw...

[CommonBloke]

STAHP!

Stop using logic to undermine Microsoft's totally benign plans of reducing -their- carbon footprint by sidelining it on "dumb" terminals, with the added bonus of total access to all the data on these totally secure cloud PCs!

[captain veg]

RPi 400?

-A.

[Stuart Castle]

Re: "I wonder what that device could be?"

It could be a dedicated thin client. It could be an old PC. It could be a laptop. It could be a Tablet. It could be a Phone. A company could even roll out a fleet of single board computers (such as a Raspberry Pi). It could be any device you can hide behind a firewall as long as it can access the cloud Windows install (which is any device that can run the software, or possibly can access it via the WWW).

In fact, I believe one of the big selling points for VMWare Horizon is that it can extend the life of your old PCs by enabling users to access the latest versions of Windows remotely using them.

[bombastic bob]

would be more "sustainable" if each version of windows did not require new hardware...

And of course Micros~1 wants us to use "the cloud" instead of a REAL computer, so that they have even MORE control, MORE lock-in, and MORE spyware.

(please do not look behind the curtain, the manipulation is for your own good, nothing to see here, Jedi business, move along)

[Blackjack]

Cloud PCs are not more green that actual PCs, they are actually less green, more unsafe and require a constant active Internet connection.

They are also more expensive no matter how you want to spin it. After all Cloud PCs are a monthly rent with variable price while buying a PC means you own it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/64625655

[joed]

And how do these users will connect to MS' cloud pc? From a PC they'd likely not be required to have otherwise (quite common for folks working aforementioned jobs). So the employers offload their equipment cost onto their labor and MS pockets all the imaginary savings (no way it was cheaper once everything is accounted for) and can make all the greeneashing claims (I bet it'll also ask for some green tax credit taxpayers are complied to hand over to cash strapped corpos and equally handicapped shareholders).

Win win/s

[Roland6]

Naturally, they will need a M365book, which isn’t a PC (is a Chromebook a PC?)….

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not ACTUALLY About being Green...it's about shifting the responsibility.

You've offloaded a load of CO2 generating machines to someone else's DC...the Green credentials are their problem.

Not mentioning the weekly(ish) burn off of the diesel for the generators.

Loads of firms are doing this as they move to the Cloud...oh look our CO2 footprint has gone down without actually doing anything bar taking the bins off each floor

[Doctor Syntax]

Nor do all those bits get shuffled backwards and forwards to and from the cloud do so without more energy being expended doing so. What is the carbon footprint of the internet? Not the computers connected to it, just the routers etc?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you appreciate the evilness of the most probable reason for this recommendation: they want control. Not only about how you use your systems by forcing feature updates against the will of their users, but also when and where you can access what data/service.

More recent versions of windows turn more and more into prototypical malware (ads, forced desktop links to shovelware, "telemetry" aka spyware, TPM rootkits, ...), but until now it was possible (though quite difficult) to get a clean system that didn't do anything *too* bad and at least wasn't calling home every 5min. The only way to achieve complete control over all their users is to force them to use systems administered by MS themselves - after all, you can't secure your system if you don't have root privileges and/or hardware access.

[RegGuy1]

There's always Linux ...

[ducks]

[Korev]

There's always Linux ...

[ducks]

Nope, it's a Penguin -->

(I'll get my coat...)

[Keythong]

Indeed

It's much like the insanity of significant switching from chemical fuels for, transport/heating, to electrical power. More conversion stages increase power waste, thus significant more (completely innocent) C02 [1] production.

Where "cloud PCs", possibly environments/sessions with no separate real OS instance needed, may actually be useful, is for ease of easier/automated system/data maintenance, and better access control, and data security, not for power saving BS. Cloud server farms can ironically waste a lot more power, because of a higher percentage of idle, powered up servers and support plant. Moving software product to the cloud is often more about fabricating subscription (higher-cumulative, rentier) income, lock-in, and user exploitation, than about genuine need; "free" online versions can be a bait for such traps.

Cloud can end up being more costly than on-premise, including because it can lead to unexpectedly great use and possibly use of more licenced product instances!

[1] The CO2 smearing of AGW/Climate-Change is political propaganda supported by "cherry-picking" climate evidence/modelling fraud, much like the fraudulent political linkage of meat/saturated-fat consumption with cancer/heart-disease, all designed to usurp wealth and power. The most significant atmospheric "greenhouse" (heat retaining) substance is clouds, of water vapour, not CO2, e.g. basic science observation, that after roughly same temperature daytime temperatures, cloudy nights are generally significantly warmer than clear nights, because of reduced convection.

[GruntyMcPugh]

It's hard to see any energy saving when most folks are going to access their cloud PC via another PC / laptop, so the cloud side is an additional consumption. Our VDI solution runs on a Hyperconverged cluster of servers,... it's on 24x7, and while it might not use as much juice idling as it does when it's processing peak demand, it uses a lot more than a PC that gets switched off at the end of the day.

[Mike 137]

"buying a PC means you own it."

Not if it's running Win 10.

The very first day I booted up a newly acquired refurb Win 10 laptop recently it downloaded 1.9GB of 'updates' and got into an infinite loop of failed update/blus screen/auto restart that took the best part of a day to resolve. It's perfectly clear that M$ really owns it - not me. I only paid for it.

[navarac]

Another fine mess that Microsoft wants loads of dollars for. Think of all the M$AI that'll f**k that all up.

[xyz]

Didn't Oracle come up with a similar idea

About 25 years ago... The network pc or something. I think all corps have the same mission statement... Lock 'em in and milk their asses.

[MarcoV]

Re: Didn't Oracle come up with a similar idea

And the result will also be the same. After lacklustre uptake, Microsoft and/or the customers cans it in 4-5 years, all longterm green investment in the bin

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Didn't Oracle come up with a similar idea

But just think of all the Windows and Office licences they'll be able to sell when that happens.

[Stork]

Re: Didn't Oracle come up with a similar idea

Sun’s Sunray?

[katrinab]

Re: Didn't Oracle come up with a similar idea

Yes. At least I remember when I was doing interviews for my first proper job, one of them asked me about it. That would be late 1997/early 1998.

Also, I think it was Sun rather than Oracle, or maybe it was both? Certainly Sun did have something.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: Didn't Oracle come up with a similar idea

"I think it was Sun rather than Oracle,"

Indeed, the Sunray.

However, 10 years earlier (late 80s), one could (and I did) use a Sun 3 as an X terminal to a Sun 4 server hundreds of miles away over a mere 512 kb/s leased line. I could therefore drive to my local office (10 minutes away) rather than 3 hours to where the server was located. This was writing documents using FrameMaker, IIRC. Guessing I could do something similar the days with a keyboard, mouse, monitor and a cigarette-packet sized SBC for under £200. Surely you could run VDI terminals off a £50-100k server, instead of paying monthly charges, asnd as said earlier, the risk of M$ canning the service because they feel it isn't increasing shareholder value <vomit/>.

So let's do it all again like it's 1989 ...... but have our very wallets emptied while we do.

[ShortLegs]

Re: Didn't Oracle come up with a similar idea

Correct,. Oracle did.

I cannot comment on the Sun posts below, but Larry Elllison was selling the concept of the net-PC back around 1997/1998 cant be too precise over the date as a) 25 years ago now b) www was still fledgling then, and 99% of news came from /printed/ media liek Computer Weekly and Network News - which ran the story.

My employer considered it.. but realised that apps were not available of comms were not available, and HOW MUCH bandwidth would be required?!!! A 2mb Megastream was just about the bees knees then, and would not have sufficed. iitc we looked at E3 but Cisco were only connecting G703 interfaces.

We even looked at full-on ATM, but the interconnect was the weak spot. Bear in mind the employer at the time contributed 2.2% to GDP and had a £1billion cash to get rid of, they were not short of funds.

Neither the technical nor business model worked.

[DS999]

Maybe some call centers are looking at Linux?

It isn't like a call center PC needs to do much, so that's a lot easier than converting employees who will use Office and various 3rd party Windows applications.

If so Microsoft's response to help them save money makes sense. There's no way they are doing this out of the good of their hearts.

[Roland6]

Re: Maybe some call centers are looking at Linux?

> It isn't like a call center PC needs to do much

About the only consistent requirement across all the call centres I’ve designed is the ability to run non-Microsoft call centre application suites…

[MachDiamond]

Re: Maybe some call centers are looking at Linux?

"> It isn't like a call center PC needs to do much"

So that desk doesn't need anything more than the most base level computer.

A general purpose PC has at least some resale or donation value when it gets swapped out. I've know companies just give older computers to employees if they want them. Anything that can do basic word processing might be fine for a kid in school and that it will suck for games could be a bonus.

Dedicated hardware is just scrap at the end of its life if it can only be used as part of a large system. I can remember when the "Web PC's" came out.

[DS999]

Re: Maybe some call centers are looking at Linux?

Why would it be "dedicated hardware"? You can run Linux on a regular PC, but you don't need to pay Microsoft $$$ for enterprise licenses and deal with CALs and all that crap. You can still donate it to a school or whatever when it reaches end of life - though given how little a call center computer does you would probably want to keep using it until it actually dies rather than when it simply reaches accounting end of life.

[J. Cook]

Re: Maybe some call centers are looking at Linux?

That would be a "thin client"- just enough brains to boot up a bare bones OS image from a tiny (~4GB) flash module and run a dedicated RDP / X windows / Citrix client and not much else.

We tried that at [RedactedCo] several years ago, and never got past the proof of concept stage, although we did end up having ~100 of the stupid things that got put into asset recovery afterwards...

[DS999]

Re: Maybe some call centers are looking at Linux?

Thin client concepts have been around for 25 years but never get anywhere because the cost difference between a barebones PC and a thin client has never been large enough to make it a no brainer.

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be happening already with the proliferation of web apps. My latest employer furnishes minions with a new M2 Macbook pro for iterm to ssh into a VM, and a browser when I have to use Office 365. Before that it was the latest model Thinkpad. What Microsoft's report should say is thin clients should replace the space stations required to drive Windows. I would much prefer a Chromebook and a permanent job then a 2 grand laptop with a service contract longer than mine.

[Doctor Syntax]

The answer isn't a Chromebook as such but something like it that isn't tied to a specific service.

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I like VDI

This will be a stunning sh*t show for any firm that tries it.

Why should I pay for a thin client, a monthly cost for a Windows machine in Azure, a monthly cost for O365. A device that I can't use on the train or a plane unless there is solid WiFi that isn't going to cut out every 2 minutes.

[Steve Kerr]

Re: As much as I like VDI

Because how else are they going to monetise you for a monthly fee for something you'll never own?

[IanRS]

Re: As much as I like VDI

I've been involved in a few thin client / VDI trials over the years, and one of the criteria has always been video performance. Many years ago the justification was only 'training courses often have video', but video is a lot more common these days. It always come down to a choice of sending the still compressed video over the wire and needing a powerful computer to decompress it locally, which most 'thin' clients fail at if they really are thin, or decompress it at the far end and send uncompressed data over the network, which normally cannot cope.

Strangely, what does work is having a full power machine as the client, which does seem to rather defeat the purpose of the exercise.

VDI works for spreadsheets, but that should not be enough justification for the beancounters to enforce it on everybody else.

[John H Woods]

Re: As much as I like VDI

Even with the bandwidth (which is almost never enough), you can't get away from the latency. As Admiral Hopper liked to remind us, a foot's a nanosecond: therefore every 100mi to the data centre adds a inescapable minimum of 1ms round trip time. A millisecond here, a millisecond there, and pretty soon you're talking real lag.

[MachDiamond]

Re: As much as I like VDI

"A millisecond here, a millisecond there, and pretty soon you're talking real lag."

If you aren't working with huge files in real time, some milliseconds of lag won't be a big deal. Before I had the computer I have now, when I'd plug in the card from my camera and ingest the photos into Lightroom and have it apply my basic preset and render previews, I could go have a cup of tea and a bun. Now I'm in that grey area where there isn't the time for the kettle to boil the water before the computer is done but a bit too long to sit and watch the progress bar. The biggest problem will be infinite lag when the internet goes off. My 'modem' seems to reset at least every night in the middle of my doing something and during the summer when the line amps on the pole mounted boxes over-temp. Why do they put those on poles painted black? I'm out in the desert which is well known for being on the hot side about half the year.

[doublelayer]

Re: As much as I like VDI

It depends what you're doing. How much latency when typing leads to someone watching the screen failing to notice a typo? How much latency when moving a mouse causes the user to start estimating at final positions and possibly activating the wrong thing? Perhaps most importantly, how much latency can you have before you start hating this stupid box that just can't keep up? This would get markedly worse if you were dealing with something bandwidth-intensive as well, because now you're not just dealing with the network latency, which is often not a problem if the datacenter is close enough to you, but with other limiting factors that extend this.

[munnoch]

Re: As much as I like VDI

I'm not allowed to have any company content on my personal device, everything is done captive through a remote desktop. Every keypress, every mouse movement has to go round trip *and* the screen refresh come back again with low enough latency for it to appear interactive.

Very difficult to explain this to people who think bandwidth is the only defining metric of a connection. Satellite, 4G, even xDSL, introduce significant latency that mean nothing is 'close' to you in network terms.

As someone once said, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of mag tapes going down the highway. But the latency...

[katrinab]

Re: As much as I like VDI

I tried watching YouTube videos in an RDP session to see what would happen:

Using Windows 11 on a Threadripper Pro over a 10GBe LAN connection - completely unwatchable

Using MacOS on an i9-9980HK over a 2.5GBe LAB connection - completely unwatchable

Using and iPad Air 4 over Wifi - completely watchable if I drop the video resolution down to 720p, and just about watchable if I try to stream at 1080p. My Wireless Access Point is not the fastest available, I've not got round to upgrading it yet. Maybe faster Wifi would allow me to do it at higher resolutions?

So I suppose an M-series MacBook might actually work.

[J. Cook]

Re: As much as I like VDI

Oh yeah, that was the other thing- the licensing for VDI was.... breathtakingly expensive.

license for the thin client, license for RDP, license for HyperV/VMWare View, and a license for the VDI itself. 4 licenses for a single user.

(and it if was Hyper-V, IIRC the hyper-V instance was a "per vCPU" style license, so you'd have a 48 core server and have to pay for all 48 cores regardless if you were running 1 VDI box on it or 40-odd boxes.)

You know it's bad when the Microsoft licensing expert is confused about what the exact set of licenses and SKUs are needed....

[naive]

Don't feel sorry for them that MS wants to eat their share of the IT cake

The PC makers have been sharing the bed with their Mistress Microsoft for decades, it is actually fun to see they are dumped.

Maybe it is time for them to come up with something innovative after 40 years of doing the same thing, cooperate and make a consortium, perhaps involve google and come up with something smart that can serve as an office workstation architecture based on Linux combined with solutions from google.

It should not be hard to come up with something that doesn't need weekly reboots for security patches and is cheaper to run.

[43300]

Re: Don't feel sorry for them that MS wants to eat their share of the IT cake

"Maybe it is time for them to come up with something innovative after 40 years of doing the same thing, cooperate and make a consortium, perhaps involve google and come up with something smart that can serve as an office workstation architecture based on Linux combined with solutions from google."

I was with you until the last five words...

[doublelayer]

Re: Don't feel sorry for them that MS wants to eat their share of the IT cake

Oh sure, instead of making devices that boot Windows, and also anything else you might choose, go to Google who always puts out software that makes the hardware only work with a manufacturer-specific, update-restricted version of the operating system it shipped with. After seeing the problems with Android device support and the state of modern Chromebooks, you want a third Google OS?

[Will Godfrey]

Popcorn time again!

I shall keep out of sight and watch the fun

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Ah yes I remember this from the late 90s. This was the promise of Citrix - lots of underpowered thin clients would revolutionise everything! Which it really didn't.

Of course this time it's different - this time you're paying Microsoft for them, so their plan is to try and ensure that whatever happens you'll be moving to Azure, whether you like it or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, C&W at the time pissed £500mill on it, and that's why you don't hear the name cable & wireless anymore

[Howard Sway]

Re: Citrix

I can remember 25 years ago when one of our customers also used Citrix terminals as thin Windows clients. They were OK, but a little bit laggy, and that was with a server that was in the same building as them. Also, when the server went down, so did everyone.

Subsequently, I've used several remote desktop clients, and they were all annoyingly slow, and really only usable when I really needed to do something urgent. Plus switching between the remote and local desktops was continually confusing and unreliable. And when your internet connection drops or gets throttled, the unresponsiveness can really start to drive you spare.

Finally, $10000 a year subscription is going to "save you money" replacing PCs? Only if you replace them every year........

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Citrix

Back about then I had a gig overseeing UAT for a server upgrade of an application I'd had a hand in developing years before that. The timing should make it clear this was strictly character-based stuff and they were using some sort of thin-client devices for at least some of their users. The UAT had gone ahead, the application had been cut over to the new H/W & everyone was happy. I was just about to pack up & go home when there was an urgent call to say somebody was now getting unacceptable performance.

It turned out that although it was supposed to be character based the business had bought some sort of package to GUIfy sessions. They weren't supposed to be using it but of course there's always one...

[43300]

If most of your users have the same undemanding software requirements, session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

[Doctor Syntax]

That depends on the cost of the remore service. And once you're nicely locked into that....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

Right, because a solution where you not only pay $$$ for Windows Server but where each thin client not only requires a standard CAL but also a RDS CAL, the latter which alone costs as much as a cheap entry level PC.

And then there is the thin client, many of which aren't exactly any cheaper than a full size desktop PC.

There's a reason why VDI hasn't replaced the desktop PC.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

it was always a fucking stupid idea.

just repeating the 60's/70's mainframe time sharing (Bill gates daddy paid for him to have access when he was young, so windows actually was born from this shit)

[43300]

Re: session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

If you've got Datacentre licenses for the hosts and an on-prem network, that's already going to cover most of that. Yes, the RDS CALs are additional but still a lot cheaper than individual cloudy (or on prem) VMs, overall.

Doesn't necessarily need to be a thin client, which as you say often aren't much cheaper anyway.

This sort of setup is particularly useful where you have users working on slow connections, from home or elsewhere, particularly with large files stored on the same LAN as the terminal servers - it's far less demanding on bandwidth than opening them locally would be.

Granted, VDI setups aren't always the best solution, but for a distributed workforce on a variety of connections they can be very effective - and cheaper than the main alternatives of pooled or dedicated invividual VMs. For a company with a single large office then standard desktops are normally going to be the better option - but that isn't really the target market for these dedicated cloudy VMs - they are, like terminal servers, primarily aimed at a distributed (and in many cases mobile) workforce.

Terminal servers really aren't a 'fucking stupid idea' - in suitable setups and situations they are actually very effective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

>> If you've got Datacentre licenses for the hosts and an on-prem network, that's already going to cover most of that. Yes, the RDS CALs are additional but still a lot cheaper than individual cloudy (or on prem) VMs, overall.

A Windows Server DC is what, $6k? And isn't that just for 8 CPU cores (since Windows is licensed by core count)?

What about the cost for the server (to run VDI services you need a beefy system with GPUs)?

>> Doesn't necessarily need to be a thin client, which as you say often aren't much cheaper anyway.

But what else? Do you want to give employees cell phones (shit for work ergonomics) or iPads (hardly much cheaper than a PC)?

Or do you want to use employee's own computers? What about with data loss (a VDI session running on top of a insecure system should be considered compromised)?

>> This sort of setup is particularly useful where you have users working on slow connections, from home or elsewhere, particularly with large files stored on the same LAN as the terminal servers - it's far less demanding on bandwidth than opening them locally would be.

Yes, but the very same is true for web based apps - the data is on the server. All while doing so using a lot less bandwidth than even a low-res VDI session.

>> Granted, VDI setups aren't always the best solution, but for a distributed workforce on a variety of connections they can be very effective - and cheaper than the main alternatives of pooled or dedicated invividual VMs. For a company with a single large office then standard desktops are normally going to be the better option - but that isn't really the target market for these dedicated cloudy VMs - they are, like terminal servers, primarily aimed at a distributed (and in many cases mobile) workforce.

The "mobile workforce" already works web based and has been so for a number of years, so that ship has long sailed. All while VDI has failed to achieve wide adoption, mostly because it's inferior in performance to even a low-spec desktop PC, while not delivering any of the promised cost savings. And, of course, even with VDI the high complexity and horrible management needs of Windows still remain.

>> Terminal servers really aren't a 'fucking stupid idea' - in suitable setups and situations they are actually very effective.

Terminal servers were hot shit in the '90s when computing performance was expensive, In 2023, where even the lowest-end processor from 5 years ago is fast enough for >80% of the apps most office workers are exposed to, terminal servers are pretty pointless.

Which is demonstrated by the fact that VDI couldn't achieve notable adoption over the last 30 years.

[43300]

Re: session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

You seem to be assuming that everything is 'web based' - if it is then fine, I agree that terminal servers aren't needed. But the reality is that much is stil not web based - there are standard fileservers (Sharepoint may be an alternative, but that has its own issues). There are older programs, particularly specialist databases, which still have a client program rather than being web based. There are other programs which need to be installed (i.e. they are not web based) and for speed reasons need local access to their files.

Sure, terminal servers aren't the best option in many cases - but in cases where they fit they work well, and scale up and down well too if needed. I've used them a lot, and they've worked well for the intended purposes, so this isn't theoretical. Just because they don't fit your particular use case doesn't mean that they are always a bad idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

>> You seem to be assuming that everything is 'web based' - if it is then fine, I agree that terminal servers aren't needed. But the reality is that much is stil not web based - there are standard fileservers (Sharepoint may be an alternative, but that has its own issues). There are older programs, particularly specialist databases, which still have a client program rather than being web based. There are other programs which need to be installed (i.e. they are not web based) and for speed reasons need local access to their files.

You're right that not everything is web based, and yes there are still lots of legacy programs around. But most of these legacy programs are either in the process of being replaced or already have been replaced, usually by web based successors (for example, the legacy IBM DOORS database has long been replaced by IBM DOORS NG, which is completely web based). The legacy programs are also usually either on life support or already out of support. And hanging onto such legacy apps comes with major risks so any sane business will migrate away from them anyways - and the new program will very likely be web based.

But even for those apps that aren't web based or legacy apps which for some reasons can't be replaced, the fact remains that VDI offers no real-life cost savings over a standard office desktop/laptop PC. Per user, VDIs cost as much as and in many cases even more than a regular office PC, and carry a larger management burden than local Windows installs. Which means for the average office worker who needs to work with localized apps a standalone PC or laptop remains the most economical choice in the majority of cases, and in reality also scales much better than a terminal server (adding/removing individual PCs is simple, and doesn't require to maintain expensive server capacity just to cope with high demand phases)..

I'm not saying there is no situation where terminal servers can be useful, because there certainly are cases where VDIs can make sense. Such as where the use of local PCs is unfeasible (for example for security/tampering/damage reasons). There is also a new trend to replace desktop workstations with server-based workstations, however these are normally local solutions utilizing fast networks between thin clients and workstation (i.e., no remote access or access via internet).

In any case, these are niche cases. For the majority of business users, though, terminal servers have proven to be a complete failure. And the main reason for that aren't even technical (the general idea of terminal servers still has its merits), it's simply the licensing costs and complexity which killed (Windows) terminal servers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: session-based terminal servers are by far the most cost-effective remote desktop solution.

look we realise your job relies on selling this shit so you act like a rabid PR twat.

But honestly It's a complete fucking shit idea, already years past it's fucking sell by date.

[ColinPa]

Why not go all the way?

The next step will be a screen, keyboard and almost nothing else. A bit like the green screens we had 40 years ago.

[thondwe]

Re: Why not go all the way?

Except the cost of buying, licensing, supporting and running that "thin client" is as much as running a PC? We've been around this loop so many times now - x-windows, Citrix, etc, etc.

Even Chromebooks - light and cheap - aren't cheap and have enough power to run a Linux/Windows VM now?!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Why not go all the way?

A Raspberry Pi would have more than enough power to run the equivalent of a Chromebook and/or to run the usual suite of Linux office applications - LibreOffice or whatever (there are choices). I'm not saying you'd necessarily put one in your Chromebook equivalent but it's not a tough job for an ARM processor. But why would you want a Windows VM in your thin client?

[RegGuy1]

Re: Why not go all the way?

Indeed. Build a Kubernetes cluster out of several Pis, add a JBOD. and you're done. And best of all you run Linux with Open/Libre Office and you're quids in.

There was a reason M$ fought tooth and nail to prevent ODT becoming the default document standard.

[Pascal Monett]

"meaning fewer devices need to be summoned into existence"

Sorry ?

This scheme is supposed to get "personal" PCs into the business place and Borkzilla thinks that that means fewer PCs ?

Hey Nadella, you do realize that, since COVID, everybody who's actually going to use a personal computer has one now ? And you want people to buy your handwaving argument that cloud PCs are less expensive ?

Do you really think nobody else is writing or reading about the green cost of datacenters and Internet usage in general ?

Pull the other one, it has bells on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "meaning fewer devices need to be summoned into existence"

I'm sure that Nadella along with the CEO's of Intel and AMD will be off playing golf together and come up with a new scheme to force Windoze users to buy a new PC just to run a future update of W10 and W11. Those devices will be hellishly expensive and none of the existing work arounds will work. This time it will be locked down so hard that no one outside the NSA could root the devices.

You gotta keep them Wall St types happy with ever increasing revenues.

I got off the WINTel bandwagon almost a decade ago. My two small sized AMD servers run Linux and those will be retired when an M2/M3 Mac Mini can also run Linux well enough to run a website or three.

As for moving everything into the MS Cloud... Just wait for the pain when the JCB/Backhoe digger rips up your network cable. Your staff will be doing SFA until you send them home to work.

Personally, I would not trust MS with even telling me the correct time of day.

[Doctor Syntax]

Your staff will be doing SFA until you send them home to work.

Of course it might be a fleet of JCBs we've not been told about but Microsoft seem to be doing the job quite nicely and sending them home to work won't help.

[Roland6]

Re: "meaning fewer devices need to be summoned into existence"

> Nadella along with the CEO's of Intel and AMD will be off playing golf together and come up with a new scheme..

I suspect both Intel and AMD do not want MS to downgrade client requirements as that really favours ARM…

[sten2012]

Re: "meaning fewer devices need to be summoned into existence"

> Personally, I would not trust MS with even telling me the correct time of day.

Funny you mention this. I ran into this today. Teams running on my Windows (it's work, I have no say) told me a received a message 3 minutes in the future of the current time that Windows, synced to Microsoft NTP servers, told me it was.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "meaning fewer devices need to be summoned into existence"

Nadella know this. In fact, it's the root of his problem. If nobody's buying PCs they're not buying Windows licences. If they're not buying Windows licences because they've got them the only option to keep the money coming in is to rent them another licence that they don't need.

[Matt_payne666]

Massivly on the fence with this but see a use so well prepared for all the downvotes to come pouring in...

This wont work for everyone and I expect it would run alongside traditional thick versions of windows, but its a choice...

Google has shown the chromebook has legs, this is just a Redmondised version.

Azure and AWS, etc shows that virtualising and cloud hosting server hardware is viable.

Everything is Subscription, so instead of my yearly OVS i pay a different subscription.

Fixed broadband speeds are going up and up, mobile broadband is getting cheaper,

Newer mobile hardware will have embedded broadband.

It has the possibility of extending hardware lifecycles, but to be honest, I think the 3yr cycle has long gone. A 4th Gen core processor with even a SATA SSD is more than capable of most general purpose office desktop/laptop tasks.

connecting over a VPN to a secured cloud based client will help with both physical security and DLP...

Problem with ol computers, after 7 years they are way out of warranty and more prone to hardware issues... but with a virtualised environment, issue another thin client and away they go - minimal downtime.

there will be the odd dead spot for mobile users, but this is the case with phones and chromebooks too...

Environmental, yes if I dont replace all my machines every x years thats less machines being made and less being recycled, as for power... more efficient use of centralised processing could offset the cost of connecting and idle client hardware, but i think energy savings will be minimal just as mentioned previously the point of emission has been shifted to someone else.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Google has shown the chromebook has legs, this is just a Redmondised version.

No, it's not. It's pretty much the complete opposite. ChromeOS is a locked-down OS to run a browser to work with web apps, which fits into Google's MDM and can easily be locked down.

What Microsoft offers is a full size Windows desktop which runs on Azure and where users are login in remotely. It's the same Windows that is complex to manage and tie down, just running on someone else's computer and with a monthly ransom attached.

>> It has the possibility of extending hardware lifecycles, but to be honest, I think the 3yr cycle has long gone. A 4th Gen core processor with even a SATA SSD is more than capable of most general purpose office desktop/laptop tasks.

The same computer is also good enough to run most apps locally and without the ransom.

Also, may I remind you that it was Microsoft which created tons of e-waste by artificially blocking Windows 11 on all but the latest PCs?

[hammarbtyp]

Follow the money

So buy a perpetual license and run your pc for 5-10 years (or longer) or go to the cloud and pay MS monthly for basically the same thing

Cannot for the life of me why MS would like this model

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Follow the money

Or give MS the big middle finger and use software that does not mean justifying the expense to beancounters.

These days, most of us can get by without Office 360/350/300/200/whatever... Libre office does it all at zero cost and is always available even if I am in a deep tunnel

Ok, there are a few bits not up to par with Office. Just have one paid for workstation and job done.

I basically refuse to use any software that needs a monthly subscription. I do use a couple of services that have annual subs but I'm talking about $20-$30 per year. That is hardly going to break the bank.

Yes, I know that I pay a subscription for my phone and broadband services. With these, I am free to move to another supplier. With Windows and Office I'm locked in.

[original_rwg]

Their hardware

M$BOT: I see you're trying to install Firefox. Have you tried Edge?

[StrangerHereMyself]

Cloud is dying

I heard stories from the US that businesses are pulling back from Cloud deployments. It costs too much money and leads to enormous vendor lock-in.

Costs can also easily spiral out of control if you press the wrong button or upload faulty code.

[Plest]

Re: Cloud is dying

Cloud is just another resource, the problem was that the PHBs were sold it as the panacea to all problems, turns out that it's not the miracle it was promised to be. Anything can be overly expensive if you piss up the project and overpay a bunch of numpties or a service provider, whod' a thunk it eh?

Cloud has its place and on-prem has its, the challeneg is now for each company to find a way to build a cost-effective hybrid IT infrastructure. Most businesses already utterly hate their IT depts as horrendous financial black holes, this is not getting any easier despite all the promises from the cloud providers to solve all our problems!

[Mostly Irrelevant]

They're trying to shift everyone to a remote desktop-only environment so they can charge everyone a monthly fee in perpetuity. My office is working to get everyone set up in the opposite direction right now to avoid the latency and downtime (more complication ALWAYS means more downtime).

[Korev]

Just below this article's headline:

Where are we now - Microsoft 363? Cloud suite hit with yet another outage

[Anonymous Coward]

30 years or 800 years.....M$ supplies 5 minutes!!!!!

Quote: "...Microsoft's concerns for sustainability..."

Yup...I know it's not "sustainability"....more like "longevity".......................................

....................but why can't I read or edit my M$ Word documents from 1990 using M$ software today?

The British Library had a marvellous exhibition showing ORIGINAL Magna Carta documents which are 800 years old..................

.....................and M$ can't support my documents for 30 years!!!!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: 30 years or 800 years.....M$ supplies 5 minutes!!!!!

"but why can't I read or edit my M$ Word documents from 1990 using M$ software today?"

I thought it worked the other way round until MS got their arm twisted to sort of standardise the format. If you had Word x you couldn't read a .doc written with Word X+1 so you had to buy Word X + 1just to open documents someone else sent to you. But Word X + 1 had to be able to (usually) read a .doc written by Word X. Not even MS could have got away without that. I did come across one .doc with macros that was absolutely version specific and would simply hang the entire box that ran any other version.

[VicMortimer]

Re: 30 years or 800 years.....M$ supplies 5 minutes!!!!!

Nope, it's the old formats.

Some years ago, they broke Word's ability to read its own old formats. Unless they've since fixed it, in order to open an old Word document you have to first convert it with LibreOffice - at which point, you don't really need Word any more anyway.

I'm not really sure exactly where it broke, but early '90s files is probably about right. And don't forget nobody put .doc on the end of Mac files back then, file identification was based on the type/creator codes, which really was a better solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloud ...

... is just somebody else's server.

This has loads of privacy implications along with the risk that the service becomes unavailable when you stop paying...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cloud ...

Our shop is terrified of using any cloud specific tech, we simply have huge numbers of VM instances running. We fear vendor lockin so we're basically paying over the odds for a huge VirtualBox setup!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cloud ...

Except you're almost certainly saving money over using somebody else's server.

And saving yourselves from vendor lockin is an incredible value, even if you are paying more.

You're doing it right-ish. Even better would be to take advantage of all that distributed computing power on everybody's desktop instead of using them as dumb terminals.

[fidodogbreath]

Our IT provisioned one of these for me to try out because "we think it will work really well for your use case."

So I load the thing and (as expected) it's completely locked down. I pointed out that since I work in the development team, I'd have to open an IT ticket to install every new software build. They promptly ended the experiment.

As someone else noted above, I don't get WTF problem cloud PCs solve, since you still need a physical PC (with all of its attendant risks, hardware failures, and maintenance) to get to the cloud PC.

(Edited to clarify that the cloud PC was just a trial)

[captain veg]

back to square 1

As someone who witnessed first hand how PCs took off in business entirely because they didn't rely on anyone else's say so, this amuses me greatly.

-A.

[BrownishMonstr]

It makes sense

MS are moving to the cloud business, so that's where they want to orientate their future products.

XBOX now has cloud gaming, although I personally found it to be a bit subpar. They also have dev boxes in the cloud for software development.

This probably works for allowing remote workers to use better hardware without it being physically present.

This won't work in all use-cases, and I don't blame MS for trying. Sometimes you have to risk failure to try new things.

[Plest]

Heaven's preserve us

I live in the UK, we only produce around 2% of the carbon emissions worldwide. If you want bang on about the green bullshit, got to places like Russia and China we're they seriously don't give a crap and pump out tons of CO2. Oh wait you can't due to various legalities and sanctions so you decide to have a pop at US and European countries ( despite Brexit we're still physically part of Europe! ).

We haven't even got onto why storing all your company data out in the big wide internet cloud stuff is not the best idea.

[CommonBloke]

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe

Companies realize that going green means making better use of computing power, thus actually optimizing their code instead of shrugging while spouting "Memory/Storage/Processing is cheap"

[Miko]

Must mean the businesses are no longer replacing their PCs as frequently as they "should", so time to push a subscription model to combat this.

[Alan W. Rateliff, II]

Makes sense with ESG filings

With the SEC heading into requiring ESG as part of annual filings, it makes sense that Microsoft would take this stance as companies are held to account for their customers' environmental and sustainability portion.