Back in 2008-2009 I shared this crazy idea with my peers that Microsoft was moving towards an “always connected” OS that would probably be hosted on their servers, because you can make more money charging someone for access to their data than charging them once for their OS.
they laughed it off and told me that nobody would fall for that.
…who’s laughing now assholes?
Google calls it a Chromebox.
This is horrifying in that it signals a concerted push towards getting consumers on cloud computing.
But in terms of self hosting your own compute these actually look great, especially if they’re subsidized to get you into a subscription fee. As long as we can break into the bootloader and run Linux on these, they look to be very capable and efficient small compute boxes. 2.5Gbps Ethernet ports, DDR5 memory, and Intel N series processors?
Self hosters and homelabbers will be licking their lips.
I’m really worried about this, I don’t think it’ll become a universal standard by all means but I can see Microslop forcing this onto people as a kinda next step from all the hardware limitation bs.
They would finally have total control over your OS.
They’ve been pushing the thin client for years and it’s never taken off. You and I wouldn’t be the target for this machine and neither would gamers or content creators. This is for business or grandparents.
gamers or content creators
I can totally see them targeting those demographics as well, cloud gaming has been kinda popular in the last few years. Content creators could be sucked in with promises of getting pro performance without the price, possibly bundled with creative software.
They need to lower the price of the hosted desktops then, it’s still way more cost effective over time to buy a laptop/desktop for a 3 years cycle than to rent a monthly virtual desktop. The only business that wants it are opex obsessives that hate any capex.
Self-hosters will be all over these
It’s never taken off because of relatively inexpensive and abundant hardware. But these will be attractive to people who need something now and want something inexpensive.
Grandparents are the immediate target but eventually if they force the hardware supply shortages soon some people will need something.
Imagine students with low budget.
The next 5 years are going to be really interesting.
It must be noted that Big Tech is currently engaged in artificially forcing hardware prices upward, and that’s going on while Microsoft continues their generations-long quest to deprecate old hardware by forcing new versions of their OS out of compatibility with it.
There are so many ways they’re actively screwing their customers by making things tangibly worse, and then conveniently showing up to “help” by selling us more of their shit.
I would be surprised if this WASN’T a conspiracy among all the billionaires in their secret clubs.
They are all such cunts!
What in the name is the flying spaghetti monster is Windows 365? An even less private version of windows that won’t work is you don’t have internet?
The OS is fully running on the cloud. You will be given a VM. Everything stays there. You may have to take permission to download a file from the VM onto your local device. You don’t get any choice about telemetry.
It is a Thinnet client. They have been around for at least 26 years.
Remember when you used to host your own citrix? Pepperidge Farm remembers
Walk into any office or business that runs off the cloud or a local server and they will likely have dozens… I mean dozens of these lying around.
I know the gaming community looks at these like a vampire looks at a rosary but it isn’t new tech or even a new concept.
Back 25 years ago the company I worked for was looking into changing the computers for thin clients, then powered by JAVA, aaand of course dynamic workplaces that gets reinvented every seven years or so.
In the end they decided not to because people wanted to feel that they had their desk with their computer and not a floating office limbo as daily reminder that they are replaceable labour.
But most of all, their stationary computer had a CD ROM so they could listen to their own music while working and the thin clients couldn’t even customise your wallpaper.
You aren’t wrong. But what you just described is exactly why most companies choose thin clients.
No customization, no unauthorized software installs, no distractions for staff and they will just run forever without major updates. All IT has to do is maintain a server or offsite cloud environment.
Would I personally want one… no. But I can see this as an alternative to non techie people who just need a cheap computer for email, web browsing and the occasional word document.
And when your Internet goes down, you can’t even work locally.
Genius!
I’m sure CoPilot in the cloud already took that into account though and goes off on all sorts of tangents with the user disconnected.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Don’t you guys have internet?”
yes but how often does your internet go down? I agree with the sentiment and I hate this but we should think about this from an average user perspective when we make our argument. Internet doesnt go down, I’ve had more electricity outages than internet outages in the past 5 years. if you live in a city its a rare thing.
The reason why people shouldnt want this in my opinion is not because its day to day worse but because its worse long term. These companies will offer it at a low price to entice you then yank the rug out from under you. You will never be safe with an option like this because at any time it can be taken from you and one day there might not be an alternative market of computers to purchase.
yes but how often does your internet go down?
I have a 1Gb connection. I work in software development. I live in a nice neighbourhood. My internet goes down all the time.
I live in a major city that’s been carved up by the local monopolists like a turkey, and none of them have even installed coverage in all the areas they’ve claimed and which their “competitors” won’t touch. Some people just can’t have a good connection because of their address.
Im sorry to hear that. Maybe this is a product aimed at 1st world countries. Expected downtime for 1st world countries is normally under an hour a year and I think people can live with that.
If your internet is shit you do not need to buy this.
yes but how often does your internet go down?
About once a month. Not for very long, but it is an annoyance. Xfinity usually does maintenance between 1am and 2am, and the Internet will be out for about 30 minutes to an hour. About once a year it goes down for at least half a day.
My OS hasn’t gone down at all in 20 years. I don’t want that to change. If an OS stops working for an hour once a month for maintenance, it’s a piece of refried shit.
“Now updating, please wait!”
I mean, technically not “down” but not exactly usable either. 😉
im sorry your ISP is dogshit. I dont think anyone in your area will want to buy this product.
That’s the problem. Comcast is famous in the US for being utter dogshit. So is ATT. And that’s pretty much our choices.
I think your opening statement is getting you down votes.
This tech isn’t aimed at consumers, it is for business users where the business has decided to deploy remote windows servers for their employees.
I wouldn’t want one of these as a daily home pc.
I understand and expect down votes. I am on the same wavelength as most people here. I am just trying to offer some commentary that isnt the same 100x repeated X bad perspective.
I actually asked for something exactly like this at my work a few years ago. I was like why the fuck are we buying 1000 machines when we can run all these desks as VMs off our servers. We didnt end up doing it but I still think its a decent idea for business.
For consumers its a very good value proposition but a horrible trap.
If thats happening you got bigger problems
It’s especially in those situations (like with climate warming, increasing political unrest and top-down control) that you want a working system. And also that connectivity is one of the first things to go down.
You realise that windows already does this and you can still work without internet. The way the sign in tokens works does not require 100% internet connection.
I hate the idea of a cloud OS but I also dont care about society collapsing as an argument.
What happens if the local ISP/electrical/whatever decides there need for maintenance?
Not every company can afford redundant high speed internet.Ok your internet goes down for a few hours and life moves on. Its not the end of the world.
Didnt know a company that relies on the internet can just move on lmao.
That could some cost their job. But hey, just move on (งツ)ว
8 days ago when Cloudflare bunked up my ISP.
Congratulations. My home internet was down the whole day yesterday. My power goes out at least once or twice per month due to the current nature of the power line structure. I live in Europe.
Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
I live in (Eastern) Europe.
This product is aimed at people who live in places with reliable infra. (no offense intended)
Name a single country with no power outages
You do realise power outages affect regular PC users and cloud PC users all the same.
And yet, most consumers use laptops with build in batteries. A power outage doesn’t stop them dead most of the time. It will for Windows 365 users. You’re doing an awful lot of sugar coating for someone that claims to be against this product.
I can’t work on a laptop. Might as well just use a shitty tablet instead. I’ll use a desktop PC, thank you very much.
Also, in the last 20 years I have experienced 2 power outages. One took about 3 hours to fix, which was spooky but also very cool, the other was in January this year and lasted for about 30 minutes. It’s really not a problem.
The dodgy WiFi gear from my fiber provider requires a hard re-set at least once a week. I had to do that just today.
I have no idea how you put up with that. I would not accept that from any ISP router. If my ISP router has any issue I can ship it back for free and receive a brand new one a few days later. There should also be options for bringing your own router.
Fiber gear is a little different and I’d rather deal with this than the bullshit data caps and price hike games with Comcast. 😉
Ah yes, it’s around the time for thin clients of this cycle.
Buy all the ram, inflating prices. Sell thin clients and access to computing power/ram. What a scam.
You’ll own nothing and be happy.
It’s funny because we switched from thin clients to fat clients some 30-40 years back.
About 15 years ago we started transitioning from on-site computing to cloud. Now we’re reversing the trend under the guise of “edge computing”.
I’m sure we did a cycle of network booting thin clients and windows terminal services about 10 or 15 years ago. 🤔
I might have skipped that cycle. Local always.
If you skipped the cycle of VDI, consider yourself lucky lol
Not if you’re an enterprise. I worked at a company where 80% of our workers (so over 2000) were on thin clients, even remotely. We could manage and upgrade the entire fleet easily from a single point. Ran the servers in house but were able to switch a portion to the cloud if we needed. We were doing that 20+ years ago.
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Goodbye local Windows, you mean. Except I said goodbye two years ago and never looked back or missed it. Windows does nothing I need, and does it poorly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still petty enough to hope this effort is a miserable failure, but ultimately I don’t care all that much.
I’m still petty enough to hope this effort is a miserable failure
I hope this is effort is a miserable failure … because if it catches on, it could spell the end of desktop PCs in general as a consumer product.
Desktops will always exist, because you need the local processing power (and the cooling to support it) for certain professional workloads. But if everyday computing and even gaming becomes mostly done on thin clients fully dependent on internet servers, then desktops will become more and more of a niche, professional product. Which means they’ll become more expensive and harder to get. Replacement parts will become more expensive and harder to get. A desktop PC will be an expensive industrial machine, hard to justify the upfront price of for an average consumer. (Especially when a cheap thin client with a “cheap” monthly subscription can do essentially all the same things.)
It may also slow the adoption of open-source software because these thin clients are likely to be locked down and not able to install any other software without putting up a fight, if it ends up being possible at all. And if most people get used to the paradigm of renting their computing power from the cloud, they’ll be resistant to change that and go back to locally run software on their local machine that they then have to buy because their old thin client hardware can barely run anything, even if you do manage to install other software on it. (Imagine how hard it will be to convince someone to install Linux instead of using Windows if the first step of installing Linux is that they have to replace all their hardware with much bigger and more expensive hardware…)
(Especially when a cheap thin client with a “cheap” monthly subscription can do essentially all the same things.)
Right now, one year of Microsoft 365 costs a full hundred dollars… and there is still a strong desktop market.
If you’re right that the tech industry is willing to price consumers out of personal computers - and it looks like they are - I can only imagine what will happen to those subscription prices.
If you think about it: It is very wasteful for all of us to have local computation power at home. So many wasted resources as most people use their PCs only the fraction of the time. Same can be said for cars and many other appliances.
Maybe the solution are shared cloud resources, but obviously not owned by those big corporations, but owned by the people on a local, regional, national level?
now that you say this, it is also so wasteful for all of us to leave our homes empty while we go to work! we need to illegalize homeownership, and we need to require all landlords to host multiple families in their properties! It’s not only the empty space, the empty beds and toilet, but also the fridges that keep consuming power, even though nobody is actively using them!
If you think about it, it is very wasteful for you to have that chocolate bar in your food pantry. So many wasted calories as most bodies can only burn a fraction of them before converting the rest into fat. Same can be said for pasta and many other foods. We even spend a full third of our lives asleep, consuming even less calories! Incredibly inefficient!
Maybe the solution is aerosolized calories that can be sprayed via plane over vast regions of the country instead of food so that calories are owned by the people on a local, regional, or national level?
And it isn’t wasteful to be forced to replace perfectly good hardware and filling landfills with it because fucking companies want to own your data, your money and your life? People like you are the reason these assholes feel empowered to push this crap.
Relax my fellow human.
Neither did I imply that people should be forced to throw away their hardware, nor did I say that no one should own anything or completely surrender to any corporate overlords (actually I said the opposite).
All I meant is that sharing resources sometimes makes sense. When I see people buy very expensive and powerful machines for browsing the internet and regular office work all I can think is “what a waste”, blind consumerism. I think we can do better. What “better” is, I’m not certain either.
Network down, can’t use Computer. Government Shit, can’t use computer. Cloud Computing companies shit? Can’t use computer. I want to be able to use it whenever wherever without trusting the whole Chain to hold.
Goodbye local Windows with Linux having a 3% market share means entirely different market & society too, regardless of our Linux desktops that can’t get new parts.
I’ll just point out that 3% market share is still bigger than the entire market when started building PCs. And that’s assuming they can make this attractive to anyone. Single point of failure for your entire company? Single supplier who has you over a barrel when they want to raise prices? Who in their right mind would go for that.
We’ll see. The fact that it’s on offer doesn’t mean people will bite. I’ve seen the industry try so much stupid shit that people said no to. Free computer full of ads? No. Scan cat? No. Packing LEDs into things that don’t need to light up or be hotter? Well… they got us there.
Free computer full of ads? No.
people are paying for that nowadays. they call them smartphones. even the operating system and base apps show ads.
Yes, good points, but what can make financial sense doesn’t need to make economical sense.
Perhaps in such events we can transition to smaller, maybe RISK-V boards with components from various manufacturers.
But yes, I too keep hoping consumers would speak up & stop bs practices. Then again, if we kill a consumer industry you can’t just bring it back in a year, and megacorps can weather in the meantime by offering consumers short-term incentives if they make the switch. It’s how all the personal data collection by private corps started, why eg Google had free services (and no ads) & yet was already being valued in the billions.
Assuming the bootloader is not super locked down or even nonexistent, think Wyse thin client levels of locked down.
I look forward to thrifting one in a few years, then installing Linux on it.
You can be sure that planned obsolescence can be done much easier on these kind of hardware. One tweak from the backend and “oops, looks like Microslop 365 OS can’t run your thin client”
Network booting from the WAN sounds like a hellscape
not, it’s booting from small storage, then it uses remote desktop
…good
I hope that future happens, but I’m scared.
Not the Dell one, not worth your time or money - only has Intel N-series processor. But the ASUS one may have better internals.
It’s also not worth my time or money to track down old, beat-up Chromebooks and put Linux on them, and yet here we are.
I’m weird, so the things I find fun are weird.
Someone will install Linux on them and use them as a cheap barebones computer. I’m sure with a bit of jiggery-pokery they can be repurposed to something useful.
I think they are just Intel N-series mini PCs, which is what I already use with Linux.
You say that based on 30-40 years of companies not really knowing what they were doing, but we live in a world where hardware manufacturers ABSOLUTELY know how to make nearly unhackable, locked down hardware. Smartphones are already like this - if the manufacturer decides you don’t get to install a custom OS, unless you’re lucky enough for there to be an exploit, you don’t get to. Same goes for game consoles. That knowledge can easily be applied to these to make these, if not completely unhackable, so unstable and inconvenient as to be almost the same.
We are absolutely entering this nightmare phase.
Buy some 3D-printed kit to offline-overwrite a memory chip. We did this with consoles too back then, the pain just isn’t big enough yet.
I don’t know, I don’t share your pessimism. In my personal experience, most hardware isn’t unhackable. Apart from iPhone / iPad (where hardware and software are non-standard, and also made by the same vendor) I struggle to find any examples.
I have installed Linux many times on Chromebooks, where there is some BIOS module that checks for OS “authenticity”, but that can be disabled. I have flashed ROMs on android devices many times too. It’s sometimes a bit inconvenient, but nothing remotely close to impossible.
That BIOS feature can be disabled… now. But there’s nothing keeping a manufacturer from just not providing that functionality, and requiring only signed firmware updates. Now the machine is more or less locked down.
The fact it can be disabled now is a convenience feature based on historical availability, but that’s absolutely no guarantee it will continue to be there in the future.
These definitely could be pretty solid headless Linux serverboxes for microservices.
Probably at least as powerful as a raspberry pi
Far more, in fact.
Unless the pc is free, why the fuck would anyone use it?
Because an 8GB RAM stick costs $9,000 and hard drives literally can’t be had at any price, but this shitty thin client thing is only $49.95 + $10/month subscription. ($25 per month if you want it with
nofewer intrusive ads.)Coming soon, to a dystopian AI future near you.
Enough capital can reshape even a somewhat free market into a non-free one - if we, the demand, have basically no other choice (except revolt, but we forgot/got that erased from our consciousness) we usually just try to survive.
The mythos about how things are getting better for each generation of humans is false.
I can imagine something similar to this concept would be great for enterprise environments. I imagine an employee at home using a basic thin client and connecting to a “mainframe” of a server that exists on premises and is running an individual VM or whatever for each employee’s thin client. Which I think is basically already a thing. But for a home PC, with that VM being run the OS manufacturer’s servers? No, I don’t think anybody should want to pay for that.
God. I can’t believe it. I’ve lived long enough to see the return of the dumb terminal. FFS.
You just described Citrix whole business model
This isn’t uncommon, even I have that option at work. None of this is new tech.
It’s just a long existing tech now used to close down on freedom & paywall all the things.
Lots of MSPs have already been doing / selling this exact thing for years.
Given all the attempts at eroding tech freedom, this might end up being future computing, but the cloud is state-controlled.
Penny-pinching companies love to give the absolute bare minimum equipment to their employees
I’m not using it even if someone is paying me (unless someone hacks the firmware, but that’s a different story)
After 20 years when your CPUs, RAMs, and at least SSDs don’t work anymore, and the PC supply never came back - how are you going to show/trick the government that you are a patriot that uses & supports one of the three big USA private AIs?
At that point the government can suck the lead out of my dick
