Recently Microsoft released the link 365 which is basically a thin client for Azure. You can’t run anything locally nor is there any local files. It literally just connects you to a desktop elsewhere.

Do you think this is what Windows 12 might look like? I feel like this idea is not practical for average consumers. Maybe they will make something that’s like Chrome OS?

  • *dust.sys@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    They’ll make whatever sells subscriptions at this point.

    Don’t buy, only subscribe. From media to software and now to hardware and OS. No more license keys you can reuse, no more owning what you pay for, just live services and ever-rising subscription costs that can change at any time for any reason and neuters your ability to take legal action against them while they do it.

    Silence critics, control available options, capture profit - that’s the name of the game. They’ll sell this to businesses as ‘take your PC anywhere’ like you couldn’t already do that and then they have a hunk of plastic and silicon they need to pay out the nose for until they finally give it up. And they’ll have to give it up because it literally can’t run anything else on the available hardware. I’m sure folks will hack it apart but like, what’s the point?

  • Riskable@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    Was it the future of Windows when they did this the last bunch of times? The Wyse Winterm came out in 1993. It was a huge failure then and every iteration of the same same thing since has also failed.

    What makes this version different? Branding? The fact that some of the OS/software doesn’t boot over the network? That you have to have a working Internet connection and not just a working local network and boot server (LOL)?

    No business wants this. No consumer wants this. There is no “added value” in this device. It literally only runs software made by Microsoft and even then, only software that runs through Azure.

    What office worker literally only needs Office 365? I mean, you can get away with a whole lot just in the browser but if you’re going to do that why bother with this device? Just use ChromeOS stuff (and never be locked in to Microsoft’s stuff).

    • cron@feddit.org
      1·
      23 days ago

      Why do you say that no business wants this? Obviously, thin clients have been a thing for decades now. This is just another thin client, nothing more.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
        1·
        23 days ago

        Thin clients have been failing to sell and being cursed by entire verticals, from individual contributors to top management any time they find an exception for that failure since the 1990s.

        No thin client ever saw repeat customers since dump terminals went away. But yeah, if your point is that they exist and have curstomers, that’s true.

  • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    Everything Microsoft has been doing for years now is aligned in the direction of jamming as many subscription services down our throat as they can manage, whether we want them or not. They are not alone in this by any stretch. Cloud based hardware definitely fits neatly into the current tech zeitgeist.

  • esc27@lemmy.world
    1·
    22 days ago

    It is not even a thin client for Azure. It is a physical front end for one specific, Azure based VM product. It doesn’t even support AVD which would have made it interesting for lab and classroom setups and given it a bit more utility.

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    22 days ago

    Have fun trying to flash another os when the servers shut down.