Ah yes, it’s around the time for thin clients of this cycle.
Asus and Dell announce new mini PCs for Windows 365 | Goodbye local OS
Submitted 3 weeks ago by xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-and-Dell-announce-new-mini-PCs-for-Windows-365.1236853.0.html
Comments
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 3 weeks ago
It’s funny because we switched from thin clients to fat clients some 30-40 years back.
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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”.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Except at the company I work for. We switched from thin clients to laptops last year.
jve@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You’ll own nothing and be happy.
wendigolibre@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Buy all the ram, inflating prices. Sell thin clients and access to computing power/ram. What a scam.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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?
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 3 weeks ago
“Don’t you guys have internet?”
Fizz@lemmy.nz 3 weeks ago
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.
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
What happens if the local ISP/electrical/whatever decides there need for maintenance?
Not every company can afford redundant high speed internet.
pycorax@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Considering this is very clearly targeted enterprise, there’s probably some sector of a company that works on data that’s only in the cloud anyways. They’re likely the ones asking for this. I highly doubt this would become a norm across the enterprise.
humancrayon@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
PangurBan@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m so sick of Microsoft I actually installed Fedora KDE Plasma.
Genuinely, it’s nicer than windows lol
The occasional forum crawling is a bit annoying, but overall it works really well, has more features and looks slick.
Ain’t ever going back.
Sturgist@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
The occasional forum crawling is a bit annoying
I was on windows since 3.1, dual booted various distros of Linux the past 15 years, and removed windows from my computers over a year ago.
I would have to crawl forums to find fixes for stupid shit in windows once in awhile, less than Linux 15 years ago, but more than Linux in the lead up to getting rid of it. The thing that really pissed me off was the most egregious issues with win10/11 that id be looking for solutions to would always be changed back on the next update.PangurBan@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Even Steam works perfectly fine.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The only games I can’t play are games that install rootkits that I don’t want anyway. Now I don’t have to explain to people that I don’t want malware on my PC and can just say “Ah, shucks, can’t play, Linux” 10/10 recommend.
Zink@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Excellent! It’s hard to believe how much easier the Linux experience can be than Windows. Take your PC and boot Linux Mint from a thumb drive. If you like it, it can be installed in like 5 clicks. (assuming you already prepped the machine, backed up, etc. I dual booted at first but that only lasted about 2 weeks before I wiped windows)
I have personally since moved to Debian KDE Plasma. It’s a target platform at work, and it’s more of a server machine at home. Plus doing a few more things via CLI or via finding old forum posts or documentation is fine by me.
I might try Garuda on the new PC we’ve been putting together, though. It looks like a well polished gaming-focused OS that is also Arch-based to get me into that whole family of distros. (because Valve went that way of course, and in the future I’ll always want a PC that can seamlessly run SteamVR. Plus computers are fun.)
bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Garuda is a great and very polished Arch distro. The bling in their riced themes is not so great for old machines, but a recent one has no issue. The documentation and community is also pretty good. Their dotfiles and choice of terminal tools were also great.
theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Plasma is great, I’m loving Kubuntu.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
monkeyslikebananas2@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
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.
CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They’ve been pushing the thin client for years
I think it’s been decades at this point, and I hope it never takes off.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Self-hosters will be all over these
jabjoe@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
They did since it was online. It’s closed and online, the OS “owner” are the only true admin. If it’s closed and online, your “commands” are just “suggestions” compared to theirs.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Especially for businesses. At work you’ll have no choice but to use something like this.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Why do you care? If you are using microsoft now it’s already a bad idea.
I don’t use Microsoft so I don’t really care what kind of crap they do.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Why do you care?
I don’t know. Because I care for the industry I guess…
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I look forward to thrifting one in a few years, then installing Linux on it.
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 3 weeks ago
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”
Archer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Network booting from the WAN sounds like a hellscape
Willoughby@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
….good
kurmudgeon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not the Dell one, not worth your time or money - only has Intel N-series processor. But the ASUS one may have better internals.
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
I hope that future happens, but I’m scared.
Railcar8095@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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?
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 3 weeks ago
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.
XLE@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Am I interpreting this wrong, or do the specs look like absolute crap? I would expect a thin client would need hardware this good:
2 vCPU
4 GB RAM
64 GB Storage
toiletobserver@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Unless the pc is free, why the fuck would anyone use it?
OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
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.)SatyrSack@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
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.
socphoenix@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You just described Citrix whole business model
OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
God. I can’t believe it. I’ve lived long enough to see the return of the dumb terminal. FFS.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
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.
Romkslrqusz@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Lots of MSPs have already been doing / selling this exact thing for years.
gratux@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Penny-pinching companies love to give the absolute bare minimum equipment to their employees
DFX4509B@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
Given all the attempts at eroding tech freedom, this might end up being future computing, but the cloud is state-controlled.
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 3 weeks ago
I’m not using it even if someone is paying me (unless someone hacks the firmware, but that’s a different story)
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
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?
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
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.
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Our best hope is that companies outside the US stop buying Microsoft. People will need to produce computers for them. Then we in the US can import them and run Linux.
terrific@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
These definitely could be pretty solid headless Linux serverboxes for microservices.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
terrific@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Buy some 3D-printed kit to offline-overwrite a memory chip. We did this with consoles too, the pain just isn’t big enough yet.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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?
IWW4@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It is a Thinnet client. They have been around for at least 26 years.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is horrifying in that it signals a concerted push towards getting consumers on cloud computing.
But in terms of self hosting your own computer 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 box. Self hosters and homelabbers will be licking their lips.
orioler25@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I feel bad for the poor bastards that will certainly have these forced on them at the office or at school.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Back in the late 80’s we were calling “diskless” computers “dickless” computers. It was a different time, but the message is still correct.
Hozerkiller@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
So a thin client?
RalfWausE@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Fucking terminals. These are NOT PCs, this are TERMINALS! 1!!
DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If the pc has specs to run something from the cloud it has specs to run a local os.
Surp@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Fuck you MS
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You will own nothing and you will be happy!
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
yeah Im so glad I finally went to linux for my personal computing. Really should have done it about a decade earlier.
daikiki@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s like a Chromebook, but for Windows. Only it doesn’t run Windows. Please buy our garbage.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Obviously these are going to be used for corporate or organizational settings, as it what was then with the so-called Network Computer thin clients which Oracle then tried promoting.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Unlike Dell, Asus did mention a few more details - the system will pack DDR5 memory, HDMI, USB-A, USB-C, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and 2.5G Ethernet. Exact details regarding the USB and HDMI port were not offered, however.
Isn’t the amount of memory kind of a tiny bit more important than which generation it is?
heiligerbimbam@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
lol. Nope.
Ghostie@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Asus and Dell announce their own Mac Minis but this time with blackjack and hookers.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I see this going nowhere
For a few hundred bucks I have a mini PC with which I can do anything I want
This thing, even at half price, would only allow office365, with monthly payments.
Who the fuck would want that and not just spend a few bucks more and have an actual computer?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Businesses will adore this. I can guarantee a lot of us will be forced to use these at work, like Teams and CoPilot.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
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…)
XLE@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
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.
obz3n@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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?
Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Desktops are just hardware. Pretty cases on your desk will just get traded in for slim sideways 19" racks on a stand. And then they’ll get pretty, too.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
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.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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.
DFX4509B@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
Assuming the bootloader is not super locked down or even nonexistent, think Wyse thin client levels of locked down.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I jumped ship like 2 years ago too, but kept a “windows game box” i5 8500 with an rx6400 to play.
The sff (usff?) thinkcentre 6500t with linux is so good it’s insane. Somewhere 6-9 months ago I just stopped booting the win-box.
One day I’ll probably switch os on it and use the better PC as my daily driver, but my quad core is enough for now, crazy actually when I think of the sluggishness of windows on a “+50%” (or more) pc…