I am going to assume this is an artificially crippled piece of sh*te rather than something we can install a minimal operating system on right?

Locked bootloader, doomed to fail like Windows RT?

Landfill! Landfill! Landfill!

From The Verge; Windows 365 Link is secure by design, using all of Microsoft's previous work of locking down Windows and even the Xbox xonsole to keep hackers out. That means it won't run anything local on-device other than a lightweight OS that's designed to get you into a Windows 365 cloud PC as quickly as possible.

So it sounds pretty locked down. Hard to say until hackers get their hands on them, but it sounds like they've put a fair amount of effort into preventing them from being repurposed.

And other than the thrill of the challenge, I don't see much motivation for people actually wanting to repurpose them, considering what can be had from the likes of Beelink or Minisforum for a similar price.

I love the fact that we seem to have gone back to the old Wyse terminals secretaries used to be given back in the 1980s..

Given the price a new Mac mini at $599 is a bargain...

At least these will be almost as capable as a smartphone.

Microsoft's innovations never cease to astound me. They've invented the overpriced thin client! It's a mystery why no-one thought of this before.

If it's not a full featured computer, and it's not saving you money on licenses or power over a standard SFF PC or laptop....WTF is it for?

It There are plenty of tools to make old kit usable through virtualisation etc

People who have been disowned by all their local support channels for wasting their time, who can now just "speak to Microsoft" directly themselves and cut us out of the loop.

If it's not a full featured computer, and it's not saving you money on licenses or power over a standard SFF PC or laptop....WTF is it for?

I can imagine a use case for someone who wants a very high spec PC which will only be used for a limited time each month - buy one of these boxes and spin up a VM in Azure as an when needed. The TCO would be less than buying an equivalent physical high-spec machine.

However....if that's your use case then your almost certainly the sort of person with some other sort of laptop/desktop kicking around that you can use for the same thing, so no compelling argument to buy one of these new boxes.

"We reinvented thin-client terminal servers again!"

I'm sure that Citrix are grateful / fuming at the competition.

Next I think we should consolidate everything that we previously decentralised and then we should reinvent Active Desktop yet again because people are bored of Metro already.

Yes, Active Desktop.

And ActiveX.

And Visual Basic 6.

:-)

They were called thin clients.

And they were shit.

The word Citrix still gives me shivers.

I can safely say that it will and won't depending on how big a user you are, whether there's an offer on, whether it looks like you might leave MS, whether there would be a revenue drop to MS if you switched to this strategy or whether you asked on a Tuesday or a Thursday.

Warning icon as you'll need to be wary.

...of any of those tiny form-factor n100 boxes that you can get basically everywhere these days, which can run a real operating system and drive a pair of 4K displays.

Which does rather leave one asking "Why?". I mean, do in fact use said little N100 boxes as terminal service machines, but they can also boot Ubuntu.

In fact that's how I use them as terminal service machines. Log in with your regular network credentials, run the "terminal services" application, get presented with a list of remote machines you can use to do heavy compute on if you need to - alternatively all your email and web browsing needs can be met right here. In fact the vast majority of non GPU related needs can be met right here, because it's a fucking 3GHZ machine with 16G of ram. For $175.

I wonder if the issue here is security? If the machine contains next-to-nothing that's capable of running anything on the machine itself, then the machine has quite a high implicit level of security - even if some ne'er-do-well can get physical access to the machine then so long as it's powered off they can't molest it. Pound-for-pound those small form-factor boxen offer more features but for some users the absence of features could be seen as worth paying for,

I'd be willing to buy that argument except for the way that it's going to be 100% proven false when we get our hands on the things. If you baked everything it was capable of doing into hardware - proper vt220 terminal style - then you could argue that it'd be very secure. But they're not going to do that, are they? Because to actually connect to the internet and Microsoft's cloud services it's going to need a fairly deep software stack, and that software stack will contain bugs, and that means they're going to release patches.

I absolutely guarantee that in there will be a totally normal - albeit possibly arm based - machine running a stripped down version of Windows itself. Sure, it might have secure boot turned on, it might have a properly signed software stack - but we can already do that on a normal machine. What we won't find in there is the entire set of software necessary to make it work baked into an eprom. Hell, the software stack necessary to detect the proper resolution and colour depth of whatever monitors happen to be attached to it is too complex to be hard-coded into firmware with any degree of confidence that it'll work properly long term.

It's kind of cheaper and prettier than a 1960s terminal, but the subscription is a killer. Also your average Internet connection might be less secure and reliable than a leased line.

How reliable is MS service compared to time shared services before 1980, or your own kit?

Anyone using this is daft.

Bring back the Zune and Hololens! Oh wait Microsoft is not in the business of listening to consumer wants and demands.