Microsoft cuts cloudy desktop prices by 20 percent, warns they’ll wake up slowly
- Reference: 1775780912
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/04/10/microsoft_cuts_cloudy_desktop_prices/
- Source link:
The software giant told partners it will cut prices “to make Cloud PCs more cost-effective for small and medium businesses.”
Microsoft has framed the price cuts as an “update” to the service that will change its performance in two ways:
Cloud PCs stay powered on for one hour after sign-out/disconnect;
Reconnects after more than an hour might take slightly longer as the Cloud PC resumes from hibernation (with the same performance once connected).
Microsoft calls the above behaviors “a new on-demand start experience” and says it “helps deliver a lower price point while preserving the full Windows 365 Business value and capabilities partners and customers expect.”
Windows 365 for Business offers three cloudy PCs: a Basic $31/month machine with a pair of vCPUs and 4GB of memory, the $41/month Standard machine with 8GB of RAM, and a $66/month Premium product that offers four vCPUs and 16GB of RAM. All include 128GB of storage. Microsoft sells the same three cloudy PCs under its Enterprise plan. The only difference is that fleets of Business cloud PCs can’t top 300 machines, while the Enterprise plan allows unlimited users.
[1]
The lower prices will kick in whenever existing users sign up for a new subscription, and also apply to new users.
[2]Enterprise PCs are unreliable, unpatched, and unloved compared to Macs
[3]Microsoft reveals new cloudy AI PC that’s not a Copilot+ PC
[4]Omnissa brings VDI-style app packaging to physical PCs
[5]Citrix finds new use for virtualization: Avoiding PC price hikes caused by tariffs
Microsoft’s price cuts come at a time when [6]the price of physical PCs is set to rise , thanks to memory shortages and geopolitical issues caused by the USA’s war of choice against Iran. PC buyers may also have spotted analyst firm Gartner’s [7]opinion that cloudy PCs now have lower total cost of ownership than laptop computers.
Virtual PCs have traditionally won favor from buyers in heavily regulated industries that have good reasons to frown on local data storage. Environments where shift workers share hardware, such as healthcare, are also big VDI users.
[8]
Gartner thinks more organizations are finding reasons to consider hosted desktops, and has predicted that by 2027, 20 percent of workers will use a cloudy PC as their main workspace, up from 10 percent in 2019.
Lowering the cost of Windows 365 therefore looks a lot like Microsoft trying to win more of the PC market at a time buyers have very good reasons to consider a move.
[9]
Microsoft offers two virtual PC products. Windows 365 is its simplified PC-as-a-service offering.
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is Redmond’s old-school VDI offering, pitched at power users. Microsoft believes some AVD users will get the best experience when their virtual PCs run on-prem, either on its own Azure Local hardware or on Nutanix hardware: the latter company this week [10]proudly began to offer on-prem AVD as a way to extend its desktop virtualization (VDI) portfolio. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2adh15O-WK8RSOq1fRlW7LwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/25/omnissa_digital_workspace_report/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/19/microsoft_virtual_pc_update/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/24/omnissa_appvolumes_physical_extension/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/citrix_virtualisation_avoids_tariffs/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/09/middle_east_madness_to_hike/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/14/gartner_daas_predictions/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44adh15O-WK8RSOq1fRlW7LwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44adh15O-WK8RSOq1fRlW7LwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/07/nutanix_azure_cloud_desktops/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: A serendipitous MS business decision - for some?
I'm old and the memory is not as good as it was. I'm sure that I have seen something like that before - Now, what was it?...
Ah, yes! Mainframes and time-sharing. I'm sure the addition of the superb "Microsoft Windows 11 Experience" will make this truly wonderful for everyone involved.
Re: A serendipitous MS business decision - for some?
McNealy's Sun tried to sell us "Graphical Terminals", "Diskless Workstations", "X terminals", "Thin Clients" and "The network is the computer" ... I'm sure I missed a couple in there, but the idea is pretty much the same across the board. It didn't sell, at least not in any numbers in the real world ... The basic bottom line is that this kind of computing didn't have legs when CPU, RAM and disk were as inexpensive as they were. Once so-called "AI" is exposed for the fraud that it is, we'll have a glut of CPU and RAM on the market again and this model will fall on it's nose.
Those of us who have been around for a while already recognize it for what it really is ... Basically, it's centralized computing, with modern bandwidth allowing a GUI instead of text terminals. Mainframe technology with a glittery interface ... but mainframe technology nonetheless. They are trying to sucker people back into the pay-it-monthly service bureau days. It's an all-singing, all-dancing, brightly colo(u)red, dinosaur.
Barney, in other words. And targeting the same mental age group, computing-wise.
Overpriced
I think this laptop I'm typing on is going on 8 now. It has 12G of memory. It is a quad core I think with 2 threads/core. I think it was 600 at the time. 600/(8x12) is 6.25/mo. And it gets cheaper with each passing month. Bonus, it runs linux, not windows. So it wasn't obsoleted, well, just because the kernel version number bumped up.
X terminals?
I get the business benefits of VDI. They have been around for a while.
It does remind me of X terminals of the 90s. They weren’t full virtual machines but they did let you run desktop applications on a remote server.
they forgot to mention other costs
Anything below 66$ is useless (and even then this 128GB storage is likely a shinning rust) plus once the cost of a system needed to connect (clay tablets will not do) is considered, the whole setup is even less exciting. And lets not forget about other M$ subscriptions required to make all this work.
And if M$ even bothered to optimize their cloud PC. Nope, all the Windows fat included at no charge. No shame.
A serendipitous MS business decision - for some?
Microsoft's encouragement to PC users in business to turn away from dependence upon particular individual machines and also to economise on hardware, appears of benefit to both parties. It may be viewed as an 'innocent' business proposal, in so far as 'innocence' has meaning in this context. In effect, business PCs are gravitating towards being dumb terminals. No longer need individual PCs require hardware bells and whistles, and in-house IT support is simplified.
Of greater significance is the opportunity for clever politicians capable of foresight - should any exist in the West - to latch on to a clear opportunity to advance their desires to strongly regulate Internet usage by the common folk. In part under the umbrella of 'Think of the children', and through promise of cost-savings for families, they can persuade many people that dumb terminals offer flexibility and access to immense resources without need of expensive hardware and its maintenance.
What better way to enforce age-checking and, more importantly, to know the identifies of adults using the Internet? No longer would people connect to services via the simple intermediaries of ISPs and DNS. An 'approved' body within the 'cloud' would take care of all that. Tools for evasion, e.g. VPNs, would become useless.
After a surge in uptake by 'responsible' citizens, laggards can be designated antisocial and liable to consort with terrorists. Compulsory introduction could follow a spate of taxation on non-compliant personal devices. It would be cemented by forbidding import of stand-alone computers and their components. Thereafter, black market pricing would be way beyond even those dreadful people who insist upon bearing placards with 'Palestine Action' written upon them.
However, from a detached stance with awareness of mind-rotting social media, one does have sympathy with introducing 'protection', for simple plebeians lest they become too distracted from their duties towards GDP maximisation.