Microsoft wants to stream your OS to you. Ignoring the whole "Microsoft" angle on this, I personally hate this idea. I miss the days when a computer was a standalone device that COULD connect to the Internet, but didn't have to. These days, so many things DEPEND on having that connection, and just flat out won't work without it. Maybe I'm a stodgy old guy, but can't we go back? I want my computer to with exactly the same online or offline.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/27/23775117/microsoft-windows-11-cloud-consumer-strategy
πππππ 
Buy Windows for only 12/dollars a month, and it might increase every year
Do they give the client device for free? If and only if, they include the client device as part of the deal, this gets anywhere close to being reasonable. Paying money for a device that is constantly in the brink of disconnect shouldn't be any less capable than the device I already have.
Also, where did you see 12$/month ?
Only price I could find is 31 USD per month per user. This is too expensive for a VM with 2vcpu 4gb ram and 128gb storage.
@murtezayesil
I think it's going to be something like VMware live migration with you running a local copy of VM and another copy of it "in the cloud", the two replicating constantly, so you can still have some access to your data offline, but have ability to offload computing expensive tasks to more powerful hardware. And you always have your data backed up! I still don't like it and won't use it, but some might if they can make it truly seamless π€·
@selea @mike
@m0xee
This seems like a complicated solution to a problem that should have never existed. Want backups?
Backup your fricking Active Directory server. It would probably cost you 5$ per employee, not 30.
Cheapest tier (30$) offers 2 CPU threads and 4gb RAM. Companies will end up paying a 1000$ laptop every 3 years. Funny thing is, you need to pay 1000$ for a laptop to access the freaking thing anyway.
Even Microsoft sales more reasonbly priced alternatives. See Surface Pro 9.
Bitter Old Man LLC 
Sorry for replying from a different account, but I failed to fit into the 500 character limit on that instance.
Well, that was just my guess of how it will work from technical perspective. Companies will likely have an option to host this on-premise with HyperV-based tech, they already do something like this with RDP, it's not a problem that doesn't exist, this is just a more streamlined solution to that. Then they are going to pay only for CALs like they already do, probably way less than $30. For SMBs that might make sense even at higher price point, they get backups and get taken care of maintenance of client PCs, except for hardware, but there is a separate warranty to cover that.
And yes, of course they do it to milk their users and impose vendor lock-in, but it's not like right now there is an alternative company making alternative Windows π€·
Of course it's not for those who care about their privacy and self-host, but there are people who use iCloud, Google Drive and all that bullshit β even for personal use. There is market for that, why not give them a way to back up their entire running system to "the cloud"? Throw in an extra, so they can now rent more processing power on demand?
Then again, I don't know what the final product will be like, but I don't think that it's a problem that doesn't exist, I see a market for that, and maybe they do too, they probably did study the market very well during COVID lockdowns and all this work from home thing and came up with this. Of course they might've just went nuts like a lot of companies do, even RedHat did. It is indeed sort of crisis going on, some downsize and cut down on personnel, some look for new sources of revenue.
But from MS I don't see this as something new and Orwellian, Widows has been a horrible choice for privacy-conscious, those who'd like to have control over their data, for years. This direction is bad, but not something completely new, a lot of people don't own their data, don't own their music, don't own their movies and seem to have little problem with that. A lot of us here aren't like that, but a lot of us don't use Windows already π
@selea @mike @m0xee
@m0xee
They just want to milk their users
@murtezayesil @mike