Windows 365 Boot: a paid subscription to boot your local PC into your Microsoft cloud PC

[Alfonso Maruccia]

A hot potato: Windows 365 Cloud PC is Microsoft's offering for the modern hybrid workspace, as paying Redmond $20 per month to access an always-on, secure custom Windows installation is seemingly better than using a cheap laptop you buy yourself. Now, Windows in the cloud is even easier thanks to a new remote boot feature.

Microsoft is improving its Windows 365 Cloud PC service with Windows 365 Boot, a Windows 11 exclusive feature designed to boot a local machine directly into a remote Windows 365 Cloud PC virtualized image. The company thinks this cloud approach to computing provides better security to users that need their own custom system while being on a shared device.

With Windows 365 Boot, Microsoft engineer Andrew Miyasato explains, when a worker logs in with their "unique" user identity, they can enter their own personal and secure Cloud PC. Users could achieve exactly the same result by creating (or asking the IT admin to create) a new user in a local Windows installation, but Microsoft doesn't seem particularly keen about this simpler, more traditional solution as local users don't need to pay every month to access their Cloud PC account.

Microsoft thinks Windows 365 Boot and Windows 365 Cloud PC are the right answers for organizations employing shift workers in customer support, healthcare, or other frontline roles. The idea is for a worker to log in to their cloud PC account for eight hours, then give room to their colleague during the next shift and so on. Again, this scenario could also be easily managed with a multi-user setup, a feat Windows has been capable of since the NT 3.1 days.

Windows 365 Boot seemingly is a "much-anticipated" feature Microsoft is now introducing in public preview for eligible customers. Cloud boot requirements include Windows 11-based endpoints (Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise), enrollment in the Dev Channel of the Windows Insider Program, Microsoft Intune Administrator rights, and of course a Windows 365 Cloud PC license.

Users need to follow a convoluted process to push the Windows 365 Boot components to their Windows 11 (22H2) endpoint machine. After Windows 365 Boot activation, Microsoft explains, the lock screen will be the Windows 11 screen. From there, users can log in with their Microsoft account to seamlessly connect to their Cloud PC virtualized OS.

Microsoft has yet to provide any final date for when the Windows 365 Boot preview tech will become generally available. For now, the Redmond corporation is inviting its most passionate fans to join the upcoming Windows in the Cloud episode scheduled for June 7. The podcast will provide all the info needed to learn how to properly deploy the Windows 365 Boot feature.

Microsoft seems to be incredibly fond of this cloud PC idea. Besides Windows 365 Cloud PC and Windows 365 Cloud Boot, the company is also working on yet another Azure service designed for developers: Microsoft Dev Box is a pre-configured, Windows-based cloud space that programmers can customize to manage specific code projects.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98811-windows-365-boot-paid-subscription-boot-local-pc.html

 

[punctualturn]

Now I wonder which is better, AWS/Citrix combo or this?

 

[ScottSoapbox]

This seems really dumb.

But I can see why an IT department might consider it as a way to keep users from doing dumb things on their devices.

 

[Shaitan]

The day Apple proves to be user friendly when it comes to upgrades and repairs of their stuff is the day when I'm done with windows forever.
The only thing I really need now is gaming, as for the rest of the stuff, I could take get around with Linux. As much as I hate Apple, at least that thing is stable and doesn't require a f***g subscription for office and a reinstall every six months or so

 

[ferrellsl]

This seems really dumb.

But I can see why an IT department might consider it as a way to keep users from doing dumb things on their devices.

Why does this seem "dumb"? People use Remote Desktop (RDP) all the time to access their work systems while they're traveling. It's especially useful when all they're traveling with is a Chromebook or other portable system that doesn't have much processing power so they can rely on the power of the remote system to handle all the grunt work. This is no different. Microsoft is simply hosting a Windows system on their own cloud servers rather than it being hosted on your company's servers or having to configure your work PC to accept RDP requests.

It's also convenient if you're traveling without a laptop or portable device and you find yourself in an internet cafe with the need to access your work environment.

It's also more secure for the traveler in that if your laptop or Chromebook gets stolen while you're on the road, your cloud PC and the files you leave on it aren't affected.

I travel frequently and I'm an AutoCAD user. The laptop I travel with has a very weak Intel N4020 CPU and only 8GB of RAM. I can RDP into my work system that's equipped with 64GB of RAM and a RTX 4080 Ti and still work with my CAD files that are usually in excess of 4GB in size. There' s no way my travel laptop can handle that kind of workflow. Aside from my AutoCAD use, there are quite a few other scenarios that can benefit from RDP and cloud hosted PCs as well.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

... I travel frequently and I'm an AutoCAD user. The laptop I travel with has a very weak Intel N4020 CPU and only 8GB of RAM. I can RDP into my work system that's equipped with 64GB of RAM and a RTX 4080 Ti and still work with my CAD files that are usually in excess of 4GB in size. There' s no way my travel laptop can handle that kind of workflow. Aside from my AutoCAD use, there are quite a few other scenarios that can benefit from RDP and cloud hosted PCs as well.

Sounds like you need a new travel laptop.

I use a Surface Pro with an i7 and 32 GB RAM for reasonable processing on the go. When that’s not enough, then I remote into my workstation.

 

[b1k3rdude]

This is all assuming the user has a fast or reliable enough internet connection or any connection. But then we are missing the big con here, Micro$haft want to gaslight user/companies into thinking subscription model is the way to go when fixed licence has worked for years without a problem. In a phrase "f**k no"

 

[MrJelly]

The day Apple proves to be user friendly when it comes to upgrades and repairs of their stuff is the day when I'm done with windows forever.
The only thing I really need now is gaming, as for the rest of the stuff, I could take get around with Linux. As much as I hate Apple, at least that thing is stable and doesn't require a f***g subscription for office and a reinstall every six months or so

MS Office 2021 with no subscription is available on PC too:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mic...2021/cfq7ttc0h8n8?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Why does this seem "dumb"? People use Remote Desktop (RDP) all the time to access their work systems while they're traveling. It's especially useful when all they're traveling with is a Chromebook or other portable system that doesn't have much processing power so they can rely on the power of the remote system to handle all the grunt work. This is no different. Microsoft is simply hosting a Windows system on their own cloud servers rather than it being hosted on your company's servers or having to configure your work PC to accept RDP requests.

It's also convenient if you're traveling without a laptop or portable device and you find yourself in an internet cafe with the need to access your work environment.

It's also more secure for the traveler in that if your laptop or Chromebook gets stolen while you're on the road, your cloud PC and the files you leave on it aren't affected.

I travel frequently and I'm an AutoCAD user. The laptop I travel with has a very weak Intel N4020 CPU and only 8GB of RAM. I can RDP into my work system that's equipped with 64GB of RAM and a RTX 4080 Ti and still work with my CAD files that are usually in excess of 4GB in size. There' s no way my travel laptop can handle that kind of workflow. Aside from my AutoCAD use, there are quite a few other scenarios that can benefit from RDP and cloud hosted PCs as well.

This is targeted at customer service reps and similar jobs, so it is $20/month per user for a chromebook level virutual machine. I.e., the opposite of your suggested use case.

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

Using the words "Microsoft" and "Secure" in the same sentence should be banned. Then there's the cost. A large organisation like the NHS is the UK, with upwards of 800k staff - The costs would be astronomical. Feeding the gaping maw of Microsoft, at the cost of patent healthcare would be morally and financially catastrophic. The whole greedy, rentier, edifice of neo capitalism needs to be deconstructed ASAP.

 

[Tyler Dur Den]

This would seem to relegate a PC as a mostly dumb terminal. Any company that needs this paradigm is already doing it with Citrix, Vmware View, or other similar scheme. Maybe those companies would switch to this new technology since companies are more and more tied to Microsoft's cloud. For home users this could be a benefit but at a huge cost of complexity and loss of data when something breaks.

Give me a regular PC with a local account with a reliable OS that has no Internet-connected features. If need to reach the Internet, I will use an application that does so. Don't cram this into the OS.

 

[wiyosaya]

This is all assuming the user has a fast or reliable enough internet connection or any connection. But then we are missing the big con here, Micro$haft want to gaslight user/companies into thinking subscription model is the way to go when fixed licence has worked for years without a problem. In a phrase "f**k no"

Exactly. I am also highly skeptical that M$ respects the privacy of such virtualized machines. IMO, it just makes it easier for them to mine data.

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

I travel frequently and I'm an AutoCAD user. The laptop I travel with has a very weak Intel N4020 CPU and only 8GB of RAM. I can RDP into my work system that's equipped with 64GB of RAM and a RTX 4080 Ti and still work with my CAD files that are usually in excess of 4GB in size. There' s no way my travel laptop can handle that kind of workflow. Aside from my AutoCAD use, there are quite a few other scenarios that can benefit from RDP and cloud hosted PCs as well.

So you're willing to pay Microsoft $20 per month, forever, to get a sub-par virtualized Windows instance instead of spending a bit of money to get a decent portable PC? Is this a "benefit" of the mighty power of the cloud?

I'll never understand how people have become so bad, so fast, at managing their money in tech spending :-D

Really, it's baffling...

 

[Jimmy Alexander]

Windows wants to be a new version of Chrome. And has the gall to ask you to pay for it. Getting worse by the Day.

 

[hwertz]

"The only thing I really need now is gaming, as for the rest of the stuff, I could take get around with Linux"

Wine (with dxvk and vkd3d) and Proton have great gaming support in Linux, essentially it runs everything through Vulkan and works out great. Mac is a little more problematic, because the dxvk (direct3d 9/10/11) and vkd3d (direct3d12) developers have found that Metal is missing several features (esoteric stuff like being able to map video memory into the address space of the game).. games don't HAVE to use those features, but D3D11 and D3D12 games expect those features to be available and do use them; dxvk/vkd3d is unable to provide them since the Metal support is not there. Will Apple add extra API calls to Metal just to suit wine gaming? They could but I don't know that they will.

Shift worker customer support (a.k.a. call centers)? Why would they use seperate accounts at all? The one I worked at for a brief stretch, you powered up the computer, it got to a desktop, and you opened the call center application and logged into it. We were not accumulating piles of documents on the desktop that we may want to keep seperated. The specific use cases Microsoft lists are whisful thinking, in other words.

 

[Sir Sparkles]

Microsoft wants the worlds hardware to be a thin client for its cloud.

What could go wrong? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯