The 1970s called, they want their 3270 terminals back.
It's worth remember what the P in PC stood for. Personal. A computer that was yours to do with as you wished. Not a machine that is yours only as long as you pay rent to IBM (then) or Microsoft (now). It would be a tragedy to lose the P.
Since this thing only has to connect to some Windows 365 instance in the cloud, the device itself has no need to run Windows. I bet it runs some locked down flavour of Linux instead, similar to SteamOS or LibreELEC.
> its design, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Apple Mac Mini.
I followed the link and they look nothing alike, unless this is the first time the author is seeing a mini pc. Otherwise it looks like a, surprise, mini pc.
For those of us in "enterprise" work farms, thin clients never really left. Citrix and related technologies are still massively used within any enterprise that has offshore/outsourced IT and software dev teams. It is still the most cost-optimal way to provide IT environments to vendor/non-FTE resources, and this is not going away any time soon. These devices can be incredibly convenient, it takes away the multiple man-years of effort involved in rolling out remote-access solutions.
Another step toward modern dumb terminals, now "thin clients" of the mainframe, now "the cloud", where a handful of giants own anything and the others nothing, not even understanding this. A name? Ah, yes, 2030's Agenda or an old book I suggest to anyone The Science Of Government, Founded On Natural Law, by Clinton Roosevelt also available in pdf https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/items/sciencegovernme00roo...
I suggest https://kfx.fr/articles/2024-04-26-onnewdealexp-contrapolis/ and really starting to think about where we are going and where we could go. We could go in a distributed society, resilient like the Internet, spread like Usenet, desktop-computing and homelabs as the norms, where companies who needs more own a shed or more with some racks, p.v. and storage to ensure stable power, FTTH and emergency radio (4G/5G and LEO sat access) full of very dynamic SMEs or a set of large internment camps named smart cities full of inmates and no innovation nor dynamism till the obvious collapse.
BTW that's NOT a political vision but a technical one, because the cloud model will end up there technically anyway.
This comment seemed odd so I went looking for the Apple III fan story. Then things got more strange: the Wikipedia article is full of talk about things melting because there's no fan. However, read all the supposed references and nothing appears about overheating or missing fans. Based on the references Apple III initially had reliability issues due to socketed devices (a known bad idea) and use of substandard PCB manufacturing processes.
The fan thing made me scratch my head initially because 8-bit micros pretty much never had fans. Cooling only became an issue generally speaking in the 32-bit generation, some 10 years later.
There are lots of other fanless thin clients already, and they work fine. I have some that work fine as local machines too after I upgraded RAM and storage.
> especially in the light that end users shall not have the privileges to install local apps
So it's a way to lock users into the MS cloud ecosystem even more than normal Windows... How nice.
I can think of no greater hell than being locked in Microsoft’s ecosystem.
I have no local account and I must scream.
The 1990s called, they want their X terminals back.
It sounds like basically the same thing: a screen, keyboard and mouse that displays windows for apps running on a remote server.
The 1970s called, they want their 3270 terminals back.
It's worth remember what the P in PC stood for. Personal. A computer that was yours to do with as you wished. Not a machine that is yours only as long as you pay rent to IBM (then) or Microsoft (now). It would be a tragedy to lose the P.
Since this thing only has to connect to some Windows 365 instance in the cloud, the device itself has no need to run Windows. I bet it runs some locked down flavour of Linux instead, similar to SteamOS or LibreELEC.
Nope. It runs a heavily restricted version of Windows.
> its design, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Apple Mac Mini.
I followed the link and they look nothing alike, unless this is the first time the author is seeing a mini pc. Otherwise it looks like a, surprise, mini pc.
$349 for a terrible thinclient
I expect OEMs to come out with cheaper variants (and more modern port selections).
Is it the thin client part of the cycle already? I though we were still living in the middle of thick client times.
I'm looking forward to the part of the cycle where these are discontinued, have been hacked to run Linux, and are sold used on ebay for $5 each.
For those of us in "enterprise" work farms, thin clients never really left. Citrix and related technologies are still massively used within any enterprise that has offshore/outsourced IT and software dev teams. It is still the most cost-optimal way to provide IT environments to vendor/non-FTE resources, and this is not going away any time soon. These devices can be incredibly convenient, it takes away the multiple man-years of effort involved in rolling out remote-access solutions.
Will Windows 365 support color managed workflows and chroma 4:4:4? Because RDP does not.
The best I can tell is that stuff is related to photography. I think the purpose of this thing is for office work, so probably not.
Another step toward modern dumb terminals, now "thin clients" of the mainframe, now "the cloud", where a handful of giants own anything and the others nothing, not even understanding this. A name? Ah, yes, 2030's Agenda or an old book I suggest to anyone The Science Of Government, Founded On Natural Law, by Clinton Roosevelt also available in pdf https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/items/sciencegovernme00roo...
I suggest https://kfx.fr/articles/2024-04-26-onnewdealexp-contrapolis/ and really starting to think about where we are going and where we could go. We could go in a distributed society, resilient like the Internet, spread like Usenet, desktop-computing and homelabs as the norms, where companies who needs more own a shed or more with some racks, p.v. and storage to ensure stable power, FTTH and emergency radio (4G/5G and LEO sat access) full of very dynamic SMEs or a set of large internment camps named smart cities full of inmates and no innovation nor dynamism till the obvious collapse.
BTW that's NOT a political vision but a technical one, because the cloud model will end up there technically anyway.
Not the worst idea or design but it's too expensive for a thin client.
A computer without a fan. Worked well for the Apple 3.
This comment seemed odd so I went looking for the Apple III fan story. Then things got more strange: the Wikipedia article is full of talk about things melting because there's no fan. However, read all the supposed references and nothing appears about overheating or missing fans. Based on the references Apple III initially had reliability issues due to socketed devices (a known bad idea) and use of substandard PCB manufacturing processes. The fan thing made me scratch my head initially because 8-bit micros pretty much never had fans. Cooling only became an issue generally speaking in the 32-bit generation, some 10 years later.
There are lots of other fanless thin clients already, and they work fine. I have some that work fine as local machines too after I upgraded RAM and storage.
And phones and tablets.
And MacBook Airs