Rent a virtual desktop from Amazon: 35 bucks a month (PC not included) Amazon is bringing its margin-destroying, no-fun business model to the thrilling world of virtual desktop infrastructure – and could upset the balance sheets of traditional VDI providers along the way. The Amazon Workspaces technology was announced today during the inaugural keynote speech for the web bazaar's second-ever re: …
No mention of how they are dealing with the Windows licenses. A quote from the Microsoft VDI and VDA FAQ
"Currently, there is no SPLA model for Windows VDA. Hence, customers who subscribe to desktops from a third-party hoster will need to pay Microsoft for a Windows VDA license for each device accessing Windows client virtual machines in the datacenter. Additionally, hosters need to ensure they isolate the hardware and other resources for each company. Any hardware running an instance of Microsoft software (OS or application) must be dedicated to a single customer. For example, a SAN device that is not running any Microsoft software may be shared by more than one customer; whereas, a server or SAN device that runs Microsoft software may only be used by one customer."
So unless Amazon have some kind of special deal with Microsoft, there is no way that this can work running Windows 7.
After a further reading of the Amazon literature my guess is that they are not offering Windows 7. They advertise it as a "Windows 7 Experience". The assumption therefore is that they are using Server 2008R2 with desktop experience enabled so that it behaves like Windows 7. That way Amazon can purchase per user RDS CALs together with processor licensing for 2008R2 and they don't have to worry about the stupid way Microsoft have licensed desktop VDI
I think the licencing discussion http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2013/11/11/Chris_Mellor_1_Death_of_the_business_Desktop/ here is very relevant to this thread...
I wonder if I can convince my family to move 'to the cloud'? ~£22 for fully managed, 'unbreakable' desktops is an interesting, if slightly high price point. If it were around the £15 mark, or £20 with the office bundle, it would be a godsend, especially as to them its Windows. I'm guessing that the price is made up of something like 20% compute resource, 60% licencing costs and the rest left as take home.
Looking at the summary page, PCoIP so I'm guessing VMView clients may be the way this goes. But I think that a proper understanding of the access methodology is required - the big bugbear with VDI is you can end up paying twice, once for a local licence and once for the remote desktop. I see no mention of a Linux client at this time, and Id like to understand which browsers are supported.
I can see lots of use cases for this technology, and for small workgroups, its a damn sight easier on the CAPEX than Citrix or VMWare environments.
If you want to have a solid cheap home version, just get a normal desktop and bang Drive Vaccine* on it, with a unprotected space for documents etc.
Pretty much bomb proof desktop.
*Others are available. In the old days, you just used Microsoft's Steady State, which is not available for 7 / Vista / 8
Or you go to the local library and use their wifi connection from your phone or tablet, or spend an an afternoon in a coffee shop or local pub (because they all offer free wifi). The days of worrying about the unlikely event of the water company digging through your telephone line are, fortunately, in the past.
However, the cost of this service is unlikely to be appealing to home users. To include Office its $50/month or $600/year but you can rent Office for 5 devices for $100/year. That makes the cost of the desktop $500/year or the cost of a laptop or iPhone each year. Maybe AWS think those economics work for business but it's not going to appeal outside the work environment.
Which, would surely run out far cheaper for your average home or SMB (or even large, enterprise) user who isn't too demanding of document and spreadsheet apps? I reckon it is simply good enough for most users. Anything demanding specialist PC applications is surely better off under the full control of the user.
Also, is there really much of a cost saving when you still need hardware to stream the virtual PC to?
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