• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Microsoft Windows DaaS.....Device as a Service or Desktop as a Service

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
https://www.computerworld.com/artic...ng-say-goodbye-to-your-pc-as-you-know-it.html

Either way it doesn't sound good to me. You lease a computer you don't own, and it has an OS you don't own or control. My complaints about MS have been their propensity to update when they want without regard to how you may wish to use your hardware. This will only get worse if you have a Device as a Service you lease monthly or if you pay a subscription to have Windows on your hardware. Neither sounds appealing to me.

I suppose it wouldn't differ from a Chromebox or Chromebook except they do seem to manage working without getting on your nerves in regards to updates. They get on your nerves in other ways like being 95% of what you need in a PC without ever being willing to get 100% there and it seems on purpose. With those, like with a Mac, you buy the device and the OS is part of the deal no monthly charge.
 

Dismayed

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2018
Messages
387
Likes
404
Location
Boston, MA
You don't like the updates now? Just wait until they start implanting chips in people's heads!
 

maverickronin

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 19, 2018
Messages
2,527
Likes
3,308
Location
Midwest, USA
MS has been pushing their "as a service" BS pretty hard, but they're going to run into too much backlash sooner or later.

The article your article references says it's going to be a separate service for managing W10, not replacing it.
 
OP
Blumlein 88

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
MS has been pushing their "as a service" BS pretty hard, but they're going to run into too much backlash sooner or later.

The article your article references says it's going to be a separate service for managing W10, not replacing it.

While MS has acknowledged it they are still being coy. It may be managing the OS for you. Or it may be leasing you approved devices that they will manage for you. I can see them at least offering that to consumers though it seems aimed primarily at business. They may not intend to make it so you have no choice at your local store as an individual consumer. Or it may be an experiment they are pretty sure will work for some businesses and if it takes off in consumer-land so much the better.
 

maverickronin

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 19, 2018
Messages
2,527
Likes
3,308
Location
Midwest, USA
While MS has acknowledged it they are still being coy. It may be managing the OS for you. Or it may be leasing you approved devices that they will manage for you. I can see them at least offering that to consumers though it seems aimed primarily at business. They may not intend to make it so you have no choice at your local store as an individual consumer. Or it may be an experiment they are pretty sure will work for some businesses and if it takes off in consumer-land so much the better.

What really sucks is how they're stratifying various layers of support and features. I work at a managed service provider and Microsoft keeps changing things, even on older versions of Windows, to make them harder to manage effectively in a small business enviroment.

As a gamer and power user I'm not too worried about Windows on my personal computer. There will always be hacks and tweaks to make things work until Windows' userbase shrinks so much it's not worth using anymore but for various, practical, legal, and insurance liability reasons those things can't be done in a business environment.

As someone who is partly responsible for administering dozens of small Windows domains it's a nightmare. The Professional edition used to be all you needed on a workstation to effectively administer it on a domain but they've started withholding features from it, making them only available in the Enterprise edition which Microsoft doesn't allow to be sold OEM from PC manufacturers. Various other changes to their update software and distribution model also make it more difficult to control things beyond an individual domain level with a 3rd party remote monitoring/management tool. This increases our workload and decreases our customer satisfaction as more things continue to break that we no longer have good ways to fix.

Basically they seem to going for more and more integration. (Can we have another anti-trust lawsuit? Also software as a service is weird. I can't decide if this is horizontal or vertical integration.) I think their plan is to leave the rea" version of the operating system (i.e. the one that's not artificially crippled) only to large organizations and force small and medium companies onto Azure AD by crippling the ability to manage it in any other way.

On the bright side, that's not really going to put my company out of business. Just because it's all hosted by Microsoft doesn't mean that they won't still need someone who know what they're doing to manage it and Microsoft is never going to have decent customer support. It would basically mean that MSPs focusing on Windows shops would have to switch to MS supplied RMM tools. (Hopefully they will at least be unified. With all the clients using Office 365 for their email sometimes I've had to have 4 different browsers open at once so I can be logged to 4 different client's admin consoles. It would be nice if they could all be delegated to a master account owned by my company like many other products we use.)

On the down side, what we'll be able to do with those RMM tools will be limited by the whims of Microsoft's upper management and that will impact the quality of support we'll be able to offer to our clients.
 

Dialectic

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Sep 26, 2017
Messages
1,740
Likes
3,098
Location
a fortified compound
https://www.computerworld.com/artic...ng-say-goodbye-to-your-pc-as-you-know-it.html

Either way it doesn't sound good to me. You lease a computer you don't own, and it has an OS you don't own or control. My complaints about MS have been their propensity to update when they want without regard to how you may wish to use your hardware. This will only get worse if you have a Device as a Service you lease monthly or if you pay a subscription to have Windows on your hardware. Neither sounds appealing to me.

I suppose it wouldn't differ from a Chromebox or Chromebook except they do seem to manage working without getting on your nerves in regards to updates. They get on your nerves in other ways like being 95% of what you need in a PC without ever being willing to get 100% there and it seems on purpose. With those, like with a Mac, you buy the device and the OS is part of the deal no monthly charge.

Pushing me even harder toward Linux.
 
OP
Blumlein 88

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
Pushing me even harder toward Linux.

I've used Linux for maybe 12 years. It is really well done today. If not for proprietary drivers and such, you'd need nothing else. And may not anyway. I need another OS for some recording gear I have and a Canon photo scanner. Other than that I wouldn't need anything else. I could get another scanner that works as far as that goes.

I would liken it to learning the jargon in a new to you profession. Everything you want to do is easily available, but some bits may go by a different name you are not familiar with. Once you learn the jargon variations it is pretty easy to deal with. And mostly today, you just load it up and go. Only in the finer details would it matter about the jargon, and that may never be needed by you. Once you've done this awhile Windows OS seems like a sick joke.

You may know this, but if you don't, you can download the various versions, put them on a memory stick and boot off of that to try them out. You need not touch anything else on the computer's existing OS. You can use a few programs, I'd recommend Etcher to burn the Live linux OS onto the memory stick so it is bootable.

https://etcher.io/ This is an easy graphical way to put the Linux ISO onto a bootable memory stick. They have versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.
 

maverickronin

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 19, 2018
Messages
2,527
Likes
3,308
Location
Midwest, USA
I've used Linux for maybe 12 years. It is really well done today. If not for proprietary drivers and such, you'd need nothing else. And may not anyway. I need another OS for some recording gear I have and a Canon photo scanner. Other than that I wouldn't need anything else. I could get another scanner that works as far as that goes.

Seems like there aren't many gamers here which is the major issue for me. I'd be happy to switch as soon as Wine is less trouble than actual Windows.

Another big stumbling block would probably be Avisynth which I use for real time upscaling of SD video. It looks like the are some linux ports of that now but I'd still have to wait until it builds up a decent library of filter plugins since I don't imagine the linux version will work with the abandoned plugin DLLs I've collected for my preferred script.

Recommending someone switch to Linux is weird because I would recommend it to polar opposite groups - perople who are already tech savvy and people who have little to no experience with computers. People who are tech savy can figure it out themselves and will be able to research if it's even possible to switch without loosing any necessary functionality. People with little to no computer experience can be taught from scratch without getting confused about what things are different.
 
OP
Blumlein 88

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
Seems like there aren't many gamers here which is the major issue for me. I'd be happy to switch as soon as Wine is less trouble than actual Windows.

Another big stumbling block would probably be Avisynth which I use for real time upscaling of SD video. It looks like the are some linux ports of that now but I'd still have to wait until it builds up a decent library of filter plugins since I don't imagine the linux version will work with the abandoned plugin DLLs I've collected for my preferred script.

Recommending someone switch to Linux is weird because I would recommend it to polar opposite groups - perople who are already tech savvy and people who have little to no experience with computers. People who are tech savy can figure it out themselves and will be able to research if it's even possible to switch without loosing any necessary functionality. People with little to no computer experience can be taught from scratch without getting confused about what things are different.

No I am not a gamer, and linux is a problem for gamers.

Going to linux might not be dead cold easy. But it is improved.

I don't disagree too much with your two groups.

I was MCSE certified a decade or so ago. It was not the core of my job, but was part of it. So I've some familiarity with Windows and how to deal with it as an experience. Of course the half life of such knowledge is maybe 18 months. I retired a few years ago. I already used Linux at home quite a bit. Now touching Windows problems is like touching the tar baby. Plus my skills have atrophied at least from using only linux for myself. The level of aggravation and disruption of Windows issues are painful when you've been using an OS that just doesn't give you much trouble. You just didn't realize how unnecessary it is when you are involved with it everyday. I finally purchased a Macbook second hand recently to handle things I can't do in linux. I don't really dig OSX all that much, but it fails to aggravate in the way Windows regularly does. So Mac and Linux is better for my needs than Windows and Linux.

About 4 years ago, I switched all my relatives and friends from Windows over to either Mint Linux or Chromebooks and Chromeboxes as appropriate. I was basically those people's IT tech support. The difference in my level of involvement, how often I was needed, and my level of aggravation was tremendous. I still did a little work on Windows for free for a couple churches. Some other friends have been on Mac and don't need me for OS issues. And tech savvy friends are a mix of what they use. A couple have it as their daily work, and they have said things like, "I don't see any reason now for someone to have Windows at home."

The installed base of Windows machines is huge. Most people if they aren't on a Mac are going to get a Windows machine when they buy one. Increasingly students get Chromebooks, and people make do otherwise with tablets and phones.

Windows is in a sense painted into a corner. They want to maintain compatibility with past software which is valuable. Well until it becomes a problem. I think they would be well advised to do what Apple did with the introduction of OSX. Bite the bullet and break all compatibility and start over. OTOH doing so might be very ill advised for their bottom line. They can't let go for business reasons. So they are left with a tricky transition.
 

Dialectic

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Sep 26, 2017
Messages
1,740
Likes
3,098
Location
a fortified compound
You may know this, but if you don't, you can download the various versions, put them on a memory stick and boot off of that to try them out. You need not touch anything else on the computer's existing OS. You can use a few programs, I'd recommend Etcher to burn the Live linux OS onto the memory stick so it is bootable.

I have used Linux for many years, usually on whichever of my computers is the oldest one that still works. (In fact, I used to use Knoppix booted from CD for certain tasks.) I tend to use my Linux computer for most daily tasks but not for music listening, which I still do on Windows and Mac OS. If BACCH-dSP were ported to Linux, and if NTFS support were improved under Linux, I'd be on Linux full-time.
 

restorer-john

Grand Contributor
Joined
Mar 1, 2018
Messages
12,581
Likes
38,283
Location
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
I have many machines of various vintages and flavours and even though my daily machines are Win10, I still don't like it. Like many of you guys, I have seen/sold/built everything from Z80 dev boards, Apple II clones onwards.

For one of my hardware devices (AudioLab) I even have to keep an old Win95 machine alive.

Each iteration of windows from XP onwards started burying the detail, the nuts and bolts, from the users. Each iteration was dumbed down as the majority of 'users' couldn't be trusted to mess about in their own computer. Consumers expected the simplicity of a microwave oven in what is the most sophisticated piece of technology ever to see the inside of a home.

I moved my parents (in their 80s) from XP and Win7 to Win10 and they are happy- less problems and they just let the computer do its thing.

I fire up a Win7 or even a Win XP box and I feel instantly 'at home', whereas even several years into Win10, it's still a mess of disparate functionality and broken parts.

WaaS and Daas will not ever happen for me. I will use up all my Win7 home premium licenses (I have about 12 unused legit licenses), and run it indefinitely (updates shut off) once the Win10 plug is pulled to move to W/SaaS. I have a bunch of Linux machines too, but I miss the old versions of Ubuntu with the beautiful visuals (8/9/10 etc). My concern is MS will shutdown the Win7 update portal completely before they announce all this Win10 business, and users wanting to install an old OS will be screwed.
 

restorer-john

Grand Contributor
Joined
Mar 1, 2018
Messages
12,581
Likes
38,283
Location
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
And that reminded me of this little gem when I was very young, my old Micro Professor (MultiTech Corporation- now Acer)

IMG_2391 (Small).jpeg


IMG_2392 (Small).jpeg


IMG_2393 (Small).jpeg


IMG_2396 (Small).jpeg


IMG_2394 (Small).jpeg
 
Top Bottom