This is interesting. Where are the public-facing Windows machines? I wonder if there's an opportunity in creating "Windows as a Service?" So many of us live on Mac OS or Linux and only need Windows on those rare occasions when someone sends us a .docx file or when we need to access some horrible web application that only works with Java SE 1.6.36_2 running on IE.
"Windows as a Service" is essentially exactly what this is. Despite the hype I've seen in a few places suggesting this is some radical way to run Windows on Chromebooks what it actually is is a Chromebook-hosted client for VMWare's Horizon "DaaS" (desktop as a service) platform.
Since this is an enterprise blog, it appears this is a solution for IT departments where they can host a Windows instance on a VM on their server. The end users can then login via almost dumb terminals.
Title ("Windows on Chromebook at last"... will probably be changed by mods since it doesn't match the source post) is somewhat misleading in that this is just a remote desktop client to VMWare Horizon.
I'm sure this solution is nice for people that are already invested in the VMWare Horizon infrastructure, but for people with Chromebooks who are already tied to physical Windows machines just using Chrome Remote Desktop (which has been supported on Chromebooks for quite a while) is probably the better solution.
If they've got one more appropriate I welcome the change.
Yes, initially for enterprise, but once the door is open and traveled by experts a bit to wring it out and simplify it it becomes everyone's egress. The fact of an app store app for it (mentioned at the bottom) portends that future.
This has been around for a while, and there are plenty of other solutions: Citrix and Ericom both have a similar product.
There is also the Google developed RDP client for Chrome[1].
Outside of enterprise (and development) it isn't a very interesting market - the fraction of people who need Windows apps, have a Windows machine and a Chromebook, and are bothered enough by having to physically access their own Windows machine is pretty small.
The "remote assistance" market is somewhat different, but that is served by quite a lot of applications.
It's just a refresh of VMWare Blast. Citrix has had this for ~a year as well with StoreFront + Receiver for HTML5 for access to datacenter-hosted virtual desktops.
While initially aimed at enterprise the fact that there will be a fairly simple app for this in the app store could radically change Microsoft's role in the marketplace.
My shelved Chromebooks for Seniors project is now off the shelf. I came to realize that they would not appeal to those who already have Windows computer experience, by far the largest share of those with experience. That group is rapidly becoming the majority of seniors. Having a unified hardware platform that can be shared among the complete set of users totally changes the game.
This might be the final correction to the deviant path taken away from thin clients with the advent of the PC.
So this DaaS is supposed to be accessed through an HTML5 client. I wonder if this will nudge Amazon into developing a web client (maybe coinciding with the end of the limited preview) as well so their similar DaaS product (WorkSpaces)[1] can compete with VMWare for the Chromebook market. At the moment, WorkSpaces supports Mac, Windows, iPad, Android, and Kindle Fire [2].
Yes, I hope Amazon come up with a good case for this as AWS is really designed for compute and web servers. So I don't need all of the server features like advanced NIO or support for clustered SQL servers. Just want a simple VM that I can dial down or up RAM and processing power if I want to do more complicated stuff.
Awesome if they can come up with MacOS VM for iOS development; or even a optimized VM for Android development.
> Awesome if they can come up with MacOS VM for iOS development
Unless Amazon can cut a special licensing deal with Apple, for now the only legal way to run OSX VMs is on top of OSX itself on Apple hardware. Since Apple discontinued the rackmount Xserve line in 2010, that would require a datacenter full of Mac Pro towers on shelves or something, which sounds unlikely to be appealing to Amazon.
Amazon WorkSpaces and VMWare Horizon both use the same protocol (Teradici PCoIP), so it's likely Amazon will be able to replicate the VMWare Blast product shortly.
Someone had to be laughing when they typed that. At this point *aaS is just overused that I don't know how anyone typing another instance of it could be serious.
It used to be VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), and I remember a lot of hype around 2008; I guess the *aaS is easier to understand because it sounds more familiar.
But you're right. I remember joking with a taxi driver about the abuse of buzzwords and we agreed he was in the "CaaS" business (car as a service).
They do a sorta softlock on the bootloader to maintain OS consistency and security, but you can override it by putting the machine into "developer mode".
Getting Windows up natively on Chromebooks is possibly possible depending upon the machine. ARM based Chromebooks are obviously a non-starter for running x86/x64 Windows. For Intel systems it can be made to work using coreboot firmware to boot into Windows but the install process tends to be fairly involved and non-user-friendly and device specific, sort of like building a hackintosh.
Probably not but that would alter the Chromebook. Their solution requires no modification and yet supposedly gives a Windows user experience for those to whom that's good enough. Depending on the DaaS capability WRT the apps I use that could easily be me going forward.
Device sharing is also facilitated by the DaaS approach. Any user can log on to any device at any time and see an uninterrupted work flow. For emerging societies and especially their students this can be a huge benefit. There are many environments where sharing inexpensive hardware without penalty can be a sea change. The lack of Windows is a penalty whether we like that or not. :-)
Installing Windows as an end user on hardware that doesn't already support Windows sounds very painful. Even if you get it to boot Windows, getting all the hardware working will probably be nigh-impossible.
I'm not sure this will work wonderfully. As someone who tried to spend a big chunk of time sitting at a MacBook and using Windows via RDP, it's a royal PITA as the keyboard differences are pretty big and the mappings are unintuitive. The ChromeBook keyboards are pretty much a rip off of Mac keyboard so you're getting into interesting territory of no F-keys and odd delete behaviour for example.
It's not going to be pleasant.
Windows can be driven very effectively and easily by keyboard only (unlike MacOS and ChromeOS) and this advantage is lost so power users at least and a lot of office workers accustomed to using their devices via keyboard are going to be shot.
I've had to go back to a PC for RDP sessions to be honest as it's the only thing that's bearable.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 68.7 ms ] threadOn the other hand, desktone(acquired by VMware) claims it can boot in 60 seconds[2], which might work for this use case.
[1]http://www.slideshare.net/mingtemp/a-performance-study-on-th... [2]https://twitter.com/Desktone/status/312990615229050880
I'm sure this solution is nice for people that are already invested in the VMWare Horizon infrastructure, but for people with Chromebooks who are already tied to physical Windows machines just using Chrome Remote Desktop (which has been supported on Chromebooks for quite a while) is probably the better solution.
Yes, initially for enterprise, but once the door is open and traveled by experts a bit to wring it out and simplify it it becomes everyone's egress. The fact of an app store app for it (mentioned at the bottom) portends that future.
There is also the Google developed RDP client for Chrome[1].
Outside of enterprise (and development) it isn't a very interesting market - the fraction of people who need Windows apps, have a Windows machine and a Chromebook, and are bothered enough by having to physically access their own Windows machine is pretty small.
The "remote assistance" market is somewhat different, but that is served by quite a lot of applications.
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desk...
My shelved Chromebooks for Seniors project is now off the shelf. I came to realize that they would not appeal to those who already have Windows computer experience, by far the largest share of those with experience. That group is rapidly becoming the majority of seniors. Having a unified hardware platform that can be shared among the complete set of users totally changes the game.
This might be the final correction to the deviant path taken away from thin clients with the advent of the PC.
[1]: http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/ [2]: http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/details/#desktop-and-mobile...
Awesome if they can come up with MacOS VM for iOS development; or even a optimized VM for Android development.
Unless Amazon can cut a special licensing deal with Apple, for now the only legal way to run OSX VMs is on top of OSX itself on Apple hardware. Since Apple discontinued the rackmount Xserve line in 2010, that would require a datacenter full of Mac Pro towers on shelves or something, which sounds unlikely to be appealing to Amazon.
Someone had to be laughing when they typed that. At this point *aaS is just overused that I don't know how anyone typing another instance of it could be serious.
But you're right. I remember joking with a taxi driver about the abuse of buzzwords and we agreed he was in the "CaaS" business (car as a service).
Is there any real reason you couldn't just install Windows on Chromebook hardware? Do they lock the bootloader?
Getting Windows up natively on Chromebooks is possibly possible depending upon the machine. ARM based Chromebooks are obviously a non-starter for running x86/x64 Windows. For Intel systems it can be made to work using coreboot firmware to boot into Windows but the install process tends to be fairly involved and non-user-friendly and device specific, sort of like building a hackintosh.
Device sharing is also facilitated by the DaaS approach. Any user can log on to any device at any time and see an uninterrupted work flow. For emerging societies and especially their students this can be a huge benefit. There are many environments where sharing inexpensive hardware without penalty can be a sea change. The lack of Windows is a penalty whether we like that or not. :-)
It's not going to be pleasant.
Windows can be driven very effectively and easily by keyboard only (unlike MacOS and ChromeOS) and this advantage is lost so power users at least and a lot of office workers accustomed to using their devices via keyboard are going to be shot.
I've had to go back to a PC for RDP sessions to be honest as it's the only thing that's bearable.