Comment by imglorp
6 years ago
Desktop much?
In this century, cloud apps as a managed service are sufficient for some 90 pct of office workers. Chromebook/thin clients can be wiped on the hour or chucked in the trash if they break. So, 365, which is killing it. Not an MS cheerleader but this is the right play for them.
Developers are obviously different and need a curated desktop experience.
In this century, cloud apps as a managed service are sufficient for some 90 pct of office workers.
Is there data on this?
So, so, so, so many companies have random internal desktop apps, or are dependent on external ones, that I think chucking a Chromebook at 90% of office workers is a pipe dream.
But absent data, this is all pure speculation.
Thin-clients are very much last century, mid-last century at that. They were called terminals. That's just a new buzzword because technology became fashionable for the non-technical, like calling server farms, "the cloud".
A thin-client is just a desktop that can't do much of anything under its own power. There's good reason Apple keeps advancing their A-series chips, why not stop at "thin client" (running a browser), like a Chromebook? Instead, they're near desktop Intel speeds. To answer that, it's because they want their platform to actually be able to do something on its own. AR, VR, image processing, video editing, you name it. No developer is required to own it, unlike this idea that "curated desktops", which can be around the power of an Apple A13, as somehow just aimed at developers.
Agreed on O365. Microsoft can do thin clients, and has a complete stack that integrates easily to resolve more complex demands out of the box. Just because it's the 21st century doesn't mean any of these concepts listed are new, nor is what Microsoft built in the 80's, 90's and 00's valueless. Depending on requirements it's very strongly to the contrary.
If your employee’s tasks are more typically clerical ones like data entry, working with MS Word documents, etc., then why do you want computing power capable of “AR, VR, image processing, video editing”? That sounds like something that the employee would be applying towards rich social media experiences instead, which is probably something you don’t want them doing on company time.
Aye, but that's not my point. I'm saying everything that's old is new again. No one builds a processor that's computationally limited to lock employees into data entry. It was done in the 70s and prior out of necessity. Pretty much everything that's out there from Snapdragons to RPis are Facebook-capable.