 Microsoft is putting Windows in the cloud. Windows 365 is a new service that will let businesses access Cloud PCs from anywhere, streaming a version of Windows 10 or Windows 11 in a web browser. While virtualization and remote access to PCs have existed for more than a decade, Microsoft is betting on Windows 365 to offer Cloud PCs to businesses just as they shift toward a mix of office and remote work. Windows 365 will work on any modern web browser or through Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app, allowing users to access their Cloud PC from a variety of devices. “Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience,” according to Wangui McKelvey, a general manager for Microsoft 365. This instant access lets workers stream their Windows session with all of the same apps, tools, data, and settings across Macs, iPads, Linux machines, and Android devices. “You can pick up right where you left off, because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices,” explains McKelvey. Windows 365 will only be available for businesses when it launches on August 2nd, with a per-user monthly subscription cost. Microsoft is not detailing exact pricing details until the service launches next month, but Windows 365 is designed for one-person businesses all the way up to enterprises with thousands of employees. There will be two editions of Windows 365: Business and Enterprise. Both are powered by Azure Virtual Desktop, and individual Cloud PCs can be configured with a single CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage at the low-end, all the way up to eight CPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. Microsoft is offering 12 different configurations for both Windows 365 Business and Enterprise, and businesses will be able to scale processing power so there will be lots of options to choose from. Technically, Microsoft offering Windows in the cloud isn’t much different from the myriad of choices that businesses could already opt for with virtualization right now. Microsoft has already offered similar technology with Azure Virtual Desktop, and Citrix has been offering cloud-hosted desktop PCs for years. Where Microsoft is trying to differentiate is in both ease of use and management. “Windows 365 is really going to make a huge difference for organizations that wanted to try virtualization for various reasons but could not — maybe it was too costly, too complex or they didn’t have the expertise in-house to do it,” says McKelvey. Businesses will be able to create Cloud PCs within minutes and assign them to employees, avoiding the need for dedicated physical hardware. That could be appealing for many businesses hiring remote workers or even temporary contract staff that need to securely access a corporate network. As your entire Windows PC is in the cloud, employees don’t need to navigate VPNs or worry about security on personal devices. While Windows 365 seems perfectly timed for businesses looking to tackle the complexities of remote work, Microsoft has been working on the service for years. The operating systems group at Microsoft had been working on a project codenamed “Arcadia,” a service to stream video games from the cloud. Arcadia dates all the way back to Microsoft demonstrating Halo running on a Windows Phone in 2013. This early virtualization work eventually led to Windows 365 and a focus on making it consumer-friendly. “When we built this team, we brought in a couple of leaders who had experience with virtualization, but for the most part we brought in people who had experience with Windows and experience with consumer experiences because that was the bar we wanted to set,” says Scott Manchester, director of program management for Windows 365. The pandemic accelerated work on Windows 365, and Microsoft’s broader focus on hybrid work. Microsoft has been steadily improving Microsoft Teams over the past year and laying out its vision for the future of meetings, remote work, and more. For more visit OUR FORUM.  Windows 11 is coming this holiday season, although upgrades from Windows 10 won't happen until much later. We're sure that users who are hungry to get their hands on Microsoft's latest OS will be able to do so fairly quickly, though. That's especially true considering Windows 10 Insider Previews have all but dried up, leaving nothing but Windows 11 for Microsoft's volunteer quality assurance testers. However, once users upgrade, there's an alarmingly short time to decide to roll back to Windows 10 without starting over entirely. An FAQ has made its way to PC maker MSI's website that indicates Microsoft is trimming down the Windows 10 rollback window to just 10 days. The rollback functionality in Windows will take the archived Windows install folder (which is typically named Windows.old on the C: drive) and reinstate it as the PC's operating system without having to reinstall from scratch. When users upgraded from Windows 8.1 or earlier to Windows 10, they had a whole month to decide if the last newer version of Windows was good for them. In practice, though, this shorter time will probably not lock out users who decide they don't want Redmond's latest and greatest. Formatting a PC's primary storage and reinstalling Windows from a USB stick or DVD will likely still be an option once that 10-day window closes. Microsoft has committed to supporting Windows 10 through October of 2025, so users have three years from now to decide if they're ready to take the plunge into the Spinal Tap edition. The only potential issue is if Microsoft gets aggressive with its upgrades like it famously did when the company's upgrade reminders drove Windows 7 users batty. The FAQ is still live on MSI's site and covers a range of topics from when Windows 11 PCs will be available to which MSI PCs will support Windows 11. The company encourages users to download Microsoft's PC Health Check application, which displays a PC's ability to upgrade to Windows 11. One other interesting change covered in the FAQ is that S Mode, the lower-permissions option that locks users into the Microsoft Store, will continue to exist in Windows 11 Home, but apparently will be removed from Windows 11 Pro. For those who are interested to get a head start, Windows 11 Insider Preview builds are available to install, and the process is pretty simple. We wouldn't recommend installing a preview operating system on a PC that's used for business purposes, or for the faint of heart who recoil at the idea of possibly reinstalling Windows 10 from scratch if a deal-breaking bug crops up. On the other hand, Microsoft's Bug Bash is currently ongoing, and adventurous enthusiasts with a knack for finding unexpected behaviors could possibly make some bank. Not all PCs will be able to upgrade to Windows 11 when it releases in the not-too-distant future. Initially, Microsoft announced some pretty intense system requirements that left CPUs from 2017, which were still top-of-the-line in early 2018, out to dry. Fortunately, Microsoft appears to have heard the cries of its customers and is reconsidering Windows 11's requirements to stretch back a bit farther. Scalpers have been making a bit of bank on hardware Trusted Platform Modules, now that TPM is a requirement for the new OS, too. Windows 11 will release this holiday season and will be a free upgrade from Windows 10 on PCs that can support its hardware requirements. Follow this and more by visiting OUR FORUM.
 Microsoft has had six years to prepare for the launch of Windows 11, but the company is still struggling to explain its new hardware requirements. Windows 11 will officially support Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake or Zen 2 CPUs and up, leaving behind millions of PCs that were sold during the launch of Windows 10. It’s an unusual surprise if you purchased a new PC for Windows 10, or perhaps you have a perfectly capable machine that’s even older. Windows 11 will require Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake or Zen 2 CPUs and up, TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) support, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. Microsoft doesn’t typically enforce such specific processor requirements with Windows — with both Windows 8 and Windows 10 only requiring a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM (2GB for 64-bit), and 16GB of storage (20GB for 64-bit). Power users of Windows, and IT admins alike, have built up an expectation of being able to upgrade to the latest OS, regardless of what hardware they’re running. It looks like that’s about to end with Windows 11. After much confusion last week, Microsoft attempted to explain its hardware requirements again yesterday, and it sounds like the main driver behind these changes is security. Coupled with Microsoft’s hardware requirements is a push to enable a more modern BIOS (UEFI) that supports features like Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module). When you combine TPM with some of the virtualization technologies that Microsoft uses in Windows, there’s an understandable security benefit that we’ve discussed in detail previously. Microsoft claims that a combination of Windows Hello, Device Encryption, virtualization-based security, hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI), and Secure Boot “has been shown to reduce malware by 60 percent.” You obviously need modern hardware to enable all these protections, and Microsoft has been building toward this moment for years. TPM support has been a requirement for OEMs to gain Windows certification since around the release of Windows 10, but Microsoft hasn’t forced businesses or consumers to enable it. Microsoft’s decision to force Windows 11 users into TPM, Secure Boot, and more comes at a pivotal moment for Windows. It’s Microsoft’s operating system that’s always caught up in ransomware and malware attacks, and things are only going to get worse if the level of Windows hardware security doesn’t go up a notch. That delicate balance of security and the typical openness of Windows is something that Microsoft will struggle with over the next decade, as it wrestles with modernizing Windows and the understandable backlash. While Microsoft is waiving its new hardware requirements during the preview phase of Windows 11, we still don’t know exactly what devices will be supported when it launches later this year. Microsoft tried to offer some more clarity around this yesterday, but it wasn’t the level of detail we were hoping for. “As we release to Windows Insiders and partner with our OEMs, we will test to identify devices running on Intel 7th generation and AMD Zen 1 that may meet our principles,” says a blog post from the Windows team. That could be good news for the Surface Studio 2, a $3,499 device that Microsoft still sells with a 7th Gen chip that’s not on the Windows 11 list. This same blog post also revealed that the 7th Gen is probably as far back as Microsoft is willing to concede. “We also know that devices running on Intel 6th generation and AMD pre-Zen will not” meet Microsoft’s minimum system requirements, said the blog post before it was edited to remove this line. It’s not clear why Intel’s 6th Gen chips are definitely off the list, but part of this decision could be related to Spectre and Meltdown — two major computer processor security bugs that affected nearly every device made for 20 years. Follow this thread and more on OUR FORUM. |
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