Windows 365 Link: The New Device that Imprisons Windows Users in Microsoft's Cloud

In April Microsoft plans to release a new device on the unsuspecting workers of the world. Its name is Windows 365 Link. Microsoft's YouTube advertisement explains that the new device will be secure because it will have, "No local admin users, no local data storage, and no local apps." In other words, it will be little more than a dumb terminal with a few USB, HDMI, and Ethernet connectors. Microsoft's dream of a Windows computer that is fully in the cloud is finally about to come true. Users of this device will apparently have no control over it whatsoever. If true, this means Microsoft will be free to abuse them as it likes, and they won't be able to do anything about it.

Microsoft's YouTube video goes on to extol the device's key features. To begin with, its "security features cannot be disabled". Presumably, this includes a user not being able to boot from a Linux USB flash drive. One has to wonder, however, whether the security of the device will actually be any better than the pitiful security associated with many of Microsoft's other products. Assuming the security is as good as Microsoft claims, the user will be inexorably stuck with whatever awful software Microsoft allows him to run. At least company IT people apparently will have some say in what software will run on the device.

Each work session will begin when the employee enters his work email address and authenticates with the Microsoft mobile authenticator app. What else? No passwords allowed? The video doesn't say, but it does mention second-factor authentication with Fido2 keys and "cross-device pass keys", whatever that turns out to really mean. The video says after a worker is authenticated, he is connected to "his" cloud PC. Only, it isn't his PC. A Windows PC hasn't actually belonged to the user in years. He--or in this case, his employer--is just the one who pays for it. This device should complete the process of transferring essentially 100% of the control of a Windows PC to Microsoft.

For the "privilege" of having this device sitting on your desk, Microsoft will of course charge a monthly fee, most likely a rather fat monthly fee. So far, I haven't found anything definitive from Microsoft on exactly how much it plans to charge, but after an employer has paid the MSRP of $349 for the device, he will pay whatever monthly fee Microsoft wants to charge him. Otherwise, the device will likely be just an expensive paperweight. Some searching led me to a Tom's hardware article that claims the fee will be between $28 and $315 a month per user, a rather wide range. PC Magazine said, "On the downside, the device means businesses will also need to pay for subscriptions to Windows 365 in addition to buying the hardware. Monthly plans for Windows 365 start at $28 per device but can scale up to over $277, depending on the configuration of the cloud PC." The two statements seem to conflict a bit, but now I hope you see the real point of a cloud-only device manufactured by Microsoft and its partners. Money!

Microsoft's video says the device provides a "no compromise experience". What that means is no compromise for Microsoft, and maybe little compromise for your company's IT team, but plenty of compromise for you. But as far as Microsoft is concerned, your experience doesn't matter. You are not a person. You are just an employee.

I have a feeling that many more BYOD's (Bring Your Own Devices) will begin appearing in work places around the world.

Do we have any bets as to how long Microsoft will take to begin marketing Windows 365 Link or something very much like it to home users? My guess is not very long. And most likely, when the only alternatives for most "normies" are Windows 11 PC's, Chromebooks (soon to be Androidbooks), mobile phones, or over-priced Apple products, a large number of them will at least consider buying something like this thing from Microsoft Hell. And, please don't insult my intelligence by comparing this device to a thin client. I have installed OPNSense on a thin client to make it into a very nice home router. Something useful like that will very likely be impossible with this device. Landfills of the world, open wide and prepare to receive hundreds of millions of these things after companies have used them for two years and tossed them out. Tom's hardware says, "Windows 365 Link makes no sense for individual users who have kept their computers for several years." Well, at least we can agree on that, but when has Microsoft ever cared more about what makes sense for its users than about making money? The dirty little secret of the personal computer industry is that if no company makes what you want to buy, you are just out of luck. Do you want a thick laptop with plenty of airflow across its CPU to prevent thermal throttling? Do you want scads of USB ports, an ExpressCard slot (what's that?), one of those nostalgic old DVD drive thingies that helps you to avoid paying for Netflix, a user-removable battery, and RAM not soldered to the motherboard? Good luck finding that in a non-gaming laptop, or really anywhere! Do you want a smartphone with a user-removable battery and a 3.5 mm headphone jack? Good luck sucker! A tiny number of models with those two features still exist, but you won't have much of a selection.

Most people's total loss of control over their computers is what I began warning readers about all the way back in early 2019, and I have continued to warn about this problem ever since. This is what I said in September of 2020,

"Not only is the Internet being increasingly regulated and sectioned off into separate Internets for each country, but the personal computer itself is being hobbled. We are told that our computers are being stripped of their functionality because they are just too insecure and too complicated for the average 'normal' or 'normie' to deal with. After all, the problem could not possibly be that the Windows operating system is an insecure piece of junk, reminiscent of a 40-year-old family minivan held together with chewing gum and baling wire. It could not be that more money can be made by locking down the personal computer and moving most, or all, of its processing into the cloud, where giant companies, rather than the owner of the computer, will decide what software can run on it and most importantly where a monthly fee can be charged for its use."

Many "smart" people on Hacker News said back in 2020 that I had no idea what I was talking about and that a war on general-purpose computing was nothing to worry about because a PC in the cloud doesn't even make sense. When I said later that the only point of moving the TPM module into the CPU via Pluton technology was to prevent users (who Microsoft now considers to be enemy "attackers") from being able to do what they want with their own computers, many of the smart people on Hacker News once again said we have nothing to worry about, and they added that the tone of my article was too insulting to nontechnical folks. Well, smart people, can we begin worrying now? Or, is my tone still too insulting for you to pay attention to what I am saying?

The truth is that I am just annoyed and tired of warning about this year after year and having very few people listen as Microsoft slowly coaxes Windows users ever closer to their prison in the cloud. My efforts to warn computer users of the dangers of the cloud feel like telling a friend that we need to call an ambulance because he has a bullet hole in his chest with blood gushing out, and him saying no, it's just a pimple. I don't know why people aren't more concerned about control of their PC's being taken away. If they don't see or care now, will they when they are locked into Microsoft's version of America Online or Prodigy, where they don't realise or even care that Microsoft's new walled garden is not the Internet? Maybe I have answered my own question. Most readers of this article are likely too young to have had conversations with users of those two original walled gardens and realised they were unaware that Prodigy and AOL were not the Internet and paying for them wasn't even required to access the Internet!!! I just don't know how to make the problem any clearer. Do I need to juggle flaming torches while hopping up and down on one foot to get computer users' attention?