Let’s take a little trip back in time.

mid 80’s That’s what the clouds were all about. clouds. Internet was a word unknown to ordinary mortals, but one company was already thinking about connected computing. This now-defunct company was called Sun Microsystems. And in 1984, one of its managers, Joghn Gage, had a vision that became the company’s motto.

Network is computer.

Many people did not understand this concept well, but it was not easy to do at that time. Personal computers were just coming into being, and even having a computer connected to a local network was something that companies were just beginning to understand. They remained that way for several years.

But in 1993, an Oracle executive named Tim Negris invented another very striking and forward-thinking concept. Negris started to speak thin clientthin client. The name wasn’t very descriptive.

They should have called him stupid customer.

What Oracle designed (a company that literally killed Sun, by the way) was simply this: a computer that wasn’t even a computer: all the processing wasn’t done by it, but instead by servers hosting a network operating system. so many workstations can take advantage of the resources of this powerful server. Client-server architecture seemed logical, but you know what?

This never worked. At least not for PC use. Users wanted their own computers, with their own operating system and applications, whether for work or not. Neither the network was the computer (Cloudflare eventually bought that slogan) nor the customers. fools light has conquered the Earth.

Now they will try again.

Yesterday, Microsoft introduced Windows 365 Link, a tiny $349 mini PC with a unique feature: work with Windows 11 in the cloud via Windows 365.

Created at Sun in 1984, the slogan was eventually acquired by Cloudflare.

The offer is, of course, striking. Companies running Windows often have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of computers, each with their own Windows, and managing these resources is often a complex challenge for these companies’ systems departments. Not only against hardware or software conflicts, but also from a security perspective.

And certainly Windows 365 Link is leading the charge for Oracle thin clients. He wants to be a stupid customer too. Not a bad idea at all, be careful: being connected to an operating system in the cloud solves a lot of these problems, because you don’t have to manage, manage and solve problems with 1,000 different operating systems on 1,000 PCs. different configurations.

The settings almost don’t matter, because all your PC needs to do is connect to a remote desktop to run all your applications from there. The system administrator will be absolutely happy: He just needs to make sure that the cloud operating system is up to date and ready to use. Having to do this with just one sample is not the same as having to do it with 1000 samples.

We insist that the idea is striking on paper. In practice and operationally, the advantages are clear. The problem is different.

Problem subscriptions.

The all-conquering model becomes a condemnation. Subscriptions overwhelm us with quantity, quality and also prices: when you become addicted to a subscription, the company that controls it – knowingly – often takes advantage of this to raise prices. We see this everywhere with streaming content, of course, but also in other areas.

This is one of the dangers of subscribing to Windows. For Microsoft, the idea is great: recurring revenue for a product that doesn’t just produce it. Windows 11 has been with us for three years and its market share (35.8%) is still below the veteran Windows 10 (47.25%). Achieving with Windows what you have achieved with Office 365 is one of the clear goals of this strategy.

The question is of course If we are ready to subscribe to an operating system. And this question is followed by other even more important questions.

The first one if we want to do this.

Second, unless this is (another) clear sign that companies have gone too far.

in Xataka | The subscription age is approaching collapse