Guest post by After the end of business on Monday I received the following in an email from Microsoft: “We appreciate your feedback and enthusiasm throughout the Windows Thin PC Community Technology Preview. Today, we are happy to announce that Windows Thin PC has been released to manufacturing (RTM), and will be available for our SA customers to download starting July 1, 2011.” Anandtech published a brief but concise review of Windows Thin PC but here’s a quick summary of my experience of this 32-bit only OS based on Windows Embedded Standard 7.
For in depth technical details, please refer to AnandTech’s writeup as mine is just a brief review of my own experience which was somewhat limited in time and scope based on my own needs and curiosities.
I run Windows in a VirtualBox VM at the office but my desktop host only has 4 GB of RAM so I was eager to compare Thin PC to my 64-bit image of Windows 7. The file system foot print was around 2 Gb (including my apps) and it seemed to boot slightly faster but this would probably be better tested on bare metal hardware if you want to get more accurate comparisons.
I installed the Lync chat client, Outlook 2010, and a handful of other small utilities like IrfanView that I use on a semi-regular basis. The apps I did install function just as well as they do on my Win 7 guest OS but one thing I haven’t tried is a simple Steam game or one of the games I’ve bought as part of the Humble Indie Bundle. I’m not sure that’s their target market for this product and there’s a chance it may not even have much of a life cycle once the slimmed down Windows 8 comes out.
But if your org plans on deploying a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure real soon then this might be worth a look — especially if you’re using deduplication to reduce the storage footprint on the back end. When I have more time I may try to implement Bitlocker or Applocker but my first pass was just a usability test and I’m not using System Center which allegedly makes such things simpler. If you have any experience with these features of Thin PC or have used any current or past iterations of Windows Embedded, I’d be curious to get feedback on your experience.
I remember being two years ago in an youth hostel in Switzerland (Basel) where Windows CE was used as their system for Internet access.
They used a kind of set-top boxes as computers.
Why is Microsoft always late to the party. People have been doing thin OS’s for a long time now. Course, 1 GHz is more than enough to run a basic Linux OS. And that won’t cost you anything.
You do realise they’ve been offering this product pretty much since… Well, forever, right?
They’ve always had windows embedded, but you had to be an oem to get it. This seems like its specifically targeted for thin clients for use in the enterprise, rather than the normal target of embedded: special purpose machines. So its not radically new code or anything but more of an attempt to capture a different market with mostly the same product. So you could say that they are late to the party of marketing thin clients, but not late to the embedded party.
Actually, even this isn’t new – see Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs. Basically, this, but on XP Embedded instead of 7.
Ah, I stand corrected. Never heard of “Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs” before. The name just rolls off the tongue.
Sure it won’t cost anything, other than support, costs of retraining, rebuilding your entire user management structure, and the cost of all those 1Ghz machines, unless you are repurposing older 1Ghz machines, which by this time, are 10-12 years old, and so increased hardware costs.
Free is not always free.
support? i guess windows run without it. guess malware is just in our minds.
retraining what? unless you are dumb and intentionally promote wrong way. in all my cases where i moved some company… firefox/chrome here, firefox/chrome there. OO.o here, OO.o there. thunderbird here, thunderbird there. same custom software here and there. people didn’t even notice or care. except problems being gone, there is no difference
rebuilding your entire user management structure? why would you do that? linux plays well with windows way, it is other side that is problematic. move can be really gradual, without pains and automated
cost of hardware????? windows will run on air to be cheaper?
I mean support for your users, you care about your users, right? The OP was talking about replacing WINDOWS, not IE or Office.
If you replace apps piecemeal, then sure, support costs are low, but to replace the entire software stack, well then yeah, you are going to incur training and support costs.
You would have to change your user management because if you were standardized on Windows, then you are probably using AD. You would have to switch to LDAP and some other bits to support your new OS.
Hardware is hardware, but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, If your current system is running just fine, why replace it?
So yeah, that is pretty much what I meant.
Edited 2011-06-09 21:25 UTC
Last time I checked, RHEL and Fedora and pretty much any other distro could authenticate against AD out of the box. Lets face it, switching over is not that hard. eWeek did a recent survey. It used to be that the number one reason for switching was cost. Now the number one reason is to avoid vendor lock in. People are tired of being bent over a barrel when its time to upgrade because all their data is locked in some application.
As for the article, this is the first time I have seen Microsoft promote Windows CE as a desktop product. I didn’t really think of thin clients as the same as in the same market as these though. These seem to be able to be self sufficient versus just a remote for terminal services or citrix.
You really mean the exact same type of support you would have to do with a Windows eviro right? Or do Windows Sys Admins just sit on their collective asses and do nothing. I know your a Windows fanboy Jake, but come on, if you are going to criticize something at least put something on the plate. Sheesh.
Does Thin support Fat?