
I love my Amazon Workspace - ShaneOG
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/i-love-my-amazon-workspace/
======
Diederich
Funny thing, I need to use an amazon workspace from time to time for my job.
I've managed to keep 100% Linux (for my personal boxes) professionally and at
home for a good long time now, but a specific (and thankfully rare) access
requirement was solved by using a Windows Amazon workspace.

Guess what? No Linux workspaces client.

So now to gain network access to a particular resource (a web address), I run
the Windows workspaces client under Wine under Linux, which gives me access to
a properly virtualized Windows workspace, which gives me access to a web
address that is hosted on Linux.

It would be a comic tragedy except that it was so damn easy to make it work,
and it works very well.

~~~
Daviey
It can be made to work under wine... or you can still use rdp.

~~~
npongratz
The Workspaces FAQ appears to disagree, but I'd be interested in learning if
one can indeed use RDP.

[https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/faqs/#Clients_User_Experie...](https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/faqs/#Clients_User_Experience)

"Q: Can I use any other client (e.g., an RDP client) with Amazon WorkSpaces?

No. The only supported clients for WorkSpaces are the free clients provided by
AWS."

~~~
Daviey
I did it.. So it does work :)

If you use public IP addresses, just use that.. or leapfrog rdp through an ssh
tunnel or VPN on a linux instance on the same VPC.

Something like this, to tunnel through a linux instance:

    
    
      #!/bin/sh
      sshuttle -D -r ubuntu@linuxinstance-in-vpc 172.16.X.0/24
      xfreerdp +clipboard /rfx /smart-sizing:800 /d:CORP /u:demo /v:172.16.X.X

------
ylem
In science, it's common to run one week schools on various topics for graduate
students and young postdocs. When software is involved, we spend a lot of time
dealing with the students' installation issues. I tried the VM approach once,
but the images are relatively large and when I tried it with VMWare, the
registration process was still a bit cumbersome. This time I tried Amazon
workspaces for about 30 students. Though I had some initial growing pains (be
careful on permissions!) and they did (I think they were just scaling up when
we ran it), I would use it again. It simplifies the Mac/PC issues that we had
and makes it easy to share materials. We did have one student with a linux box
and it's a shame that Amazon didn't (doesn't?) have a windows client, but
overall I had a positive experience. I saw that someone mentioned that there
is an Azure option that's similar? At the time, I saw that VMware also had an
offering. Has anyone tried it?

*disclaimer these are my personal opinions, not my employer's

------
commandshift90
Worked on Workspaces at AWS for about a year, on the software clients in
particular. I think their product has potential but for the moment is limited
by some underlying technology decisions made in the interest of a quicker go-
to-market.

I would not be surprised if at some point soon their underlying tech became
all first-party and we saw some significant improvement. There are plenty of
resources throughout AWS that with some work could be composed into a better
stack than the 3P pieces and protocols they use currently.

I don't think I've disclosed anything here that isn't already public
knowledge, past my own wild speculation based on zero knowledge of internal
workings since my departure. If anyone has any questions that I can answer
without endangering myself to NDA issues, I'd be glad to answer about
Workspaces.

I think it's a great product for those who benefit from it; I ended up leaving
the team because while the technological challenges were interesting, I
couldn't put myself in any potential users' shoes, and therefore really
couldn't drum up much organic passion of my own.

~~~
jareds
Is there any possibility of insuring that Workspaces will be accessible to
users of assistive technology? I use a WIndows PC because that's what has the
best screen reader support, a quick google search didn't turn anything up
about running a screen reader in the workspace and having it's sound piped
back to the thin client.

~~~
mgkimsal
coincidentally, that's what I was doing in march, and... surprisingly, it sort
of worked.

client had JAWS, and the JAWS installer read itself to me while it was
installing - I was rather impressed. Had to reboot, and it never came up after
that - assuming it was related, but never figured it out.

The NVDA screen reader _did_ work, as well as the windows voice assistant
thing itself. both would generate audio in the workspace, and I was hearing it
over my el capitan local setup.

~~~
jareds
The Jaws problem may have been video card drivers. Jaws installs it's own
video driver that I have found to not work under Virtualbox unless guest
additions are installed. I could see there being something in the Amazon
virtualization solution that could cause problems with the driver.

~~~
mgkimsal
I wanted to dig in to a bit further, but the client just reset the whole thing
and said "you don't get JAWS now". Project cancelled soon after that -
unrelated to JAWS/workspace.

Don't have time now, but hopefully it will be resolved at some point. NVDA was
'good enough' for the testing I was doing, and it was pretty slick to know the
audio was streaming and working without any extra configuration. Probably old
hat for some folks, but I'd never experienced that before. :)

------
matt_morgan
I love that this idea never goes away (in my first real career job, I
supported actual dumb terminals that we replaced with desktops). It never
seems to take off either, but _it 's always just about to._ I don't mean to
criticize! WorkSpaces sounds pretty great.

~~~
bpyne
I've seen variations work quite well.

The first time was in a startup company. We hired a brilliant and
unconventional sys admin who was somewhat reminiscent of the Gilfoyle
character in "Silicon Valley". After being hired, he took a few weeks to
analyze how the user groups worked. Then he disappeared into his work room for
a few weeks, often working late into the night. When he finally reappeared, he
had set us up so that our desktops were running apps from the Windows servers.
(At the time, we used Windows 3.51 on the server with Novell ?Netware?.) I ran
everything from Powerbuilder to an Oracle standalone instance to Word (or
Wordperfect) from the server. When I needed additional tools, he was very cool
about installing them.

The second time was at a training session at Sun Microsystems' Burlington, MA
campus. My first day they handed me a key card. The card allowed me access to
the building and rooms I was authorized for. I also needed it for access to
workstations. I could go up to any workstation in the lobby and authorized
rooms, insert it into a card reader, and instantly have my desktop appear in
the state I left it in during my last session. It was a fully graphical
desktop. Absolutely eye-opening experience working there for a few days. It
spoiled me. I've been looking for that experience again, but haven't found it.

~~~
ghshephard
These workstations:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray)
?

~~~
msh
They had those at my university. I loved them

------
kfullert
OK, so Workspaces appeals to me (C# developer for a small company, no IT team,
working from home) as redundancy - at present, if my laptop goes bang
everything is backed up in "the cloud" (be that Azure, S3, somewhere) but it's
the time getting everything restored like the multiple Visual Studio versions
I need, the connectors for SSRS report designer etc. that I can see Workspaces
working out for me (laptop goes bang, borrow my wifes one, connect to
Workspace, carry on as if nothing happened until I can get a replacement)

However ... Workspaces looks like it needs an Enterprise AWS subscription
($15k/month?) so what alternatives are there for someone like me, where
someone takes care of providing a Virtual Desktop, making sure it's running,
backed up, connectable from anywhere (obviously with me responsible for
ensuring off-site backup of any code/deliverables as I am at the moment) or is
it best just to run up my own VPS with Win2k12 or similar and use that?

 __EDIT __Ignore that, I was getting a weird redirect where trying to
subscribe to WorkSpaces was taking me to the Support Subscription page, and
just would not let me subscribe to WorkSpaces, but it appears to have sorted
itself out now

~~~
ianhawes
Not sure where you saw that you need an Enterprise AWS subscription. I didn't.

I tried Workspaces for a month and it was decent. There are a few things it
does better than RDP (especially on OS X). I did, however, switch to running
Windows Server 2012 R2 on Azure instead, though that was because it was
effectively free thanks to BizSpark.

~~~
btown
Any noticeable latency differences between RDP to Azure and AWS Workspaces?
I've noticed that the modern.ie free instances, for example, do have a
noticeable amount of lag.

~~~
ianhawes
I have almost no latency issues with RDP in Azure. I can watch a YouTube video
with no major latency. Workspaces wasn't terrible in that regard but
definitely not as smooth.

The Azure machine is a bit beefier than Workspaces, so that probably factors
into it.

------
machbio
\- Q: What Operating System does a WorkSpace run?

\- WorkSpaces provide users with the Windows 7 Experience, provided by Windows
Server 2008 R2.

Suits only a windows user - lets say you need a ubuntu machine; the EC2
m3.large similar to the "Performance" workspace bundle. The difference between
AWS Workspace and AWS EC2 is huge ($48), while AWS Workspace will cost you
$60, EC2 Machine with same configuration will cost you $108.

But the advantage with the EC2 machine - is you should be able to shutdown the
machine when not in use, so a 50 Hour/Week will cost you only $39, that is $21
less than the AWS Workspace. So any AWS workspace single user who can use
Linux Machine does not benefit from AWS Workspace.

~~~
tw04
Generally speaking the difference is in the client you connect to the system
with. Most "VDI" solutions deal extremely well with latency/packet loss. A
standard VNC connection... not so much. If you're just using a CLI it probably
is a wash, but for a GUI there's a pretty big difference.

------
ebbv
History truly does repeat itself. Shall we go over the shortcomings and
problems with thin clients again?

 _Network problems mean you are screwed._ Even short of full on connectivity
loss, if you're suffering congestion or packet loss for whatever reason, a
thin client can quickly become unusable. Right now I work remotely a lot, from
accessing remote git repositories to doing work on c9.io (which I love.) But
if I do suffer network problems, I _can_ work locally. It's not a full on loss
of productivity.

Yes network ubiquity, reliability and speed has never been better than it is
today. But it is not 100%. Especially if you live in a rural area like I do.

 _Datacenter problems mean you 're screwed._ Datacenter suffer outages too.
Even AWS. Again, with a traditional client you can cope with it. With a thin
client you are totally hosed.

As with network issues, there are lots of datacenter problems that aren't full
on outages. Hardware and otherwise.

 _Even Thin Clients suffer obsolescence._ One of the tried and true dreams of
thin clients is that they don't go obsolete. Anyone who has been on this rodeo
before knows that's just not true. Network connectivity gets better, display
connectivity gets better, power usage improves, etc. And with today's desktop
and laptop speeds improving at the snail pace they do, a thin client really
isn't offering any bonus here. If you buy a good laptop or desktop today it's
going to last you years and years. (The MacBook I'm typing on now is 4 years
old and showing no signs of age.)

 _It is slower._ Despite this raving endorsement (totally unbiased I'm sure.)
Thin clients that have to reach out across the network for every action are
always going to be slower than a machine that doesn't. The network is always
adding latency. Whether that bothers you or not largely depends on your own
tolerances and what you are doing.

There's a reason thin clients always make a comeback and people are excited
for a while and then realize "Oh wait I want a traditional machine again
please." This cycle has happened so many times.

------
Daviey
I have to agree with this. It has been a real pleasure to use. I have managed
about 50 workspaces... but there has been some annoying things:

    
    
      - inability to modify workspace t-shirt size
      - workspace features using AWS services but mostly hidden
      - lack of ability to re-brand the client (i did rewrap the installer with custom artwork but breaks on upgrades).
      - Linux client... still waiting. (but can run under wine)
      - not easy to use 2fa support
      - not easy to set default printer.. they are non-static
      - reboots are slow
      - no ability to declare exit IP location... UK people don't want to appear in Ireland (bad for google.com and credit card payments).. have to spin up a standalone proxy using a different provider (thanks digital ocean).
      - BYOL is great.. but inbuilt support for office365 would be better.
      - No Amazon Elastic File System yet in Ireland.. so have to run a separate fileserver for network drive.
      - Not been able to get vnc as a service working.. and can't use the windows UAC without it.
      - No ability to use custom templates on user provisioning emails.
      - Can't use human interaction device, such as dictate pedals for secretaries. 
      - .. and some more.. these are the top of my head.

~~~
sbierwagen

      inability to modify workspace t-shirt size
    

What?

~~~
adrianpike
I _think_ it's a small/medium/large reference, but it's definitely an
unconventional way to put it.

~~~
RyJones
yes, common estimating method. My group at Lab 126 used it.

you're correct his usage is uncommon

~~~
Daviey
Sorry, I've seen it used in a few environments now... felt like it was common
nomenclature. Googling around seems to confirm.

~~~
RyJones
I don't think you need to apologize. the nomenclature is common, but the usage
was new to me. I like neologisms so I'm filing the numbers off your usage and
stealing it :)

------
cm3
As long as your use cases are covered sufficiently and you're fine with
cloud'ing your environment completely, I guess this can work.

But I much prefer being self-reliant and not at the whim of a company for
things like my computing environment. This is why I run free/open source Unix
variants and Linux and rely on applications whose config I can copy and reuse
across machines. Add NixOS on top and you have yourself a one command setup on
a new machine, if you desire so. If I don't own the environment myself and
understand it, I cannot fix problems when they come up and they will,
unfortunately.

------
dalacv
I checked out Amazon Workspace a few months to see if I could get rid of one
of my laptops. Alas, my client's VPN caused issues. I opted for creating a vm
and accessing it through the web via Guacamole. I can get to my machine from
anywhere.
[http://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/](http://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/)

------
DTE
If you are interested in VDI without the complexity that comes with AWS check
us out at [https://www.paperspace.com](https://www.paperspace.com) (YCW15)

a few key differences:

\- we can stream directly to a web browser without any plugins

\- you can fire up a new machine in just a few minutes

\- all of our machines have GPUs that make the experience feel great (we work
with architects, engineers, and others that need a fluid desktop experience)

\- we are cheaper (starting at $15/month) and our pricing is predictable

[disclaimer: I'm one of the founders]

~~~
metasean
I'm interested in the concept of a VDI - and both
[https://paperspace.io/](https://paperspace.io/) and
[http://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/](http://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/)
look interesting.

However... I frequently work with very, very, very limited and intermittent
bandwidth (i.e. off of my mobile phone via railline), so unless Paperless can
work offline, your statement/bullet, " _Untethered Agility_ " seem
particularly deceptive!

~~~
DTE
Guacamole is a great project for using VNC/RDP protocols. We have developed
our own protocol at Paperspace which we are constantly optimizing for sub-
optimal conditions which can include low bandwidth and low-quality (i.e. lots
of dropped packets). That said, we are primarily building for a world where
access to high quality, fast internet is a reality.

As far as "untethered agility" goes, it was intended to speak to being free to
access your computer from any device! Sorry for the confusion :)

~~~
metasean
It's awesome that you, "are constantly optimizing for sub-optimal conditions
which can include low bandwidth and low-quality". Out of curiosity, is there a
way to specify a maximum bandwidth? (e.g. my phone plan has a monthly cap,
that can easily be exceeded and result in a nasty bill; can I specify that
Paperspace not exceed a certain data transfer rate when I'm on that network?)

The irony of the "phone on a train limit" is that I have a phenomenal fiber
line into my house. So I know how awesome, "high quality, fast internet" can
be!

I was not confused about intent behind "untethered agility". My point was, I
can use my laptop completely and genuinely untethered where ever I want for as
long as my battery lasts. In other words, by default the only necessary tether
is for power; and even then, I can go for almost an entire workday before I
need that tether. Paperweight, as well as the other VDI options, _actually
require a near constant network tether for operation_.

edit: typo fix

------
nickysielicki
> One morning I sent the team an email with the provocative title “My
> WorkSpace has Disappeared!” They read it in a panic, only to realize that I
> had punked them, and that I was simply letting them know that I was able to
> focus on my work, and not on my WorkSpace.

"Jokes on them I was only pretending!"

Do people actually do this in a corporate setting?

I'll assume that this is just fluff for the sake of being able to post an
advertisement under the guise of a blog post.

~~~
jeffbarr
I wrote the post and I can assure you that I actually did this. Our internal
slogan is "Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History." I try my best to do all three.

This was not fluff, it was my actual story.

Also, this is a corporate blog and I am part of the marketing department.

~~~
nickysielicki
Every workplace has their dynamics, and I don't know what your team is like. I
didn't think you'd read that comment, but you did, and unfortunately it took
your comment for me to realize the degree to which that comment is mean-
spirited. I'm sorry for that, and it doesn't reflect well on me.

I do stand by what I'm saying there, though. One of my first bosses treated
email as sacrosanct, and that rubbed off on me. His workflow was centred
around his email queue, and email was the official ledger. If we talked about
an idea, the first thing I did afterwards was put it into writing and email
it. He had a newborn and was busy as hell, but he always got his job done.

With conversations that touch several separate groups, and with people who are
responsible for a lot of different things, email becomes the common
denominator. All it takes is one "URGENT!!!!" subject line to throw someone
off-kilter. If that turns out to be a joke, you've interrupted them for
nothing. And for very busy people, that can add up and be the difference
between catching their bus home to see wife and child. It probably seems a bit
melodramatic to liken it to directly taking away time spent with family, but I
think it's a reasonable common courtesy to leave all jokes outside of the most
formal form of written communication.

Not a big deal for a rare joke or an email that stays within a couple people,
and that's what this sounds like. But the principle is something that I
appreciate.

------
nutbutter
Paperspace.io is pretty awesome. I've been using it for about a week now. The
specs/ratio are much better over there.

~~~
inthewoods
Looks interesting - their demo shots show it running Windows 10, but the
pricing shows Windows 7. Which does it run? Or some other OS?

------
NuclearFishin
As a software engineer that works across multiple platforms, I've used Amazon
Workspaces as my primary Windows dev environment for the past 18 months. In
general the experience is great- the input response and 2D graphics are
superior to an RDP session. It's easy to forget you're working remotely.
Another nice bonus is longer battery life relative to running a virtual
machine on your laptop.

But the real limitation is the tiny C: partition. It's fixed at 60 GB, nearly
half of which consumed by Windows and its gradual updates, which generally
leaves you with insufficient space to install Visual Studio with the Xamarin
tools.

The limitation has been noted in the AWS Developer forums, but unfortunately
the 60 GB limitation seems hard-wired into the platform for now[1]. It's
painful enough that I searched around for alternatives, but I couldn't find
any direct competitors! I'd be 100% happy with this if I didn't have to run up
against this 60 GB limit all the time. Just a heads-up for any engineers
considering this for a Windows development environment.

[1]
[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=220618](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=220618)

------
mgkimsal
Had to use workspaces on a client project a few months ago. There was some
bizarre issue between El Capitan and the remote desktop which would send most
of my keystrokes to the remote instance, even when the focus was not on the
Workspace window.

I'd somewhat narrowed the behaviour to any 'messaging' system - slack, skype,
messages and some others - if I switched to slack or responded to an osx
'messages' notice, my keystrokes would also be sent to the Workspace, and
generally cause havoc. I'd leave an IDE open, switch to slack to talk to the
client, come back, and all the code was replaced with our conversation.

There seemed to be reports of some similar behaviour with a windows client
last year, and it was supposed to be 'fixed', but I never saw any reports of
similar OSX behaviour.

------
travelton
In a past job, I worked with a company who deployed thin clients at various
locations around the country to rapidly expand their footprint with minimum
upfront capital.

However, we constantly ran in to problems with this model of centralizing
computing to a Terminal Server.

If the office doesn't have 100% stable and fast internet, your users will
complain. Users are accustomed to lightening fast response from
clicking/typing. Also, if the internet does go out, the entire office is
offline and productivity halts until resolved.

We then investigated redundant internet links... But, there's a point where
the monthly recurring cost no longer justifies this model.

As cool as this tech is, I don't think it will ever take off as the risk of
lost productivity, and user frustration, is too high.

------
enibundo
But I like having my stuff on _my_ machine.

~~~
Daviey
And Enterprises like it on /their/ machine. Which is the whole premise of VDI.

------
spaceisballer
My organization does thin clients and I'm a big fan. It would be nice to have
smaller quieter and more energy efficient ones, but I'm sure it was cheaper to
keep what we have. I never have problems with software not being up to date or
something going wrong. Just new problems like if there are network issues I
can't do any work (was still a problem before moving to thin clients). I also
like that I can just use my computer at home and log in and have everything
set up like I'm at work.

~~~
rboyd
We're glad it's working for you.

Sincerely,

NSA

~~~
projectramo
Purely out of curiosity: why did people downvote this comment?

If someone who didn't downvote this wants to speculate, please let me know.

The downvoting is sometimes spot on, but sometimes it seems a little
arbitrary.

IMHO, rboyd was just pointing out the potential privacy issues in a humorous
way.

~~~
lallysingh
I didn't downvote, but I can think of a few reasons.

1) It doesn't add anything to the conversation. Yes the NSA watches everything
in some way, saying so is redundant.

2) Presumably the connection is encrypted, so the NSA just sees a long lived
connection between your and an Amazon data center.

3) Actively pulling data off of a privately owned server inside the US is a
bit (but only a bit) of a stretch for what we know about what the NSA does.

------
6stringmerc
Quite a convincing description! I can really dig the overview and description
of transition and use case scenarios. Kind of makes me chuckle to see a Dummy
Terminal return, I mean, cough, Zero Client. The more things change, right?

As a quite satisfied user of Amazon's StoryWriter program online I can really
agree the ease of access and stability of the resource provides value. I've
moved from CelTx at this point, and will probably even import to Amazon from
that.

A friend is experimenting with Amazon's VideoDirect system as well, so I hope
to hear about that experience. He did mention the need for Closed Captioning
took some effort to find a suitable online tool (there are some good free
ones) and the large file uploads for HD video isn't the most fun, but so far,
so good.

For some reason, Amazon has targeted some of the creative sector in ways that
Google and Facebook I don't think quite understand how to set up. Sure, both
have some dominant platforms and tools (YouTube, "Artist Pages") but these
new-ish developments by Amazon seem to be sticking the landing pretty often.

Gotta say though, I like seeing this admission:

> _I do still run PowerPoint locally, since you can never know what kind of
> connectivity will be available at a conference or a corporate presentation._

Nice. Every little defense against Murphy's Law in presentation/performance is
a wise move in my experience.

------
superuser2
Who are these people who have good enough internet connections for one
reasonable Remote Desktop session, let alone dozens?

Outside of college I've never been in a building with that kind of bandwidth.
At a tech company office, sure, but they don't need to outsource this kind of
thing. Your average small to medium business in my hometown has 3Mbps at best.

~~~
Spooky23
Once you graduate away from cable, it's pretty cheap in a central business
district or office park. I think we have 100meg circuits everywhere now.

~~~
charlesz
Unless Charter owns the monopoly in your area.. $80/mo for 100/7 copper, or
$450/mo for 100 symmetrical fiber.

~~~
Spooky23
There's no monopoly on commercial fiber in many places. Even at my home in a
city, I could get commercial metro-ethernet service from 4-5 providers. You do
have to pay for build-out costs.

When you're siting an office, it's definitely something to look at.

------
arien
My bet is that if/when this kicks off a bit more the next move will be Amazon
laptops (these being like Chromebooks).

~~~
Nexxxeh
I predict... Firebooks?

------
andrew_wc_brown
I dunno, as a dev you can just docker your environment and if your Macbook air
dies, you buy a new one, and simply pull your images and your back to work in
minutes.

Even setting up a mac from scratch for me only takes an hour, and I run an
array of different web-apps.

An hour lost at worst once a year isn't worth much to me.

------
mkohlmyr
I've been experimenting with something vaguely similar in the form of getting
a ChromeBook and using a Nitrous VM for programming projects.

I initially used (and preferred) Koding, but their shift away from solo
accounts made me switch. I find it very strange that they have such a good
core product that they could simply focus their efforts there and instead so
much of their effort seems aimed at building an integrated slack / hipchat /
.. competitor. They could integrate with them and have much a better selling
point.. I digress..

It's oddly unburdening to not have any projects on your laptop but at the same
time have the ability to access them whenever from any machine. I firmly
believe it's the future.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Same here: I have experimented with nitrous.io for programming and using a
Chrome based editor that works with DropBox and Google Drive for editing my
leanpub book project -- all on a Chromebook. The advantage is that this setup
works on any laptop or PC I sit down in front of. My only complaint about
nitrous.io is that their web IDE does not work on my iPad Pro with Apple
keyboard.

------
dharma1
I was running an AWS spot instance for 3D rendering/modeling for a while,
using one of their GPU instances. It's my only Windows based workload, and I
only do it occasionally, there aren't powerful enough laptop GPU's - so it was
a decent option. The remote connection wasn't a problem, but it was a pain
spinning the spot instance up and down.

In the end I just built a PC with a GTX970 at home instead which I use with
Splashtop remotely now. I also setup a Belkin Wemo switch if I need to reboot
it remotely.

------
jastanton
I've done something similar for years, all my files are mounted on my drive
with sshfs. Whether I'm at home or work everything is available to me and when
I'm done I log off my VPN and all my sensitive documents unmount and
"disappear", what's left is just a few applications... Sublime, chrome etc...
Works great.

------
cuongt
Has anyone used it to play games like Minecraft? Last time I tried it didn't
work.

~~~
fencepost
Anything that requires what's basically video is probably going to be subpar.
I believe Windows Server 2012 has much better handling for things like
playback but it's still not going to be great for gaming.

Minecraft also benefits quite a bit from a decent video card, something that's
going to be absent from most remote desktop servers (though I think that's
changing).

------
AJRF
Is there something like Workspaces for consumers?

The homepage[1] makes it seem very enterprise heavy.

[1]- [https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/](https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/)

~~~
commandshift90
Definitely targeted at the enterprise, but it's entirely possible to provision
and operate a single instance without any kind of enterprise-level agreement.

~~~
AJRF
Was there any work done around OS X support or are there licensing issues
there / not enough support from Enterprise?

~~~
commandshift90
OS X licensing for off-prem machines is a tricky thing, and the technology
being used for streaming complicates it further, if I recall.

~~~
AJRF
Thanks for answering! Other providers for OS X solutions are super dodgy /
shutdown / involve time sharing (no imaging, you store everything into a
personal Dropbox).

I ask about OS X support as the requirement for OS X to run Xcode kills a lot
of iOS development workshops as the cost is to high / device availability is
low.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer.

~~~
math0ne
I don't believe there is anything like RDP built into OSX, so I don't forsee
anything like this for apple any time soon.

~~~
bgaid
Apple's included screen sharing tool is a Mac-specific solution. At
MacStadium, we provide iRAAP server on our dedicated Mac servers for customers
connecting from Windows computers; it allows for RDP access to the remote Mac.

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criddell
If I move my PC to the network room and instead use remote desktop (I'm on
Windows almost all the time now), don't I get pretty much the same experience?

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facorreia
I took a quick look, but it's not for me. It's Windows only, and tops at 2
vCPUs, 7.5 GB of RAM, and 100 GB of storage.

~~~
yardie
This is almost the exact VM spec I use in VMware Fusion.

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spdegabrielle
I love the idea - but at the moment my tethered data costs (UK) would exceed
the costs of the Workspace by some margin.

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dfamorato
I love the concept. Anybody knows if there are similar offerings from Azure or
Google Cloud?

~~~
Spooky23
Azure has RemoteApp.

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wyldfire
Am I just slow today or did they really overload the "AWS" acronym for this?

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rorykoehler
Is this Amazon astroturfing on hackernews?

