AWS Repurposes Fire TV Cubes Into $195 Thin Clients For Cloud Desktops (theregister.com) 25
Simon Sharwood reports via The Register: Amazon Web Services has announced the WorkSpaces Thin Client -- a device dedicated to connecting to its WorkSpaces desktop-as-a service offering and based on Amazon's own "Fire Cube" smart TV box. The $195 machine has the same hardware as the Fire Cube: the eight-core Arm-powered Amlogic POP1-G SoC, plus 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 10/100 ethernet, and a single USB-A 2.0 port. Bluetooth is included to connect other peripherals. A second HDMI output can be added by acquiring an $85 hub that also offers four more USB ports. Like the Fire TV Cube, the Thin Client also runs a modified cut of Android.
But there the similarities end. AWS created custom firmware and ripped out anything remotely related to running a consumer device, replacing it with software designed solely to create a secure connection between the device and desktops running in the Amazonian cloud. Amazon Business -- the B2B version of Jeff Bezos's digital souk -- will ship the device to your door, and charge it to your AWS bill. At least if you are in the USA. Europe will get the Thin Client in early 2024, and it'll eventually migrate elsewhere.
AWS decided to base the box on the Fire Cube because, according to a corporate blog post, AWS customers expressed a desire for cheaper and easier-to-maintain client devices. As AWS execs searched for a well-priced box, they considered the Fire TV Cube, found it fit the bill and noted it was already being made at scale. Keeping things in-house made sense, too. And so we find ourselves with AWS taking on established thin client providers. The cloudy concern is also keen to have a crack at the thick wedge of the enterprise PC market: call centers, payment processing centers, and other environments with lots of users and high staff turnover due to factors like seasonal demand for workers.
But there the similarities end. AWS created custom firmware and ripped out anything remotely related to running a consumer device, replacing it with software designed solely to create a secure connection between the device and desktops running in the Amazonian cloud. Amazon Business -- the B2B version of Jeff Bezos's digital souk -- will ship the device to your door, and charge it to your AWS bill. At least if you are in the USA. Europe will get the Thin Client in early 2024, and it'll eventually migrate elsewhere.
AWS decided to base the box on the Fire Cube because, according to a corporate blog post, AWS customers expressed a desire for cheaper and easier-to-maintain client devices. As AWS execs searched for a well-priced box, they considered the Fire TV Cube, found it fit the bill and noted it was already being made at scale. Keeping things in-house made sense, too. And so we find ourselves with AWS taking on established thin client providers. The cloudy concern is also keen to have a crack at the thick wedge of the enterprise PC market: call centers, payment processing centers, and other environments with lots of users and high staff turnover due to factors like seasonal demand for workers.
You can buy a computer for that price.... (Score:5, Informative)
and the cost of an Cloud PCs add's up (Score:5, Informative)
at
2 vCPU
8 GB RAM
128 GB Storage
for $41/mo PER USER
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed, but so do the cost of supporting everyone except for your standard employee.
Have a short term contractor coming in to do work and need them on the network? Well now you need spare hardware and local IT support for them, and they get the joys of carting around 2 laptops everywhere. Suddenly $41/mo per user sounds cheap, especially if it's 100 users who only stick around for 6 months.
Also then there's the power user or extra case. I have a cloud desktop provisioned for me for simulation tasks. What us
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Yes, but $200 of that price is for the Amazon logo.
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I get corporate licensing and security etc, but for 98% of us out here, you can buy a fairly modern Beelink mini PC with 8GB of ram, 512 GB SSD and a quad or better core laptop chip for less than $195 USD and have a on premise computer that can actually still access cloud desktops and do more.
Large chunks of the article discuss why having a full PC running as a client is less desirable, including local data storage and OS maintenance for the client hardware.
No need to worry about hardware seizure or required bootup & login at airports, no worrying about stolen devices. Essentially no care if ex-employees don't return one of these devices - their cloud access has already been removed and there's no local data storage to wipe. Replacements on breakage are simple - not the multi-hour process ou
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I like the prices, but egad their website is dire. You have to click into each product (or use google) just to find out which CPU it has. The page is like 80% whitespace and the images appear to be loading via dialup.
"Product Details
Small and exquisite products can be seen."
AhaHAHahaHaha
Does anyone believe you can get support out of these clowns?
the bandwidth needed to push dual 1080p to each un (Score:2)
the bandwidth needed to push dual 1080p to each unit?
and at an call center you may also have VOIP as well with even that phone also being an switch for the PC.
$195 dollars for one USB port and one HDMI? (Score:2)
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Most users will demand more for less. There are plenty of alternatives.
Yep.
An AppleTV 4K as a Thin Client would whip all over this thing.
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There is a dual monitor option and USB hubs.
1998 called (Score:3)
It said to keep its thin client computing paradigm. It doesn’t want it back.
Re:1998 called (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yeah, in 2023, we all over grossly overpowered workstations that would put a Cray supercomputer to shame to run a bloated browser as a slow thin client-cum-virtual machine running bloated web apps that rely on 15 layers of bloated web-two-oh frameworks to perform basic tasks running on a server on the other side of the planet owned by a company that only offers the service to steal your private data.
Don't be fooled: the Amazon thing is nothing other than yet another variation of the above. The thin client computing paradigm is well and truly gone, because there's nothing thin in any of the garbage that powers the internet today.
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Because silicon it cheap and coders are not?
My MSP430-based toothbrush could run 3D circles around my first Z80 based computer. So can my Ikea single-button remote light switch for LED lighting (also MSP430 based).
But yea, all is over complicated.
Re: (Score:2)
Well yeah, in 2023, we all over grossly overpowered workstations that would put a Cray supercomputer to shame to run a bloated browser as a slow thin client-cum-virtual machine running bloated web apps that rely on 15 layers of bloated web-two-oh frameworks to perform basic tasks running on a server on the other side of the planet owned by a company that only offers the service to steal your private data.
Don't be fooled: the Amazon thing is nothing other than yet another variation of the above. The thin client computing paradigm is well and truly gone, because there's nothing thin in any of the garbage that powers the internet today.
That's what I was thinking: Oh, here we go again with the once every decade "Thin Client" sham!
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We've all been using thin clients at my company since we went remote in 2020.
We can rack 100gbe nvme storage with the workstations and not deal with syncing TBs of data to remote workers.
Everything stays in the office except for H265 4:4:4 video.
AWS Cloud Thinclient Callcenter Bezos as-a-service (Score:2)
Wow, I rarely see so many nauseating words and acronyms in one single article.
not cheap (Score:2)
Screw it.... (Score:1)
I remember thin clients (Score:3)
They were called VT100's
2 GB RAM? (Score:2)
GTFOH
Thin client that is (virtually) fat? (Score:2)
Whatever happened to real thin clients, starting with terminals, to KICKs to web clients? Why would one need a full PCs with GUI all running remotely only to have to access it via RDP?
Very odd announcement in multiple ways... (Score:2)
First, in the Amazon press release, the state, "For a significant portion of the workforce, some form of remote and hybrid work is here to stay, particularly in industries such as customer service, technical support, and health care." That's after Amazon has taken an aggressive position AGAINST remote and hybrid workers within their own company.
Second, IIRC, the thin-client model gets rolled out every 15 to 20 years, only to be re-discovered that it isn't that great (as others have commented).
Third, this th
Unusable garbage (Score:2)
These things are always slower and harder to support than just a standard workstation, support and ongoing costs are higher. 2GB memory was ok for tiny low cost devices 10 years ago, now it's just a joke.
It's not impossible to configure a set of applications that will work in such a poor spec, but most teams can't or won't do it. I think a stop-gap solution might be in order, want to run a software stack with little CPU, a tiny allocation of ram and no local storage? Try it on a physical machine that can