Microsoft Recreates the Terminal with Windows 365 Link

Ever since PCs came out, IT (back then it was called Management Information Systems) has been trying to get back to terminals. Back then, you didn’t worry about endpoint updates, user viruses or malware much at all. From an IT perspective, terminals were heaven, but for users, terminals were hell.

Well, Microsoft is bringing back the terminal in a product called Windows 365 Link, which promises the benefits of the terminal for IT and the benefits of a PC for users. Let’s chat about that this week.

Terminals: A Bit of Heaven for IT, A Bit of Hell for Users

I worked at IBM when we were moving from terminals to PCs, and it wasn’t fun. Terminals came on like TVs did. You just waited for the tube to warm up and light up, there was no real booting process, no software updates, and the only time you had to worry about a crash was when the mainframe went down which was rare, though when it did, it would pretty much shut the company down.

For IT this was heaven. It had full control over the hardware, and it was typically locked up in a secure room much as servers are today, and IT was mostly focused on creating new applications that had little to do with what the people that requested them wanted.

And that was the downside. Users had virtually no control, and they had to go to IT to get custom applications made so they could do their jobs. The process of creating the custom application was long and expensive, and it generally ended with missed expectations because it wasn’t like you could just go to the store and buy one. That isn’t to say that firms didn’t build applications that you could buy, but you had to go through IT, which had to approve the application, and then someone had to fund testing and deployment much like we do now. Assuming the result ever worked, which wasn’t a given, users generally were less than happy with the result.

One of the worst user apps back then was Profs. It was so horrible that the executive over Profs once asked his lead salesperson why it wasn’t selling. She took him to a terminal and told him to try it out. (Back then, IBM Execs had secretaries, so they didn’t have to learn this stuff). After just a few minutes, he walked away, saying the thing was crap. That was clearly also one of the problems with IBM back then. That has since been corrected, but for users, terminals were hell.

Windows 365 Link

So, for a new terminal, what you need are the benefits of the terminal (fast startup times, little to no need to manage the thing other than securing it against unapproved use), and the benefits of the PC (user flexibility, modern apps and less reliance on IT to get things done).

That is what Microsoft appears to have created with Windows 365 Link. It’s a terminal (well more accurately a thin client, which is a modern terminal concept) that looks like a micro PC, and it costs a reasonable (compared to both terminal and PC costs) $349 and connects the user to an enterprise (for now, this is enterprise only).

While I’ve been calling it a terminal, it’s actually a thin client, which means there is code that runs on the box, but it is very limited. It’s only designed to connect to Microsoft’s cloud, and its ability to run local apps is severely constrained, at best, and likely will be disabled.

While thin clients have been known to be slow and annoying to users, over time and with network advancements, the emergence of the cloud, and most recently AI, they can be as performant as a PC, though this still depends greatly on the network.

So, with Windows 365 Link, there is the potential to have the best of both worlds: the reliability, availability, and security of a terminal with the flexibility and usefulness of a PC, with one exception. It is not a wireless device, so laptop users are out of luck for now (though that will change).

Wrapping Up

What the market has wanted almost since the beginning of the PC age is a blend of the benefits the terminal supplied and the flexibility and usefulness of what the PC grants. Thin clients were an attempt to get there over two decades ago, but we didn’t have the cloud, and networking technology wasn’t where it needed to be back then.

Over time, that has changed, and at least with respect to desktop PCs, Microsoft is bringing to market what appears to be the best blend of terminal and PC benefits with the Windows 365 Link. We’ll see if this is the beginning of a post-PC future at scale. It’s looking like it just might be.