Chapter 1

Getting Familiar with the Future of Windows

IN THIS CHAPTER

Gaining a general understanding of a cloud-based PC

Exploring how Windows 365 is the future of Windows

Finding answers to common questions that arise as Windows moves into the future

The concept of a cloud-based PC is not an easy one to get your head around. Until recently, a computer was a physical device that sat on your desk, or perhaps on your lap, or in your pocket. How can Microsoft move that physical computer into the cloud? Keep reading to find out!

In this chapter, you get familiar with the future of Windows and the ways Microsoft is moving the PC into the cloud. We explore the concepts behind Windows 365 and walk through new terminology you will need when thinking and talking about the new Windows. Finally, because this is a brand new way of thinking about a PC, we dig into some of the common questions that we had, and that most people have, when learning about Windows 365 for the first time.

Meeting the Cloud PC

We remember when we bought our first computer. It was a long time ago, and it was a beautiful machine. It had a proud place sitting right on our main desk and we used it frequently. That was decades ago, but over the years not much has changed with the ways we bought and used our PCs. Until now!

Microsoft has moved the PC into the cloud with Windows 365. When we first heard about the concept, we had to scratch our heads. How could it be possible? A PC is something you sit down in front of and type and work on. Unless there is a way to plug our brains into the virtual world (did someone say metaverse?) then a PC will always be a physical thing, right? Well, this is where Windows 365 changes the equation.

Windows 365 is a cloud-based PC, and you interact with it using any physical device you choose.

Yes, for the time being, using a computer will still require you to interact with a physical object, such as a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. What Windows 365 does is detach the keyboard, mouse, and monitor you are physically using from your cloud PC computer. Because the cloud PC is running in a Microsoft data center, you can use any other device to connect to it and use it. All you need is an Internet connection and a physical device you can interact with. In other words, the physical device becomes a simple bridge to work on your cloud PC. Most any physical device will do the job, because your physical computer becomes a "dumb" computer. All the really wonderful things you do for work still live on your Windows 365 computer, as illustrated in Figure 1-1. We cover the requirements of the physical device you use and the Internet connection required to access your cloud PC in Chapter 16.

FIGURE 1-1: Windows 365 detaches the physical device (including, for example a keyboard, mouse, and monitor; or touchscreen) from the operating system.

You may find yourself asking, what is a cloud PC good for? What is it not so good for? A cloud PC is great for companies that are remote or hybrid. This is because the cloud PC can be centralized for your organization and remote workers connect to it just like they would come into an office and turn on their desktop computer. As an organization, you can think of all of the cloud PCs as being "inside" your organization. You control them, and remote users connect to them to get work done. The actual cloud PC never "leaves" your organization, though. If someone exits your organization, they simply stop logging in and you retain all information, content, and work that was performed on the cloud PC. Where cloud PCs are not so good is when people in your organization don't have a stable and reliable Internet connection. The cloud PC is streamed over the Internet, and if you don't have a solid Internet connection then a cloud PC will not work.

Think of your cloud PC as nearly identical to the physical computer you have at home, or in your office, running Windows. Any software you would install on your physical computer running Windows you can also install on your cloud PC running Windows 365. Of course, you still need to keep in mind the requirements for the software such as memory and disk space. Just like your physical computer, your cloud PC has a set amount of memory and disk space. We cover how to select the amount of memory and disk space in Chapter 2.

No, really, what is Windows 365?

To understand what Microsoft is doing with Windows, all you have to do is look back a decade or so ago at what they did with Office. You remember Office, right? Office programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have been around for ages.

It used to be that Microsoft would release a new version of Office every few years. You would buy it and install it on your computer and hope you would remember to make backups frequently and keep your files secure. Then Microsoft moved to a new cloud-based model offered as a subscription called Office 365. With Office 365, you sign up and you always have the latest Office programs. You don't have to wait for the next version of Office to come out in order to get the new features. With Office 365 you get them right away, as they are released. And because these programs are cloud-based, your files are saved to the cloud and automatically backed up and secured for you. We must admit that over the last decade, Office 365 has saved our files from some computer crashes and mishaps on multiple occasions.

Microsoft is starting the same journey with Windows as they did with Office. The success of Office 365 led Microsoft to do the same thing with Windows. In particular, Windows 365 is a subscription based offering that is constantly improved with new features and updated. By adopting the "365" model and moving the PC to the cloud, Microsoft makes Windows a cloud based operating system. This is important because it removes the friction and burden of managing your own physical computer. In a way, when you use a cloud PC you are offloading to Microsoft the burden of running a computer.

You don't have to look further than the 365 in the name to figure it out. And as you can probably guess, using the number 365 is a standard for Microsoft moving forward. You know, because there are 365 days in a year, and you can get new features on any of those days instead of just on a particular day every few years. Figure 1-2 illustrates how Microsoft is doing with Windows what they did with Office.

FIGURE 1-2: Windows is following the same journey as Office.

Parts of Office 365 have recently been renamed to Microsoft 365. You will still find Office 365 for enterprises but for small business and personal use you will see the branding as Microsoft 365. With Microsoft 365, you still get Office, and Microsoft has bundled a number of other things into the subscription as well. For larger enterprises, you will still see the branding as Office 365.

Looking at a real-world example

To get a better understanding of why Microsoft is on this 365 cloud journey, let's look at a real-world example. As we write this book, we type on many different physical computers. We use our laptops when we are out, in coffee shops, hotels, and elsewhere (hopefully more often as the pandemic fades), and we use a desktop computer both at home and in the office. Office 365 lets us do this because we have the Office programs installed on all of our devices, and our files are saved in the cloud. This works great for the work we do in Office, but what about all the other programs we use at work?

We cover signing up and getting started with Windows 365 in Chapter 2. We cover using Office 365 with Windows 365 in Chapter 9.

Office 365 moves your apps and files to the cloud so you can work on them from any device as long as you have the Office app installed on that device. Windows 365 moves your entire PC and all of the programs installed on it to the cloud so that you can work on from any device.

On our work computers, we have all sorts of programs. When we need to get work done with those programs, we wait until we are sitting at our work computers. This is where Windows 365 comes into play. Windows 365 takes your entire computer and moves it to the cloud so you can connect to it using any computer or device. We no longer have to wait until we get to the office to work on our computer there. It is always available to us wherever we are in the world and on whatever physical device we happen to be using at the time.

To make the point, though we don't recommend it, you could even chuck your physical computer in the ocean and a minute later pick up another physical computer and continue working on your cloud PC just like nothing ever happened. With Windows 365, your PC becomes detached from the physical world. Have you seen the new Matrix movie? Maybe your Windows 365 computer is inside the Matrix - though we aren't sure we want to jack in using a spike in the back of our heads just yet.

Always on, always available, and just how you left it

Your Windows 365 computer stays the same regardless of how you connect to it. For example, you might connect to it from bed in the morning using your Google Chromebook, then move down to your home office using your Mac for breakfast, and then using your Linux laptop on your commute, and finally a Windows desktop computer in your office.

Even though you are moving between...