I’ve been intrigued by the idea of remoting into a cloud-based computer for years. Historically, it’s been expensive and the machines were limited in CPU power, RAM and storage. A french company called Blade is changing this with their Shadow service. For $35 a month, you get remote access to an Intel Xeon processor with eight dedicated threads, 12GB of DDR4 memory, 256GB of storage and NVidia GTX 1080 equivalent graphics. What’s really cool is that the hardware evolves and automatically upgrades. You don’t have to keep upgrading your computer!
You can remote in from your computer or mobile device (Windows, Mac and Android available now, iOS coming soon) and the minimum bandwidth is just 5Mbps. That will get you 720p at 60 fps. Faster connections will get you up to 4k resolution. (Note: Dual screens are not yet supported but will be in the future according to the FAQ.) Keep in mind that your local bandwidth is only used for display and remote control, the host computer has a 1Gb per second Internet connection!
Although it’s billed as a gaming service, it’s still just a Windows 10 machine so you could use it as an everyday computer as well. The question I have is how it will work with local storage which will be essential for resource intensive work like video and graphics editing.
$35 a month may seem steep, but it’s a lot cheaper than buying a similarly spec’d PC. Also, in lieu of using your own PC, you can also buy their Shadow Box for $139.95 or $9.95 per month to rent.
Check their website for availability. The west coast is already up and the east coast is scheduled for August 9. Look for a nationwide rollout by October.
A Service that Lets You Use Windows 10 on Any Computer or Phone Is Going Nationwide
Back at CES in January, French company Blade seemed to promise the moon. For a monthly fee, the company would give users access to a high-end Windows 10 machine, with the latest CPU from Intel and a beefy Nvidia 1080 GPU built in.