Amazon’s $195 thin clients are repurposed Fire TV Cubes

Article note: I'm typically amused by the hardware similarity of all the devices in the SBC/Media Gadget/Thin Client/Chromebook space and ...apparently Amazon thinks the same way. It's also a super clear "Rent time on someone elses' computer" return-to-mainframe-era SaaS rentseeking situation, the shittiest feeblest VDI instances are like $25/mo.

Enlarge / A blog post from AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr shows the Workspaces Thin Client setup. (credit: Jeff Barr/Amazon)

Amazon has turned its Fire TV Cube streaming device into a thin client optimized for Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon's Workspaces Thin Client also supports Amazon's Workspaces Web, for accessing virtual desktops from a browser, and AppStream.

The computer is a Fire TV Cube with a new software stack. All the hardware—from the 2GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 16GB of storage, to the Arm processor with 8 cores, including four running at up to 2.2 GHz—remain identical whether buying the device as an Alexa-powered entertainment-streaming device or thin client computer. Both the Fire TV Cube and Workspaces Thin Client run an Android Open Source Project-based Android fork (for now).