NUC, NUC! Who’s there? ASUS with a thin client for Microsoft’s cloudy PCs

Microsoft has found some friends to make desktop devices that boot into its Windows 365 cloud PCs.

The software giant was previously the only vendor to make such machines, in the form of the Windows 365 Link machines it debuted in 2024 and delivered the next year.

Dell and ASUS have now joined the cloudy PC party.

ASUS’s model is the NUC 16 for Windows 365. Readers may recall that “NUC” stands for Next Unit of Computing, a brand Intel coined for a range of PCs it and later sold to ASUS.

After the Taiwanese company acquired NUCs, ASUS told The Register it wanted to take the machines into new markets.

And now it has, and says its machine offers “the latest Intel processor” without specifying a model, but promises DDR5 memory, Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5GbE LAN, Bluetooth 5.3, HDMI, USB Type-C, and USB Type-A ports will all ...