Microsoft Halts Windows 365 Free Trials Due to 'Significant Demand'

Microsoft has paused Windows 365 free trials just a day after launching the cloud PC service. The Redmond company said that it had to pause the free trial programme for Windows 365 due to “significant demand”. Windows 365 is designed to deliver a full-fledged computing experience to users, with a variety of virtual processing cores, RAM, and storage options. The service offers personal computing based on Windows 10 or Windows 11 (when it will be available) via a Web browser. This enables device-agnostic access to Windows PCs over the cloud.

“Following significant demand, we have reached capacity for Windows 365 trials,” Microsoft notified users through the official Microsoft 365 account on Twitter.

The company is redirecting users to sign up on the Windows 365 webpage to receive notification when the trials resume.

“We have seen unbelievable response to Windows 365 and need to pause our free trial programme while we provision additional capacity,” Windows 365 Programme Management Director Scott Manchester explained in a tweet.

Microsoft has, however, not yet provided details on how many users were able to sign up for the free trials and whether it would continue to provide support to the customers signed up under its free trial programme. Gadgets 360 has reached out to the company seeking clarity on both these points and will update this space when it responds.

Notably, Windows 365 in its current model is meant specifically for businesses and is not targeted at the masses. The service, though, appears to have been able to gain more interest than Microsoft expected initially.

Windows 365 was unveiled last month as Microsoft's solution to address the growing demand for PCs. The service can be accessed via a Web browser on any Windows, Mac, iPad, and Android device to offer a complete PC-like experience. It also lets customers choose from the available set of configurations that start from one virtual processing core, 2GB RAM, and 64GB storage.

Besides free trials, Windows 365 is available under monthly paid models to customers. It starts at Rs. 1,555 and goes up to Rs. 12,295, depending on the configuration they pick.

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