2 Active users on one system with two screens.

[FloppyPoppy]

good afternoon

the missus has finally gotten into a permanent work from home roll. Unfortunately the laptop (one of the lowest end of the first release chrome books ) isn’t appropriate for the job. Currently she doesn’t want to request an upgrade as doesn’t want to upset the apple cart on a new job.

I absolutely don’t mind her using my desktop but going forward we will end up in a situation where i want to use it it but she will be working.

It’s a very high end desktop

12900k
3090ti
32gb 5600mhz ram
and more than enough storage.

What i would like to configure is having two monitors, two mice and keyboards but running different instances so we can both use it at the same time.

I was wondering what solutions are best for this? i am assuming her instance will have to be run as a VM through mine with cores ram allocated appropriately but i’m not quite sure how to set it up in such a way that for her is just like turning on the pc logging in and getting to work No faffing around with vms every morning.

is it possible?

 

[mrk]

Windows does not allow multi-user logon at the same time, your only option would be a virtual machine, but you can't isolate a second set of mice/keyboard t the VM for just that either. VMWare allows this in a basic sense, but it's a bit of faff.

An alternative could be to use a Virtual Machine anyway and she can remote desktop [ onto it via the LAN from the Chromebook thus leveraging the power of the assigned hardware of the desktop. You cannot remote desktop onto an active Windows session without disconnecting the locally active user session. This feature was removed long ago outside of a corporate environment.

The more important question is why is the workplace not providing her with adequate hardware in order to do that job? It is a major issue if the workplace does not provide the tools to do a task and should be brought up since it sounds like it can be demonstrated as to why it is not usable properly and needs to be replaced.

 

[EdwardTeach]

good afternoon

the missus has finally gotten into a permanent work from home roll. Unfortunately the laptop (one of the lowest end of the first release chrome books ) isn’t appropriate for the job. Currently she doesn’t want to request an upgrade as doesn’t want to upset the apple cart on a new job.

I struggle to believe that the I.T department would not happily give her a better laptop if she mentions it. The current one must be years out of date, a replacement wouldnt be expensive, they are tax detuctable etc I stuggle to see why they would refuse.

 

[Django x2]

Windows does not allow multi-user logon at the same time, your only option would be a virtual machine, but you can't isolate a second set of mice/keyboard t the VM for just that either. VMWare allows this in a basic sense, but it's a bit of faff.

An alternative could be to use a Virtual Machine anyway and she can remote desktop [ onto it via the LAN from the Chromebook thus leveraging the power of the assigned hardware of the desktop. You cannot remote desktop onto an active Windows session without disconnecting the locally active user session. This feature was removed long ago outside of a corporate environment.

The more important question is why is the workplace not providing her with adequate hardware in order to do that job? It is a major issue if the workplace does not provide the tools to do a task and should be brought up since it sounds like it can be demonstrated as to why it is not usable properly and needs to be replaced.

To be fair, this is 2022 and not 2002. BYOD has been with us (the world) since 2016, and the push to zero trust is even more high profile. There is absolutely no requirement for an organisation to supply hardware. In fact, most I work for contractually detail the minimum spec device an employee should have, and provide, to do their job.

Having said that, you are right in that she should at least ask and detail her position. One other options is Windows 365 which is a DaaS offering, fairly cheap to have a single instance, fully managed and as mrk pointed out, could technically be accessed from the Chromebook

 

[skyripper]

BYOD though is a convenience for those who want to use their own kit. Most employees don't care about IT or sourcing their own or understand that 1GB or ram and 1TB of spinning rust is not better than 16GB ram and 256GB of ssd. Any org that think their average employees can make good IT purchasing decisions is delusional. Otherwise places like Currys would be still flogging people Packard Bells.

 

[Semple]

BYOD is a terrible policy. Our company will let you "BYOD" but in essence you transfer over all rights/privacy to the IT department. To the point it's not even worth bothering to do.

Most people's BYOD stretches to allowing email/IM on personal phones, anything outside of that really needs a laptop provided at the expense of the company.

 

[mrk]

Oh I fully get both sides, I was setting up, buying and controlling device deployment for my users for 8 years and that environment was a mix of BYOD (O365 ecosystem access) so had to set up stuff like intune. Most user devices were fine for this, and they could access their work via personal laptops through Office 365 portal anyway so that was fine too but in order to do work through any local servers that was a remote connection through a VPN. _ None of these things had any low bar system requirements, it just worked as it was low resource usage. And where the VPN was installed on their own laptops, we took some administrative control over those devices for security purposes.

As above, anything beyond that a company laptop/phone is always provided. There was a baseline spec for everyone, but if someone's workload was more demanding, like people working in databases or very large spreadsheets with loads of formulas etc where more CPU power and RAM was necessary (Finance department for example) then those people would get upgraded when the issue was brought up.