A Little Bit of Stone is a news website that runs alongside my day job, a freelance IT consultant
[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]This article is about a service that we’ve used for a number of months and found useful.
There are discount codes/links in the article for you to use.
To be transparent we also benefit if you use them however, if you don’t want to use the discount codes the full link is at the end of the article.[/box]
I have to balance the need to have a lightweight portable computer to take to client sites but with the need to be able to do some more intensive tasks, like video editing or playing the latest PC games.
A friend sent over details of a company based out of Paris called Blade who offer a cloud-based computer called Shadow*.
For £26.99 (£16.99 for the first month if you use our link) per month, this gives me a cloud-based computer that I can access via any device that has an internet connection.
The specification on the machine as at the date of this article are:
CPU: An Intel Xeon 8 thread processor, they’re E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10 GHz, but they’re rolling out the newer Xeon E5-2667 v4 @ 3.2 GHz giving a nice bump in performance.
RAM: 12GB of DDR4 RAM
SSD Storage: 256GB (1TB available soon as an option)
Graphics Card: Each Shadow PC is equipped with a dedicated GTX 1080 or equivalent
Internet Connection: 1Gbs down and 100Mbps up! Installing an application or game takes no time at all with internet speeds this fast!
Operating System: Windows 10
Upgrades: Free hardware upgrades for life
The Shadow PC can be accessed in 2 different ways, as a client for your desktop, laptop, tablet or phone or via a dedicated Shadow Box.
We’re using the windows client on our laptops and desktops and then using an Android-based Nvidia Shield TV for big-screen gaming in the lounge!
The dedicated Shadow box takes away the need for an existing device; you just need an internet connection, monitor/TV and keyboard and mouse!
Your internet connection will be the key to how well Shadow performs for you, the recommended minimum is 15Mbps, and it’s recommended that you connect to this via an ethernet cable to reduce issues with wifi etc.
Once you sign up, which takes about 10 minutes, you’ll be able to download the app for your device and get connected!
You are logging onto a full Windows 10 based PC, so the first thing you need to do is set up things like your language and then login with your Microsoft account (or create one if you don’t have it!)
Once at the desktop it’s time to install some applications. You must have purchased the applications that you install, so I set mine up with Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, Steam and Evernote.
I’ve been running the PC now for three months and I’ve got to say it’s been fantastic. To be able to access a dedicated PC via any of my devices at any location (*subject to an internet connection) has been invaluable.
I’ve used it for rendering a number of videos and things like scrubbing through the timeline is seamless to using a power local PC.
From a gaming perspective, we’ve found it solid! We had a concern that the latency would hamper playing but we’ve found minimal issues when we had a good consistent internet connection. If this is a key driver for your decision then give it a spin for a month to see how your connection stands up to it.
Having an always on, always accessible PC has been invaluable to us as content creators.
[box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]If you’d like to sign up for the service then you can either use this link ALBOS referral link or enter the discount code JONFQZ9E
If you’d like to sign up direct without the referral or discount then please feel free to visit the Shadow.tech website
This service has no commitment so feel free to try it for a month and evaluate it yourself![/box]
