Recommends

The best Windows laptops

Here are 's top picks for a variety of use cases.

Read now

Microsoft is releasing Microsoft Dev Box, its cloud-based developer-workstation service, as a public preview on August 15. Announced earlier this year at Microsoft's annual Build developer conference, Dev Box is designed to allow programmers to focus on code, not infrastructure.

Microsoft Dev Box can support any developer IDE, software development kit, or tool that runs on Windows. Developers can use Dev Box to create desktop, mobile, IoT, and/or web applications. Because it is a Windows environment in the cloud, Dev Box also supports Windows Subsystem for Linux and Windows Subsystem for Android. Dev Box can be accessed from any Windows, MacOS, Android, or iOS device or a web browser.

Devs can choose from a variety of different Dev Box sizes -- from 4 vCPUs with 16 GB of storage to 32 vCPUs and 128 GB of storage. During the preview period, companies get the first 15 hours of the Dev Box 8vCPU and 32GB of memory for free every month along with the first 365 hours of the Dev Box Storage SSD 512 GB SKU. Beyond that, companies pay for what they use per hour based on consumption-based pricing.

Under the covers, Dev Box runs on the Azure Virtual Desktop service and can be managed alongside Windows 365 Cloud PCs using Endpoint Manager.

Microsoft is not yet talking publicly about how much Dev Box will cost once it is generally available or when it will be generally available. Today is the launch of the public preview of Dev Box only.

More Microsoft

Is Windows 10 too popular for its own good?The best Windows laptop models: Comparing Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, and moreHere's why Windows PCs are only going to get more annoyingHow to downgrade from Windows 11 to Windows 10 (there's a catch)

• Is Windows 10 too popular for its own good?
• The best Windows laptop models: Comparing Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, and more
• Here's why Windows PCs are only going to get more annoying
• How to downgrade from Windows 11 to Windows 10 (there's a catch)