Interesting. I already use an EC2 instance for exactly this (running Debian) and it has been a great way to work. My laptop only needs to be powerful enough to run an ssh client and X server and then the instance does all the heavy lifting of running applications (in this case, mostly compiling code). It is beyond cool being able to scale the hardware up/down depending on how nasty my current project's build is. Even better is that I can ssh in and do basic work from any computer than has an ssh client. Emergency one-line patch from my smartphone? Fuck yeah! Pricing of the new desktop instances looks a little high compared to reserved instances of similar power, but I imagine that is the MSFT tax at work.
Looks pretty good compared to the 'On Demand' instances though, even including the MS and (I assume) Teradici licensing. Somewhere in between On Demand on Reserved. If you can script yo sh!t together, spot instances is where it's at..
I've thought about going this route. Somewhere along the line I found "mosh" which might be useful to you if you're working at the terminal a bunch. I solves the typing latency issue as well as a host of platform specific terminal emulation issues.
