Windows hosting for home use?

Question

Remote access

Please tell me, the question is completely from a number of beginners
in the field of hosting, I want to buy hosting with a powerful machine under Windows 7/8 and use it remotely via RDP (remotely via RDP is probably the best option). I don’t know if this is real, install applications like photoshop there. How to find these services? If there is no Windows "home" then Server 2003/2008. I know the option of buying a dedicated server, but are there services for installing the operating system with your own hands?
If there are such options, then the following nuance arises: I want to buy as few licenses as possible, i.e. forgive me, greedy me, and pirated software is not excluded. How is it then with the manual installation of programs? Thank you and happy Friday ;)

Answer 1

Almost any program, including Photoshop, can work over RDP.
The process of working with it will not be as responsive as on the local computer, but it will work. You will experience delays in rendering the image ~ proportional to the network latency to the host.
Professional hosts usually use only server operating systems.
Finding hosting fundamentally with a home OS version can take time, but they do exist. Usually these are someone's private small sites, sometimes called "school hostings".
There is also "Desktop as a Service". Not many people provide it, but it is a virtual desktop with a desktop version of the OS, sometimes working not only over PCoIP / HDX, but also over RDP.
Photoshop will work on both the desktop version and the server OS. There is no difference in this.
For acceleration, Photoshop tries to use the GPU. If the server has a weak video card (for example: Intel HD Graphics), then the entire load will fall on the processor. On hosting with a weak CPU, Photoshop can lag.
Not always. Often this is just a choice among the prepared distributions for deployment.
You are not required to activate the license on the server, it will work in trial mode for around 180 days. After that, you can request to redeploy the server again, after saving the data somewhere to yourself.