We've been having good success running desktops as docker containers, scheduled on Mesos using cheaper GCE machines. We use TurboVNC as it has a built in Javascript VNC client too.
I can't quite articulate why fully, but to me this article sums up everything that's wrong with programmers and the community in general (of which I consider myself a part). :(
This is brilliant, thank you! Is there any audio/video of the lectures available anywhere? I've been enjoying some other Stanford courses on iTunes U and Coursera :)