Linked by David Adams on Tue 30th Dec 2008 19:04 UTC, submitted by jeanmarc
A recently-filed patent from Microsoft gives us a glimpse into a possible future strategy from the software giant, wherein people buy a computer, but only pay for that portion of the computer's performance and capabilities they actually use. There's a pretty detailed summary of the plan in a Cnet article that's worth a read. It actually sounds a lot like a "cloud computing" strategy for the consumer, and it all seems to make sense, until you start to really think about it.
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Member since:
2006-01-01
Ok this is just ridicolous and I am furious about it:
The end user then pays to use the computer, with charges based on both the length of usage time and the performance levels utilized, along with a "one-time charge"
A computer with scalable performance level components and selectable software and service options has a user interface that allows individual performance levels to be selected"
"The scalable performance level components may include a processor, memory, graphics controller, etc. Software and services may include word processing, email, browsing, database access, etc. To support a pay-per-use business model, each selectable item may have a cost associated with it, allowing a user to pay for the services actually selected"
Are you for real? Seriously! Perhaps they'd start charing how many times you've played a song with WM even non-protected or how many times you've visitted a web site or how long you have spent on linux.com and may be they'd be an extra charge when you go to distrowatch.com. This is so dumb. I so hope the patent does not go through.
Edited 2008-12-30 20:11 UTC