Daylife/AP Photo by Elaine Thompson
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Microsoft has applied for a patent on metered, pay-as-you-go computing. Under the proposal, consumers would receive heavily discounted PCs, then pay fees for usage.
U.S. patent application number 20080319910, published on Christmas Day, details Microsoft’s vision of a situation where a “standard model” of PC is given away or heavily subsidized by someone in the supply chain. 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.”
Microsoft notes in the application that the end user could end up paying more for the computer, compared with the one-off cost entailed in the existing PC business model, but argues the user would benefit by having a PC with an extended “useful life.”
According to the application, the issue with the existing PC business model is that it “requires more or less a one chance at the consumer kind of mentality, where elasticity curves are based on the pressure to maximize profits on a one-time-sale, one-shot-at-the-consumer mentality.”
Is there anyone besides beancounters on the Microsoft payroll?
Microsoft has come up with NOTHING new. They saw the “Tivo” and they WANTED IT!!! But in the form of their software, since they aren’t in the PC making business. So this approach will be like turn PCes in Tivos. Or rather Peevos. You’ll be peeved at them just as much. But you’ll have to pay a monthly fee to continue to be peeved at them. And there will be even less financial incentive for Microsoft to update and fix its OS’s problems. Since they’ll be getting a renewal fee, anyway, regardless of whether they do anything or not!
Of course some alternative OS might come to the foreground to fill the gap, if M$ takes this approach. That’s why M$ will have to work with the PC and device makers to keep all the driver info proprietary and secret, between them. And don’t depend on Congress passing some law to free up driver code. They’ll bail out of protecting free computing, at the wave of a lobbyist’s dollar bill!
Hmmm… So maybe we’ll eventually get “free” basic broadband in the US. But we’ll end up paying thru the nose, usage fees for anything that connects up to it. Yeah, that’s how these things always work out.
Is it just me, or does Ballmer look like Al Capone in that picture?
This marketing model certainly worked for cell phones but isn’t it WAY too late for PCs?
When PCs were $1,500 or $2,000 I might have considered such a program — but when you can pick one up for $400, how steeply can they discount it?
More likely to work is if the cable or phone companies, give away a free media PC with a broadband connection and a one-year contract.
Didn’t the “Free PC” segment of the dotcom boom establish prior art? I guess they just charged a monthly fee instead of metering your bandwidth. I still don’t see how this patent is defensible.
There are plenty of sheeple out there to shear, and M$ knows it. What the hell, there’s room in this market for lots of alternatives. But if M$ thinks they’re going to use monopolistic strong-arm techniques to force the entire market to this model, they are very, very, mistaken.
Another stunningly bad, outdated concept from Microsoft. Meanwhile Apple keeps on intuiting what consumers would really like to have – and producing it – and selling it.
Certainly no prior art on this is there?
Seems to me, even when desktop units were running upwards of a thousand bucks, companies had a hard time with similar business models.
Not only should this not be patented, as it simply retreads previous marketing attempts, but should a gimmick like this really be patentable at all?