Microsoft patent application hints at pay-as-you-go PCs
By Donald Melanson 
posted Dec 29th 2008 4:47PM
posted Dec 29th 2008 4:47PM
Heavily subsidized computers are hardly a new idea, as evidenced by the number of carriers now offering "free" netbooks, but a recently revealed patent application indicates that Microsoft might be thinking about taking the idea a few steps further. Apparently, the company is at least toying around with the idea of offering a computer with "scalable performance level components" and selectable software, which sounds somewhat similar to the "managed PC" that Microsoft developed with Korea's KT telecom a few years back. That would effectively let users only pay for the features that they used, with some added graphics performance or storage space simply a few bucks an hour away, as helpfully illustrated above. To prevent folks from "unlocking" the PC, each computer would also come equipped with a security module and metering agent that locks the PC to a particular supplier, and presumably offers up a whole host of other restrictions. Of course, this is a Microsoft patent application and, as we've seen, that hardly assures an actual product.
[Via Electronista]
[Via Electronista]
Lame!
Lame is right. I've already started to migrate from Windows and not a moment too soon.
im confused. wouldnt that mean everyone has to get a computer with 2tb and everything to begin with? if so thats stupid. if not... nah thats still stupid
Actually it could benefit the smarter consumer you get a computer with locked down parts for a base price of $200 then break the rest of the parts open on a $1200 PC for free...
This actually sounds a lot more like a scalable cloud-computing platform. If my local machine is just a "terminal", it can be relatively underpowered and almost never need an upgrade. It just needs a solid internet connection and decent graphics card. If all the processing and storage are done in some massive server farm someplace halfway across the country, it makes sense that I'd want to "scale" my system to my needs. Think of it like Amazon's EC2, but for end users rather than web servers.
All you have to do is wipe a magnet on the HD and the HD will be corrupt and then you can re install the OS and all the hardware is unlocked.
Microsoft should introduce pay as u go software scheme. Big discount for those who do not use IE, Paint, Notepad.
Unfortunately, wiping a hard-disk wont work. I am pretty damn sure, they will lock from the BIOS, so everytime you reinstall the OS i.e. Microsoft Windows, the program will be auto inserted again since its in Bios. (Notebook anti-theft has already had this).
Well when you install another OS, this is still unknown, but I bet they will use a special custom Bios so by default other OS i.e. Linux, etc, wont work out of the box. (Unless some hacker manage to open it)
Not much difference between this and enterprise class equipment. You pay to use the 'extra' features, even though they are already in the box.
Maybe not, thing of all the people that never use a computer. Or they just use it to check email and browse a few webpages. They get a computer for a few bucks a month because they hardly use it. Think if you could just pay for the channels you actually watch on cable/sat. I have 5 channels I actually watch, but I'm paying for 195 others just to get those 5.
you are sehr lame... this is quite intresting =]
Rather impressive comment history you've got there.
Your post is so convoluted, it makes everyone think: "_W_h_a_t___t_h_e___h_e_l_l_"
Am I missing what is or ever was so entertaining about "idiot speak" / lolcats speak?
What next, Pay Toilets?
my friend said those existed in england when he visited
Yeah you can actually get those here (In England)
I've only seen them a few times , and they cost 20p ,But being a kid you can just jump over the barrier to get in.
Here in Sweden (awesome country by the way) we have those. They cost like 40 cents.
but don't the pay toilets self-clean? I'd pay a quarter for a sanitary johnny...
yep they do exist in UK, also in holland lol :P
@bandigolo
Err, no. Manual cleaning. Ofcource not provided by the users.
@ Arkenklo
Err, YES. A lot of the ones in the streets in London DO self-sanitise.
oh snap. Looks like the Sweden v. England soccer match is going to extra saucy this year!
@Turky
Err No they dont. In Sweden. That's not needed since we dont exactly stand up shitting. Swedes know to use the bathroom without leaving a mess, a art apparently not yet mastered my their English counterparts (toilet-users).
I'm leaving the subject, this is a techblog.
in ukraine and lots of russia and stuff it will be polite to tip the person working the door when you use the WC as well. but thats the price you pay for public bathrooms to exist and be cleaned.
hmm... i think YOUR MOMS NEXT =]
Lolz. They already have those. :P
They have pay toilets in San Francisco also. They clean themselves after. I think they might have them in San Jose also. Can't remember.
I think that already exists.
so, put these computers in the pay toilets...
lol go to Europe those already exist
They already exist in Holland, which is rubbish.
The Dutch police encourage you to smoke pot, then slap you with a €50 fine when you urinate on the street. They're just hypocrites.
Yep, they exist here in slovenia too, but i usually only use them when i'm drunk so this includes sneaking out without paying :P
please no dear god please god dear no dear please no please god dear god dear no.
Hell Yes.
please no dear god please god dear no dear please no please god dear god dear no.
Please Count: 4
No Count: 4
Dear Count: 5
God Count: 4
Relevance Count: 0
@Lowest ranked.
Your math is incorrect.
Please Count: 4
No Count: 4
Dear Count: 5
God Count: 4
Relevance Count: 0
Relevance count should be at 1. Seeing that he is against a pay as you go computer; his protest is obvoious. Unlike your post, a total waste, not only because you FAILED at being funny, and or witty, but because YOUR post is in fact the one with ZERO relevance.
/wrist moron
thank you. most people on the internet are total dicks.
I don't like where this is going.
Look, it's not like you'll rent a laptop from a automat, this is meant for supercomputers.
I love how they have a 6 GHz/64-core processor options, but storage space only goes to 2TB.
The future looks bright, gentlemen.
super high-quality encoding ... ultrazip? super-divx?
The future may be bright, but sadly, shades will also be pay-as-you-go.
but hey, theres always open office
im trying really hard to figure out the fractions in the 2-8GB of memory range.
2 - 4 - 6 - 7 - 8?
2 - 3 - 4 - 6 - 8?
that last one seems the best since 32 bit OS's only support 3.2 GB RAM...
but still...! just make it 2 - 10 or something haha
It's quite simple; the number doubles/halves each step.
512, 1, 2, 4, 8.
but...but....it starts at 2!
Yeah...So we will have pay as you go toilet paper too. You want one-ply? Two-ply? Triple?
This is could very well happen. Someone might only need to 'word process' documents while another user would want to play the latest and greatest computer game. I can see how they would think about cashing in on an idea like that. The only customer-base I see Microsoft going after with this type of technology would be the gaming/internet cafes you see around malls and stuff. I don't see it as a thing we will have to worry about as personal consumers looking to buy our own PC's.
Real men use paper towels!
Real men use newspapers!
Real men use the hand!
Real men don't wipe.
http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/1/16/Chuck_norris_toilet_paper.png/402px-Chuck_norris_toilet_paper.png
Real men use live tarantulas.
Real men use their left hand. (at lest they do in most 3-4 world counties)
Real men use a cactus
Real men don't give a shit.
@jouten:
2 things.
1) Toilet paper in general is pay as you go in most places, unless you know where you can get it for free. :P Some of us buy in bulk, but the standard is one roll at a time that last a very short time overall. A day or two at best.
2) This response is more in line with what you are thinking perhaps, but there are a number of countries where the toilet paper in public restrooms comes from a vending machine. :P
Now.. To make sure I stay relevant...
I can see this going three ways:
1) Being marketed completely to the business world (which from the sounds of things is NOT their intent).
2) Being exactly what it sounds like and involving a pay as you go download service for software apps or something, which would blow totally. If that is what they do then my inclination would be to stick with custom boxes and pay as I go in the form of actual upgrades and electric costs, not charges to use my computer.
Or
3) It could be a kind of cloud-computing box, like Brad suggested above. This could actually work because you would be paying for an actual service as well, not just paying to use your computer. If you have broadband, and the system itself is actually a thin client, then that 2TB hard drive could easily be at the other end of a network connection. Might not be the gamers dream box, but it would be something people would be potentially willing to pay for.
I actually think this is something that would popular for small and medium sized businesses. This would
allow them to add new computers and applications quite easily. You could try an application like CS3 and decide
if it is for you rather than paying 1399.
Individuals would probably not want to be charged hourly costs, or they would meter their usage, monthly like cable might work fine.
Why do you think this is for a physical box in your home and not a 'cloud' system like the rest of the software offerings they're rolling out? In that situation, this may make sense. I have many doubts that this would be for a local system.
bingo. Run from anywhere on cloud software like Azure with pay-per-minute.
I still don't like it, but it makes more sense than buying a full-on PC and then paying to use it, or even getting a free PC in exchange for this. Hardware doesn't cost enough for that to make sense.
Maybe something like enabling an Xbox-type console to run as a full computer using cloud software.
Or it's just another patent to sit on 'just in case'.
I would think more like internal to an Internet Cafe-type setup.
Think arcade game!
It could be useful for big rendering jobs. If you could lease out 64, 6 Ghz CPU's, and 8 gigs of ram, I'm sure it'd be much more cost effective to do it through the cloud for the occasional job, versus purchasing your own render farm to use once every couple months.
Just thinking in terms of video production and graphic design.
Wasn't thinking that way.... It all becomes clear now....
You're probably on to something. This patent is probably to protect their pricing scheme for Azure, not an individual PC.
I would not like this at all. I suppose this might be useful for some, but I hate being nickel and dimed. I'll take my computers with the cost upfront and built myself, thank you very much.
As you should do for your transportation as well sir.
There are automobiles (which you can afford to buy), then there are Jet airplanes.
your choice.
Okey, like you can afford a 64-core 6Ghz 8Gb Ram 4Gb Grapgics workstation. Did'nt think so. You get the point now?
Trivia: Supercomputers are already being hired per hour, this is basically the same but for personal use. And I hardly doubt you will get a dedicated server with the exact spec you like, it's most likely virtualized. Most likely in Linux.
@ a83
my private jet should be arriving as soon as the hanger on my island is finished ;)
Leasing: The business makes big bucks and the consumer gets screwed.
I love how everyone jumps to the conclusion that all Microsoft products will someday work this way. I would imagine this is just one more avenue that they are exploring, just like any other large company. You would think that this might lower the cost of entry or operation in some circumstances. Most companies have a ton of R&D projects going on at any given time and only some end up in production. The rest of them either end up on the scrap heap or occasionally lead to other unrelated applications.
Common sense on the Internet?
He's a witch!
Exactly. The USPTO is brimming with patent applications that have never actually seen the light of day. The fact that Microsoft filed this means nothing, and is the only part of the story that makes it even remotely "newsworthy."
if this is a wave of the future, then Im building a time machine and getting the heck outta here...
Didn't you hear? Microsoft has one, but you have to rent it in 2100 money.
E.g. Spacedollars.
We all see how well this has worked with cell phones.
Let me get this straight - every consumer would have, in their home, a 6Ghz/64core PC with all the bells and whistles, but could only access the full power of the hardware by paying a premium per use? What a complete and utter waste of technology. Hi grandma, I just got you a large hadron collider for xmas - but it'll cost you to smash particles... just turn the knobs down to "3" and it'll check your AOLmail just fine.
This is so stupid it hurts my brain.
btw, does Microsoft pay the user for his time when the system crashes?
Err, NO, they wont. MS would have multiple servers in one location, and you can basically rent a server for a couple of hours. It's not like they'll deliviver you a personal Alienware and then go pick it up one hour later.
If they paid me for all the pain they have caused me I would be rich.
okay... think of it this way.
the storage, its just like a huge storage server, like the current sky drive, except its paid storage... the same way, everything else is off in a server elsewhere. all the processing is done somehwere else, all the data is stored somewhere else, that kid of a thing.
if you took high school computing basics, you would have learned about something called a terminal-workstation and server computing, which means that the computer the user works on is just the software, but all the real data is on the server.... now you're thinking... BUT how can you process whats happening on my computer on your servers! simple, you just have a fast upload and download speed.... as fast or faster than the processing speeds that you're paying for.
now you might be thinking that omgsh interet costs, wtf is this even more! but when cloud computing becomes standard, so will really high interet speeds, and your costs would lower because you dont need a high end machine in your house. all you need is a terminal that can render/display recieved data really fast, and has a good NIC for the internet. you dont need to upgrade your computer in order to upgrade your processing speed, and paying only cents an hour for usage rather than the whole thing upfront, which makes it REALLY good for people that usually only use computers for checking email and what not.
so really this isnt a stupid idea where everyone buys supercomputers and then dont use them to thier full potential or if you can randomly hack into your own computer for high processing powers. i know microsoft might have made a little mistakes in the past, but if there's one thing they're not full of... its stupidity.
Thank you, Captain Condescending. But as I read the following: "To prevent folks from "unlocking" the PC, each computer would also come equipped with a security module and metering agent that locks the PC to a particular supplier, and presumably offers up a whole host of other restrictions." I can't help but to interpret it differently than you. Perhaps Engadget has once again lead me astray with sloppy reporting, but I don't see how this excerpt could imply anything other than local workstations.
IBM do this already with their hardware and have done for many years.
This will just bump up the prices of everything, since every PC that uses this will need top of the line equipment included, whether or not the user is paying for the license for it, on the off chance that Office Joe decides that he wants to spend an extra few bucks an hour in exchange for a rig that can play Crysis.
Hardware with on-the-fly scaling costs as much as its potential, regardless of whether you use that potential, making this scheme completely unfeasible.
I think this actually refers to some sort of 'cloud computing' concept. If internet connections improve, it could actually be a plausible option.
Well, at least MS doesn't envision us paying for email. :)
I like this idea knowing that someone will break the DRM in two within a week of it coming out.
I could never afford to get a computer like this... It would cost me (based on the price on the picture) $400-$500 a month! So in 4 months or so, I will have basically purchased my Toshiba gaming laptop!
This is like Rent-a-center... Target poor and stupid people, Make them think they are getting a deal, when in fact you are ripping them off!
I kinda understand the pay-as-you-go for software idea and even the different pricing for software packages. If you want to use extra features, updates, etc, you'll pay extra and thereby compensating for the extra work (programmers, support, etc) going into those premium features. Software is fluid and can be scaled up or down relatively easy.
But how in the world does it make sense to have hardware that is pay-as-you-go? If there are 16 cores in a machines, how does MS have less overhead by having the user use only 8 cores instead of the 16? Or using another GB of RAM? The hardware is already all there...the cost of getting it to the user is already been paid by MS.
Until internet connections get fast enough to have cheap, dumb terminals and the processing done in the "cloud" where extra cpu cycles on a server really can be scaled up and down, there will be no cost savings for reduced hardware usage to the manufacturer. As such, we'd be paying a big premium on hourly rates for any pay-as-you-go that includes scalable hardware.
It's like giving someone a car with 500 horsepower and charging you less per mile for 100 HP cruising, and then charging more per mile for 500HP street racing. The cost of the car's engine and mechanics has already been assumed by the manufacturer. So the only way to for the manufacturer to make their money back is to charge much more for software upgrades and features to the car's electronics.
All that to say, you would end up paying for that additional hardware whether you use it or not by way of inflated rates since hardware costs are fixed.
Windows Midori, here we come..... unfortunately.
Horrible idea if you ask me...
"To prevent folks from "unlocking" the PC, each computer would also come equipped with a security module and metering agent that locks the PC to a particular supplier"
Yes, because none of Microsoft's software has ever been cracked...
did they REALLY say this thing would be unhackable?
I wonder how Microsoft can patent this.
IBM already does something similar for its big iron servers. We'll buy a server with 16 or 32 CPUs in it. But only 4 or 8 are running to begin with. Then, as the application grows, we pay a fee to turn on more CPUs, or memory for that matter.
This won't work because hardware is getting cheaper.
The netbooks and Eee Pc's will rule the lands of the Earth...
I really hope this happens. All I would have to do is install Linux or OSX86 and get the full power of my 32-core computer that HP subsidized for me to $200.
It has already happened. Multiple times. Look back 20 years, 100 Mhz computers, right? Super-fast! (back then)
Then look at your computer. Probably quadcore, say 3 Ghz.
Whoa! Super-fast!
What would stop someone from taking the hardware and installing Linux on it....Full processing power at no extra cost. That is assuming this lame idea is not for cloud computing.
And now we know why they're interested in the cloud.
No matter how you slice it, this is not a bad idea.
As we all know, it may never come to be, but being given a computer for free, and paying for how much of it you need to use over a year is not a bad idea.
It wont work in all markets, its not a perfect solution, but it is the beginning of subsidized computing, and this is omething that people have been trying to figure out.
David
Isn't this just like buying a slow computer for cheaper and if you want to upgrade you pay for new parts?
Give me a break. Something that everyone need to realize is that the hardware will still come from each independent manufacturer and I really do no see how MS will lock each specific piece of hardware. I will totally buy the best machine they come out with . . . then I will take the video card, memory modules, optical drives and whatever else I can get my grubby hands on, move them to a new case with a top of the line board and wham I am good to go. Their case, hardware locking device and probably custom motherboard will take its place of honor in my garbage can. I really do not see MS writing custom firmware for each piece of hardware in these machines to force check for a hardware lock, neither do I see Nvidia, ATI, Intel or AMD making MS specific hardware. Plus, run the numbers, It will be cheaper to just buy a fully loaded machine on a no interest credit card and pay it off over a year.
Even if they do create custom firmware . . . firmware flashing to OEM firmware is simple enough.
These machines would be great for Internet Cafe's. no?!?!