Microsoft patents pay-as-you-go computing

Microsoft (especially Balmer) has looked at the business application market model in awe. He really likes the model where a user pays for a licence then pays a 10-20% annual subscription for updates maintenance etc and would like to see this moved into the personal computing market. This is a way to do so, since you do not own the software only rent it.
How does it go - oh yes - Caveat Emptor

Let's not get hasty Regulas. For the past decade, every move Microsoft has hinted at making has been taken up as another grand excuse to move to Linux or Mac.
Won't happen.
Ever.
Why ?
Because Linux is not for sheep. It's a real OS, for real men.
And real men are few and far between.
What is much more likely to happen in Joe User's house is that he will say "shove it, I'll stick with XP and Office 2000 that I've already paid for and work fine".
A bit like me, actually.

I am guessing this is a cloud scheme, but the article does not really explain that part.

Compared to something like Amazon cloud services this does not look very new so I have a doubt about patenting it.

Delivering gaming video at decent framerate to the desktop from a utility somewhere out on the 'net seems unlikely.

Is this really a desktop software add on intended to run on leased PCs placed in the users' home or office?

They are no longer customer focused, if they made good products customers would stick with them.

This has to be a joke, although they are already trying to charge an annual subscription for office. www.openoffice.org is free.

Theinquirer - please sort out the comments area, paragraphs are still not working 1 month after new site launched. Where are your lazy coders, testers and project manager (probably same dude)?

This 'pay as you go' computing would work in a world of the pay service economy if the company providing you with the service gave you a dumb terminal and on the other end of the cord is a supercomputer capable of playing today's latest and greatest games, as well as providing email support and secure storage for the user. That's pay as you go. And we as computer users are already paying for out-the-door obsolete equipment and cable internet fees, it's damn expensive! And if all you do is surf and email then your computer should be CHEAP. If you want to do lots of creative and space hogging work on your computer, well it should be worth your money. There can be a good business model for this. The other side is that I want to compute in private on my machine of whatever age to do what I wanna do, and if M$ won't let me, then I will go to where I can do what I want: Mac, Linux, other. If this move turns out to be gouge city for a crappy computing experience, then forget it. This is the golden age i suppose, and you ought to figure out how to keep your XP going forever, because I am sure that no one wants to pay an outrageous fee "to blog all day long". Also, game manufacturers will probably end up doing a couple of things. 1. Talk to hardware vendors themselves. 2. Build their own Operating system for their awesome games. 3. To play, insert the disk at boot up, or the thumb drive or whatever, kinda like the old days of computing. This way, your computer MUST have the RIGHT hardware to run the game, or else you don't play.

How completely retarded this is… how do they plan to do this exactly? So you would have hardware physically existing in a machine? But only be limited or being charged to use it? That’s absurd, the only time this can fly is maybe in development countries as others stated, and the only other area I can think of is if you need more processing and video power then you could buy for a decent price, and it would be cheaper to pay for processing power done virtually, like cluster computing (or super computers)… but then wait… if its virtual computing and not physical hardware you end up with extremely high latencies and internet bandwidth usage

Why would anyone try to do something like this is beyond me, computers are becoming so cheap, and so small, esp with talks of cpu and gpu on one chip, and phones having the power what computers used to be in the old days why would anyone feel to pay for something like this? And never own your own stuff

I too wonder what happens when software issues or bugs or crashes happen? What about memory leaks or cpu hogs… all of that will be charged to you… you really want to pay MS for software that is 2 or 3x as resource intensive and hogs your processing power too? When all you need is something simple as word processor or email client, that can be done in a browser or less

I too remember being told about a similar system involving IBM - the additional processors / hardware was already pre-installed, and to "upgrade" the performance you'd get an engineer on site who simply switched the additional processing power on.

This kind of "pay as you use" nonsense might work in developing countries but it won't fly in the USA. Look at the reception of Vista. They want to prevent that in the future so they want to charge users a subscription fee based on use? I'm not EVER going to buy into any sort of software based subscription service created by Microsoft or anyone else. I will use my computer (which I bought) any way I see fit any time I want with the applications I purchased. This won't be dictated to me by any vendor. Microsoft must be trying to increase Mac Market share. THAT will be the result of this nonsense if Microsoft attempts this to consumers. You know businesses won't buy into this load of rubbish.

If MS ever releases a OS based on this, I'll be using Linux. I'm already upset that I can't buy a PDA/Blackberry phone without having to pay for the extra internet usage. It's like the damn receiver box you have to pay for each month with your cable subscription. They can take their monthly charge and shove it. I have a feeling all of these types of pay as you charges will back-fire on companies in the near future.

Didn't some computer-companies do this some time ago?

I remember the following story: Amdahl, maker of IBM-mainframe-compatible hardware, offered a machine with an included 'overdrive-mode' (=my words). With this mode the machine runs approx. 25% faster but the clock was ticking. At the end of the month the used extra cycles where counted and a bill was sent to the customer. You could switch this faster mode on and off anytime.

This was approx. 25 years ago. How can you patent something like this?

August

"bill a user depending on how much disk storage space, memory usage and processor cores are used"

So the more INefficient, bloated, and slow MS Office gets, the *MORE* they'll charge us! Wonderfull.

This is bullshit technology from MS. Stop annoying us with ur schemes. just keep things simple as they are.

is this for real, omg mickysoft is getting out of control. i would much rather pay for a machine without the cost of a monthly fee. Mac must be hurting them in their oversized pockets. thank god that we are moving over to linux in our company, where we do not have to worry about such issues and the annoying BSOD from all of mickysofts products. sry this just suxs for MICROSOFT. they going down !!!!!!!

yay for LINUX !!!!

I think manny haas hit it exactly right. M$ has gotten so big that hey cannot come up with any other way to make money than to dupe Joe Average out of his last few cents. All i can say is if this happens, Hello Linux.

Someone Special - Have you head of ZipCar? It's the alternative to renting a car and it is doing phenomenal as a business model... Pay as you go driving!

Big corporations already follow this model for high end or high capacity software two examples being ReadIRIS OCR engine (per page server edition) and Quark DTP software (active user license). Fast pace computer users (anyone under the age of 35) would never take this deal. 55 year old grandmother that only checks her e-mail once a week might like it.

When the OS BSOD's does MS offer a credit back for lost time and work? If they do not this will be an unsuccessful venture.

I refuse to pay MS for the "feature" of loosing my work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but back in the days when computers were big and expensive, isn't this exactly how to owners of the few big and expensive machines used to charge people for running their payroll each month?

Bill Gate stated back in the eighties that he envisioned a day when everyone would pay a monthly service fee to him like you do for electricity. Since then I have watched MS try various schemes to try and start the ball rolling in that direction. I hope MS tries some scheme based on this to the public, hey people are paying to play online with their crapbox 360 platform. You will then see a huge migration to Linux and Mac. Once game developers start porting to Linux in ernest and enough people get on board it over for MS and their monopoly. So I say please MS push this real hard on the mom and dads around the globe, may your greed run high.
Don't listen to Bob Dole post who probably has stock in MS.

This only shows that Microsoft has run out of creativity and wants to survive by nickel-dimming its customers. Their products are already price prohibiting anyway. That will be the last time I consider considering their products. As customers we can protest by being more careful from whom we buy products. Thanks

Im sure the bulk of the idea is aimed at corporations who have more money than "Joe the Computer User" who is broke as bleep. M$ doesnt care about you Joe, so keep your lame unthought out comments to yourself and let M$ do what it does best, make money from those who have it.

I feel the fault in this lies with the patent office and what they consider a new and unique idea to patent. Can't you go to say a Rent A Center and rent a computer for the month? Isn't this pay as you go.

If they pay you when the software don't go, bet not. It's amazing how out of touch corporations can be with Joe Public, I blame all this crap on the first time we paid for something that had previously been free or next to free (Cable TV). The financial arseholes then decided that we would likely pay for anything repeatedly.

I think this scheme is a great example of what happens when a company gets to a size where they can no longer grow at the rate 'Wall Street' expects. They have to invent new ways to charge their customers more. I suspect this scheme will not fly far as the majority of computer users would balk at it. I know I would. Who wants to think about how much video or photos they save on their computer? It would make the computing experience ridiculously complicated.

If microsoft can make this pay as you go computing experience blah blah thing about as expensive as the yearly cost of running a computer, with decrease in hardware value in mind, it could work quite well. But they would also need to give assurances that a user's privacy is total and complete without fail. After all, you could just go to an internet café.

Probably what will happen is that microsoft will shove this into developing countries that do not have the hardware.

I have to go patent 'pay as you go driving experience' now...it's completely different to renting a car, honest.

The Computer World article has its facts wrong, and it seems these have just been repeated by the Inq. The patent application was filed in June 2007, the application published last week.