Metered Pay-As-You-Go Computing Experience

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 and that presumably correspond to the task or tasks being performed. An administrator may use a similar user interface to set performance levels for each computer in a network, allowing performance and cost to be set according to a user’s requirements.

Microsoft published on Christmas Day a new patent that changes out current vision about computer and software prices. They propose a “Pay-As-You-Go” method meaning that the user will (probably) get a free PC and will pay for its usage.

As wrote above in the patent’s abstract, Microsoft wants “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”. So the user will be able to choose low performances for Internet browsing, text editing and some other usual activities and pay less money or choose high performances for gaming, video editing etc. but pay much more. You somehow rent the PC.

The paradigm of paying for scaling is not new. Many companies already addopted it and even Microsoft introduced a few months ago Windows Azure, a scalable hosting cloud enviroment that provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers. For the moment it is in a CTP (Community Tech Preview) phase and it’s free.

Of course, behind every utopic patent (in fact, what this patent proposes will happen only in an ideal world) there is a marketing strategy but Microsoft says that “Because the user only pays for the performance level of the moment, the user may see no reason to not acquire a device with a high degree of functionality, in terms of both hardware and software, and experiment with a usage level that suits different performance requirements”. In reality, embedding a cost control software in the PC will probably lock the operating system to Microsoft Windows.  It might also require that the OS to be installed only in authorized services or from a specific disc that includes the cost control application. Also, on a long term, for users who need a computer running all day this pay-as-you-go solution might not be profitable.

Remains to be seen what will be the costs of this service and what restrictions will impose