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Microsoft wants to bring mobile service model to computing

Tony Chan | January 8, 2009 | 0 Comments

After spending years pushing out new operating system upgrades that require new hardware, Microsoft seems to be turning its back on its twin Intel with a new patent filed in the US that will completely commoditize hardware.

US patent applications number 20080319910, filed on Christmas day, outlines a model where a free or subsidized ‘standard model’ PC is given to users, who then pay fees based on the time and quality of the computing they consume, according to a CNN report here.

The model is exactly what happens on many mobile networks, where the operators subsidize, or give away in many cases, mobile phones to their subscribers, who pay for airtime, messages, data traffic and so on.

In fact, many mobile operators today are already offering such services. Across Asia, many operators have started to bundle heavily subsidized netbooks – such as the Asus EeePC – with data packages for users. Whether or not Microsoft intends to enforce its patent, or whether it is enforceable in the first place, is a big question.

On the other hand, the patent does have one interesting point to make – scalable computing devices.

The patent describes “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.”

It goes on: “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.”

The idea of using only the processing power that is required, hence conserving energy, is spot on. But it also means that the maximum processing power has to be put in place at the onset in order. So instead of pushing up utilization of hardware resources, like you would with thin-clients or cloud computing, you end up wasting a lot of those resources.

So instead of paying upfront for a high end PC and then using it all you want, you get the PC for free and pay every time you turn it on. In the patent application, Microsoft even suggests prices for how much you should pay. For browsing, it’s 80 cents/hour. For Office, it’s $1/hour. For games, it’s $1.20/hour.

If you calculate that in an office environment, say 40 hour work weeks – that means $40/week to use Office, unless you get employees to shut off their Excel spreadsheets every time they go to the bathroom. How many companies would be willing to pay for that?

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