If Microsoft has its way in the future, you'll be paying to use your PC, not necessarily just to buy it. Oh yeah, the initial cost to get the PC would be minimal (translate - highly subsidized), but you'll end up paying more over the life of the PC to use it for various tasks (via selectable software packages) and in various performance modes (via scalable [re-programmable] computer parts). Payable by the hour.Oh Microsoft - your money making schemes continue to amaze me. The worst part - if enough manufacturers or vendors like this idea, it may actually come to pass.
Time for a reality check. If this actually came to pass, it would be hacked and cracked in no time flat. For a nominal fee, you could hire the local hacker to rig your PC so that it loaded every available piece of software while your computer ran at the highest performance level available and the vendor would never know. Don't think it's possible? I have 3 words for you - Satellite TV piracy. Right now, with a quick phone call you could be paying for the lowest subscription package (if you even pay anything at all) and getting every channel under the sun.
Message to Microsoft - if you want to make more money from your products - lower the prices.
2 comments:
erm, I read something recently that laptops were going the way of the dino soon because the blackberries will have those table top infra red keyboards. And Microsoft will soon find itself in the same position as IBM, selling a product that fewer and fewer people actually use y'see. Retro
As long as Microsoft makes the operating system (and office suite) running on 85%+ of computer, be they laptops or desktops, they'll have a job. I don't buy the laptop extinction prediction just yet, since people still like their big screens for reading web pages and the like. If Blackberry and the rest can find a way to eek laptop value out of their minuscule devices, the prediction could come true. For now, I see Blackberries as a stop gap device between accessing your bigger computer(s). That's my take on it.
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