Microsoft Introduces Pay-as-You-Go Computing

An anonymous reader writes "Geekzone is reporting that Microsoft is introducing a new business model for 'pay-as-you-go computing.' From the article: 'The pay-as-you-go computing model enabled by Microsoft's FlexGo technology allows customers to have a fully featured PC at home by paying only for the time as they use it through the purchase of prepaid activation cards or tokens. Microsoft has been running trials of the program in Brazil for more than a year and will soon be expanding to select markets in India, Russia, China and Mexico.'" This makes me giggle, because it's basically the return of time-sharing; in the past it was for for mainframe systems, but I suppose the same concept behind the mainframe idea would be true in developing countries today with PC systems.

Cue activation crack in...

[nstlgc]

Oh, right...

Ingenious

[ptelligence]

Pay-as-You-Go rates force you to shutdown/reboot long before the computer crashes on its own.

Re:Why?

[rolfwind]

I hope Microsoft really goes for this bigtime. Hopefully it will become pay-as-they-go as everyone goes for a Mac or Linux.

Excellent Idea

[Unski]

In fact I writing this from an MS PAYG machine right now. You can even able to purchase denominations as low as 30 seconds which ought be more than enough time to

Re:Ingenious

[linvir]

Cool. Two Microsoft-bashes, one rebuking the other.

As Office Space put it....

[10Ghz]

Steve Ballmer: "I once had a great idea..."

Geek A: "Really Steve, what was it?"

Ballmer: "Well, allright! It was an idea for "pay-as-you-go"-computing! You see, there's this full-featured computer, but you have to buy these tokens in order to use it"

Geek A: "That is the worst idea I have ever heard in my life Steve"

Geek B: "Yes, this is horrible, this idea."

Re:Why?

[tomstdenis]

where you pay $5000 for a PC that costs $500

*cough* Apple *cough*. :-)

Oh you meant over time in installments... hehehe.

hrm

[Rydia]

Sounds a bit "pay as you go" [idiottoys.com].

Re:Why?

[PaneerParantha]

They never have a good idea.

Incorrect.

ActiveX controls was a great idea.

Linking IE with Windows was another.

The question is not whether they had good ideas, the question is for whom.

With ActiveX(TM) and linking, they made it much easier for some to install helpful components, like those that display ads, on a dumb user's machine. If it wasn't for these technologies, would anyone have a network of 50,000 PCs controllable by a single person/entity in a land far, far away and sending emails for useful stuff like increasing the size of whatever is small about you? No, such things would have existed only in sci-fi movies. Now thanks to MS, they are a reality.