Microsoft's Pay-As-You-Go PC?

I know it sounds as if Steve Ballmer and co. have been spending too much time with the big cell phone guys, but it appears that they've applied for a patent with allows for a pay-as-you go PC.

Click for the full story via Fast Company

This has some interesting permutations as it has the potential drastically reduce the cost of computers by bundling services. If you coupled this with their cloud computing strategy, it would seem that they're serious about changing their business model from shrink-wrapped packages to a services-oriented offering. Given the changing landscape in IT towards more open systems and service oriented architectures, perhaps MS is actually getting ahead of the curve on this one and taking things to the next level.

Now if they bundled 3G networking, let me upgrade every two years, and allow me to "roll over" my unused computing cycles...