Microsoft received a new patent on what the company describes as a type of pay-to-play computing. Although the specifics of the approved application are somewhat different from the ad-supported "free" PC business models of the late 1990s and early 2000s, a consideration of the merits of the patent identifies many of the same potential problems.

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...

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