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Sun Says Hardware Will Be Free
ron_ivi writes "Reuters reports that Sun's President and COO thinks hardware will be free and that people will pay for software subscriptions instead. Reuters quotes Schwartz: 'In our world, you will subscribe to the software and the hardware is free.' 'Directionally, our expectation is that in fiscal 2005 you're going to see a rapid departure from selling hardware, software and services apart.' 'Bill Gates and I agree that within four to five years hardware will be free.' We've recently read here on /. how Gates thinks hardware will be free."
I'd rather buy the hardware and be able to do what I want with it, instead of having to buy software to make it work.
Then again, free hardware = hacking
pretty damn badly.
What's the standard warranty on a console system these days? You're lucky to get 60 days. But they'll charge you 25-50% the purchase price again, for another two years.
What's the standard way of getting it repaired? Ship it off to the factory. With the exception of Nintendo, "licensed repair centers" that you could take it to and get it back fixed in 1-2 days don't exist any more. And even with Nintendo, they're only in big cities.
Plus, when the console goes obsolete, don't expect backwards compatibility on the next one either. The PS2's backwards compatibility, lest we forget, was a colossal fluke. The only machine with any back compatibility to speak of, it seems, has been the Game Boy.
The more "free" you get something, the shittier service you can expect of it, and the worse/more breakage-prone product as they cut every possible corner on the device.