keywords: processor hardware pricing profitable computing
text: Motivated Seller (Forbes.com) Forbes.com - Sun Microsystems has a new business model. Over the past year the intermittently profitable Santa Clara, Calif. computer maker has moved from quoting traditional pricing--per processor for hardware, per user for software--toward a surfeit of new choices. One package of software for all sorts of Internet chores comes with one free server for a flat  #36;100 per employee per year, unless the buyer has fewer than 100 employees, in which case the software is free (but the server is paid for). Or customers can buy computing power like electricity, at a rate of  #36;1 per processor per hour.