Monthly fees can add up. While you probably realize the monthly fees you pay for your car or mortage add up to tens or hundrds of thousands of dollars, how often do you stop to think of the other fees in your life? How much money have you spent over the years on cable or cellphone bills? What online storage space?

iForem has come up with a way to eliminate the monthly fees for its online backup storage site. It just charges a really high price up front. We're talking $20 for 20MB of storage, or $1024 for 1GB. Sure, you can get storage from services like Mozy and Carbonite for a fairly low monthly fee, but if you stop paying, you lose your storage.

What makes iForem's model unique (beside the high price) is a guarantee that your data will always be available. The idea is that iForem will take your ridiculously high up-front payment and invest it in a trust. As your money makes money for the company, some of that revenue will be pumped back into server space, security, and all the other things you'd want from an online storage site. Over time, as your friends continue to pay monthly fees to their online backup companies, you'll (theoretically) realize that they've paid more money over the years than you have.

But the way we see it, there's at least three problems:

• You can already get 5GB for free from services like Xdrive.
• 1GB in 20 years will probably seem pretty tiny.
• If the company goes under in less than 15 years, you're not going to get your money's worth.

[via Mashable]

Although Microsoft claims that Windows Vista sales in China are better than previously reported, the company has reduced the price of its latest operating system in order to spur sales.

On Wednseday, the company has cut the price of Windows Vista Home Baisc to just under $66 US dollars, which is about 1/3rd the price it had been selling for. The price of Windows Vista Home Premium has also received a 50% price cut. It now retails for about $120 US.

Any way you look at it, the new prices make it a lot cheaper to buy legal copies of Windows Vista in China than in the US. But it's still hard to compete with free, or next to it. China has long been a hotbed of software piracy, and word on the street is that you can pick up a copy of Windows Vista for about a buck.

Bummed out that Google changed its product pricing and comparison from Froogle to the infinitely duller "Google Product Search?" Well, lucky for you, there's a similarly priced product out there that kinda, sorta provides the same service.

Frucall is a mobile price comparison service just making its way out of beta. You can search products by entering the UPC numbers on their barcodes, or by searching via SMS. If you're out shopping and happen to see a must-have doodad in the store, you can send a quick message to Frucall and it will either send you back a message with price comparisons or you can listen to a digitized voice reading you the best prices it can find online for the product.

[via Ubergizmo]

While some may debate how useful AdSense can be as a revenue generating tool for a blog, a recent update to Google's referral structures of both AdSense and AdWords might help matters.

AdSense received enhancements both large and small:

• When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.
• When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.
• If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).

About that last bonus, however, I agree with Ivan Raszi at creativebits:

As you might have heard, Microsoft has set Zune's price at $249.99 for it's official launch on November 14th. Sure, it is technically more expensive than Apple's iPod with the same storage, but only by $0.99. With extra features that you can't get on an iPod, like wireless sync and sharing, why wouldn't you at least check out a Zune? The kicker is that Microsoft's Zune store will have to be incredible. If it is, Microsoft may be able to steal some of the market away from Apple. I doubt that Real's Rhapsody service and Sansa's hardware together will do any harm to Apple, but Microsoft has potential for some digital carnage. Let the games, um, continue.

[Via CNN]

Interested in getting that "Ultimate" version of Windows Vista? Be prepared to pay a bit for it. iTWire is reporting that Windows Vista Ultimate will come with a price tag around $450. As Ryan over at Engadget points out, that's about as much as a budget Dell system will cost you. Ultimate combines the features of Vista Business and Vista Home. For comparison purposes, Windows XP Professional currently goes for $300 at retail.