With falling PC and laptop prices, some of the mobile phone service providers like T-mobile, Vodafone and Three are luring new customers by offering laptops with broadband connection ‘free’ (no payment upfront) or with heavy discounts. The free laptops ‘catch’ in these offers is that the buyer has to maintain the broadband account for a minimum period.
The cost of the laptop is recovered through subscription to the broadband connection. With increasing user mobility, laptops are being used not only for traditional computing but also as a communicating device to keep in touch with the rest of the world. Hence these ‘combo’ offers makes lot of sense to the youth and older generations alike.
We will be shortly launching a free laptops comparison service where you will be able to find the most suitable laptop on a “free” contract, so check back soon.
There are a number of pay monthly free laptops offers available from the 3 main UK mobile phone service providers. Vodafone offers Advent 4211 Netbook with Intel Atom N70 processor, 1GB memory, 80GB hard disk and Windows XP home edition ‘free’ for a 24 month subscription to broadband connection at £20 a month. The connection allows 1GB data transfer per month and the store price for the netbook is £279.99 inc. VAT. Vodafone has similar offers on Asus netbook (£30 a month), Toshiba L350D laptop (£40 a month), Sony NR38 laptop (£40 a month) and so on. These offers come with varying free limits of data transfer and SMSes per month.
T mobile offers Compaq CQ50-100 laptop with AMD Sempron processor, 1GB memory, 120 GB hard drive, webcam and Windows Vista Home Basic OS free with a 24 month £35 a month broad band subscription. The company also offers ‘unlimited’ data transfer and 200 text messages a month free with the offer. The store price for the laptop is £299.99 inc. VAT. Other offers from T mobile include HP G7090 laptop (£35 per month), Advent laptop with 2GB main memory for £35 a month, HP Pavilion DV6920 for a price of £199 which otherwise costs £599 in stores for a monthly subscription of £35 and so on.
Three offers EiSystem 1212 laptop with Intel Celeron Dual core processor, 1GB memory, 120GB hard drive, Windows Vista Home Premium OS ‘free’ for a monthly broadband subscription of £30 for 24 months. The in store price for this laptop is £299.99 inc. VAT. Further 3 offers 5GB data transfer and 150 text messages a month along with the subscription. Other similar offers from 3 include Dell Inspiron (£40 a month), Compaq A961 (£40 a month), Advent 5313 (£40 a month) and so on. Woohoo for free laptops.
All in all these ‘combo’ offers of free laptops along with broadband connection create a win-win situation for the mobile phone service providers as well as customers particularly the student community alike.