Free Mini Netbook?

princessamy86

Hi all, wondering if I could have some advice please.
I am considering signing up to mobile broadband so I can get a free laptop, the cheapest one I seem to be able to find is £20 a month with a free Compag Mini 700 PC Series on 3 Mobile, or £20 a month with free Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook on Vodafone.

Couple of questions: Can anyone tell me what the difference is between a netbook and a laptop? Also does anyone know what the coverage is like on these networks?

Any advice greatly appreciated!
Thanks

hansi

Hi princessamy. The main difference between a laptop and a netbook is size and portability. I have both. I have a HP laptop and and Acer Aspire One netbook both running Windows. I have seen all the "free" netbook offers but be aware that £20 a moth is quite a lot of money unless you will be onlne a lot of the time. It's a bit of "a sprat to catch a mackerel" situation. Work out very carefully what sort of time you plan to be online. Personally, I bought a "non contract" dongle from T-Mobile for about £50, and I pay £2.00 per day when I want to go online, which on the netbook is only when I go away, otherwise I use it on my home wireless network. I belive other companies are now going the "Pay as you Go" way. Not sure about coverage on the networks you mention but you can check this online. Hope this helps:beer:

princessamy86

I'm going to use the laptop/netbook for uni work and give the dongle to my sister who will pay me £10 a month for it, as I already have wireless broadband at home. I just don't think I can find the money to pay for a laptop upfront so I thought this might be a way of paying it monthly, but I do think you're right, £20 a month is quite a lot!

asininity

Mobile broadband is not as good as home broadband. Ask yourself:

How long you're gonna be online?
What you're gonna be doing online? and
Where you'll be needing to be online?

If the answers are a long time, downloading things and watching videos, and mainly a home, its not worth having. The expense of going over your monthly allowance is extortionate.

princessamy86

Well, I'm going to give my sister the dongle as she lives in student accomodation and they don't have the internet (she'll pay me £10 a month). I really just want the laptop but can't afford to stump up £200 to buy one at the moment! Do you think it's worth it for that?

[Deleted User]

Might be worth watching out that you only get 1GB of data transfer with that each month, so your sister would have to be careful not to be downloading music, tv shows on iplayer etc or going wild on Youtube otherwise you'll get stumped £15 per extra Gigabyte used.

princessamy86

Might be worth watching out that you only get 1GB of data transfer with that each month, so your sister would have to be careful not to be downloading music, tv shows on iplayer etc or going wild on Youtube otherwise you'll get stumped £15 per extra Gigabyte used.

She wouldn't be using it for that, just to connect to internet for uni work. I really don't know what's best to do! I do want a laptop, my OH is a major online gamer and since he paid for a state of the art gaming PC it's a little difficult to negotiate time for uni work-stubborn man! Not sure if best to put laptop on 0% credit card and just get the cheapest I can? Are there any good places to get second hand ones? I literally want it to be able to connect to the internet for research and be able to run MS Office off it. Any ideas anyone?!?

point3

Don't forget that the Vodafone Dell Mini 9 has a built-in 3G modem, so no separate dongle to give to your sister.

It's not good value for money. You'd be better off getting a cheap (possibly refurb or secondhand) laptop and buying the internet access separately. What's your budget?

point3

Carphone Warehouse seem to be selling off stocks of a good entry-level Toshiba laptop for £249:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/364256/toshiba-l300-120gb-hdd-2gb-15-4-inc/

princessamy86

My budget is the problem!! I really have no money at the moment, just had to MOT and tax my car so I'm skint for the next few months. Is there a good place to get second hand ones? I could do with one pretty quickly, got 5 pieces of coursework in for the next month and exams to revise for :eek: ! I could probably afford to put around £150 on my credit card (0%).

exegnomad

Are these offers really free in the long run?

The minimum contract is for 24 months, so at £20 per month you are paying £480 for your free laptop plus up to one gigabyte of data per month.If you go over this figure you pay extra.
A modern laptop or netbook should have built-in wifi, and most universities will have free wireless access for their students, so do you really need to be using vodaphone or similar for 3g access. In fact, if you are just looking at typing up projects do you need to be online - you could use a library computer (wired in to much faster networks) when needed.
You could get a much cheaper (refurbished??) machine if you don't need mobile broadband.