I've been thinking for some time now of getting a laptop and some kind of deal for accessing the internet with this wi-fi mullarkey, but as a self-confessed luddite I'm confused about how to go about it.

Is it better to get the laptop first and then start shopping around for the best deal, or are some of these providers who for around £30 a month throw in the laptop for free a better bet?

I donlt have the internet at home, nor do i want a really powerful laptop; just portable net access and being able to download music is all i really want it for.

It depends on what you prefer.

Either spend £200-£250 on a "netbook" scaled down laptop, or £300+ on a proper sized laptop, then get broadband, which you can get from a choice of decent companies for around £18 a month...

Or find someone who'll give you a laptop, but charge more per month, & get the cost of the lappy back over the year/18 months/2 year contract...

Personally I'd prefer to get my own laptop, then you can choose more what you want.

You can get a basic but usable laptop for about £300. So add up the cost of a normal internet connection (about £15 a month) over the minimum contract length of one of the free laptop offers and see which is cheaper.

I would recommend a laptop with a dual core processer and 2gb RAM if it is running Vista, which most will be. This information should be listed at the top of the specification. Some of the free laptops wont have this and will run very slow.

If you decide to buy a laptop this is fairly good for the price - see here (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146353) - I have been considering it for a relative. The battery life won't be great but it depends how you plan on using it.

It depends on what you prefer.

Either spend £200-£250 on a "netbook" scaled down laptop, or £300+ on a proper sized laptop, then get broadband, which you can get from a choice of decent companies for around £18 a month...

Or find someone who'll give you a laptop, but charge more per month, & get the cost of the lappy back over the year/18 months/2 year contract...

Personally I'd prefer to get my own laptop, then you can choose more what you want.

Call me a thicko, but is broandband the same as wifi? I only ask because I don;t want or need internet at home (I don;t even have a phone connection) and a friend I've spoken to says all you need to go online these days is a laptop and a wifi connection that looks like a little USB flash drive.

Call me a thicko, but is broandband the same as wifi? I only ask because I don;t want or need internet at home (I don;t even have a phone connection) and a friend I've spoken to says all you need to go online these days is a laptop and a wifi connection that looks like a little USB flash drive.

WiFi is the means by which you broadcast your broadband around your house, usually with a wireless router.

So you need a landline-phone or cable-tv to bring the broadband to your home I'm afraid. Or friendly neighbours who will share their signal with you. Or stupid neighbours who have their WiFi unsecured and you "borrow" some of their bandwidth, although this is both naughty and illegal.

Most laptops have a WiFi receiver built in so you don't need another uniot that looks like a USB flash drive.

The wifi dongle that looks a little like a flash drive is probably a usb broadband dongle, available from most of the mobile phone providers, they're available as pay-as-you-go or monthly contract, and would negate the need to have a seperate broadband connection at home, as long as you get decent coverage for the chosen network, its not a bad idea. The amount you pay depends on the speed and/or the amount of downloading you want to do..

Orange are offering a free EeePC with a mobile broadband dongle for £25pm over 2 years, the standard price for dongle + web is £15pm, so you're paying £240 extra over 2 years for a £270 laptop, that's better than 0% credit! If you want any more info drop us a PM :)

Orange are offering a free EeePC with a mobile broadband dongle for £25pm over 2 years, the standard price for dongle + web is £15pm, so you're paying £240 extra over 2 years for a £270 laptop, that's better than 0% credit! If you want any more info drop us a PM :)

That's not a bad deal, but bear in mind that 'mobile broadband' is no where near as fast as 'home broadband'.

I would say that unless you plan to travel around with your laptop and will need a mobile connection, then you are better of buying the laptop outright and getting a separate broadband connection.

02 and Organe offer free broadband to their customers, as do sky and virgin tv which you may already have.

Thanks for all the replies so far. Carl_Malibu's suggestion seems the best as I'm not wanting superfast broadband and I do intend to use it on the move, not least because I spend 10 hours a week commuting.

However, similar deals I've seen in the paper have got stuff hidden in the small print about limiting the amount you download to so many gigabytes and charging you more if you exceed these limits. How do you keep track of how much you've used and avoid incurring hidden extra charges such as these?

I've had a look recently for someone, the mobile broadband packages seem to be limited to either 3GB a month or 5, depending on network. T-mobile (I think) do an apparently "unlimited" one, but in reality it's unspoken 3 or 5GB cap with a "fair use" policy.

Is it really that cheap though? £25 a month for 2 years = £600 over the 2 years.

Eeepc - £200. Broadband from half-decent supplier - ~£18 a month. Over 2 years = £632.

So £16 a year, nothing in it really, if you really need mobile broadband & can't rely on wi-fi access wherever you end up then you need the first option though, just try & make sure you get on a provider that'll let you use 5GB/month rather than 3.

I pay £5 a month for mobile broadband with 3. It's a v. small allowance (1gb) but is actually plenty if all you are doing is browsing the net. I think some people, myself included, can get confused with talk about data allowance. You just have to remember that downloading a 5 second ringtone or piece of video can take up as much data allowance as reading 100 web pages, probably more.

It's a double edged sword: if you want to download music, play online games and that sort of thing, then mobile broadband is simply not sufficient. If you're planning on using it while commuting and can live without the above usages, then i'd recommend it.

steev I'm very interested to know where you can buy an EeePC 900 for £200! This is a secret that you should not keep to yourself.
When Orange started offering them I checked out, as I said up there ^ I believe ebuyer is selling them for £270 and that's generally one of the cheapest online outlets for laptops.
So if you took the £270 from £600 and divided that by 24 months you're left with a 3gb mobile broadband contract for £13.75 a month, with a 3gb limit and free dongle.

That's quids in in my eyes!

Edit: Basil, I believe the Icon USB stick that Orange (and I assume the other providers) use has a download/upload counter on it, so you can check your usage.
Failing that there's a plethora of free software available online regarding keeping track of your downloading and uploading.

3gb will be plenty for Sheff Foruming, checking out youtube from time to time, downloading a few albums from iTunes, etc.
It's only heavy downloading (e.g. watching iPlayer regularly) that you're going to find yourself going over the usage cap.

No secret, they were in stock at ebuyer the other week, the 701 with the coloured lid, none left at the moment, but there's plenty more (http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=eeepc+701&btnG=Search+Products&hl=en&show=dd) elsewhere... They were £190 inc VAT at ebuyer, with next day delivery it was just under £200.

Not convinced with the Xandros Linux that comes with it though, I'd have put eeebuntu or something on it if it were mine.

No, steev, it's not the 701 that's being given away. Compare the specs, the 900 is a far better laptop :)

Ah of course, the 90* is 9", & the atom processor.

Orange are offering a free EeePC with a mobile broadband dongle for £25pm over 2 years, the standard price for dongle + web is £15pm, so you're paying £240 extra over 2 years for a £270 laptop, that's better than 0% credit! If you want any more info drop us a PM :)

Just had a google arounds and it seems that the EeePC referred to is actually a mini-laptop around half the size of a normal one. Fine for some users maybe, but for a chap like me with sausage fingers and a preference for a bigger screen I doubt it's suitable for me. So now I'm thinking of buying the laptop separately from the broadband deal; any recommendations as to the best place to do so without getting bamboozled with jargon into buying something inappropriate?