Laptop deals from Carphone warehouse

[friendly]

Can anyone talk to me about laptop deals at Carphone warehouse etc where you get a free laptop but pay £30 plus per month for mobile broadband (or something)? I would like to get a laptop for me and dc's mainly for internet, homework and photos but don't have £300-£400 to purchase one up front. Speak to me very slowly please. I stopped understanding technology a long time ago. Thank you

If you are locked in for 2 years (which I think is typical of these 'deals') then you are paying up to double the cost of the laptop.

Before I waffle on about it being a rip off, etc, I'll go take a look at what they currently offer!

Understand that it might look 'nice' financially, but if you have relatives and could borrow the cash (even paying them back 10% interest, which is more than any banks at the moment) it would likely be cheaper for you, especially if you can spread the repayment over 20 months

Have been looking for last hour(++) at a couple of sites and was trying to find any threads on MoneySavingExpert.com about 'deals' (or horror stories).

Have seen a few options where you get a 10" "netbook" (these are more 'mobile' than a laptop, and come with a mobile dongle to actually be able to use anywhere with a 'mobile' signal.

Do you want to use this laptop sat in your car away from home (for example) as that's one of the types of deal, or would you be using it at home with your existing internet connection ?

That is an important choice, because some of the "mobile" data contracts give a stingy 1 GB a month (I am on a 5 GB a month deal, there are also 10 or 15 GB allowances). Be aware that if you go "over quota" (allowed on a contract) it can cost up to 200 pounds per GB {on O2, 100 on Three} so would hit anyone very hard.

If the latter, then there are different deals which might be more suitable. Have also seen (this morning) other deals where you get 300 or 600 minutes of calls, a new mobile phone, and a Dell laptop, from 25 pounds a month.

I had at least 3 other web sites with deals on to look at (have not even glanced at those as I got distracted by a thread on MSE about whether the service on Three {for voice calls} was OK. Just that I am using Three for my internet connection {no landline here}.

Will post web links later on, I promise, but right now have to get shaved and dressed for an appointment.

ell you do get your mobile broadband included, for which to get the same download limit (3gb) as the laptop deal it seems you’ll have to pay about £15 a month.

So you’re paying an extra £15 a month to get the laptop, which over 20 months is £360, for a laptop which seems to be selling at Dixons for about £430.

So not bad at all, providing you want that £15 a month mobile broadband, which I would question. WebDude’s gone into the disadvantages or mobile broadband, basically you can get a faster connection with less limits by going for normal broadband, which you might even get free depending on what other phone/TV packages you have.

Came across a thread on MoneySupermarket (don't know how good it is, tbh) where someone called the companies that do these deals 'con artists'.

Now, I wouldn't go quite that far, but would be happy to use quotes - it's definitely a "free" laptop... There will surely be some element of what is paid to cover it, else we'd never spend a bean on new laptops, yippeeeeee!

More important, however, for the OP (in case she hesitates to post for a bit) - do please take note that Windows 7 is due out on October 22

That may mean a lot of changes - Windows Vista will be classed as "old hat" - though I don't yet claim to know the effect it will have - whether Vista machines will be sold off cheaply to clear the shelves and make it easy to say "All PCs run Windows 7" (actually that might be difficult, at least to be still selling them in the under 300 pound price bracket, because Windows 7 might be a bit more memory hungry, and not all machines out at present seem capable)... or the firms may simply "split" their products into "Vista" or "Win 7" and have the more up-market machines in the Win 7 section.

So, it may well force some changes on the deals that are available because the market they might be aiming for (students and under-35s?) who are ready to pay a monthly fee for a mobile deal with a laptop in the bundle, and could be "put off" by "out-of-date" Windows Vista.

Now, I hope that's not confusing - it's me speculating, and hopefully they will give just as good deals, with Windows 7 installed, though there might be a slight delay before all the deals include it. However, forewarned is forearmed, and you would do well to check if Windows 7 is installed. If it isn't, then I'd sit tight. Don't even be taken in with "there's a ffree upgrade" as there might be (a) delivery costs and VAT and (b) who is responsible for making it work if the upgrade doesn't go well...

Far safer to get a new machine with it installed from day one, in my view (and not just for those who feel out of depth with technology, believe me, I for one would likely hold on for a new machine with Win 7, and I've been using computers for 30 years).

Drifting off tangent somewhat but Windows 7 is by all accounts more efficient than Windows Vista. So if hardware can run Windows Vista then it should be able to not only run Windows 7 but will run it better.

So, in theory, there's not going to be a surplus of machines that won't be able to run the new version of Windows and that suppliers will want to be getting shot of cheaply.

There might though be a number of machines that already have Vista installed that the suppliers won't bother to install Windows 7 on and might want to get clear out to save them the effort of doing so. That said there is a significant gap between Windows 7 being made available to the manufacturers and Windows 7 being on sale so I doubt that that will occur either.

I also don't think that many places will be offering machines with Vista on them after Windows 7 is released. A big goal of Windows 7 is to finally kill XP and push Vista into an early (and most welcome) grave, MS are going to be pushing hard to get both of those dumped and will be offering big incentives for it to happen.

Um so what am I getting at?

Well I don't think that there's going to be any clear out deals of old Vista hardware when Windows 7 is released.

As to waiting to get Windows 7.

Well on the one hand it is meant to be much better than Vista so worth getting.

On the other MS traditionally have issues with their new Operating Systems and it's usually best not to rush into getting them. That's somewhat mitigated by Windows 7 not really being a new Operating System, it's more "Vista Done Right", unlike the other big releases of the last few years (Vista and XP which were both significant jumps).

What would I do?

I wouldn't buy any machine with Windows 7 until it's been out for at least a month, it is a safer bet than Microsoft's usual releases.

"won't bother to install Windows 7 on and might want to get clear out to save them the effort of doing so. .... I doubt that that will occur either."

and

"I also don't think that many places will be offering machines with Vista on them after Windows 7 is released."

left me confused.

Just for clarity, do you think there will be machines with Vista on, (a) being sold cheaply, (b) at the same price, or (c) that there won't be many machines left with Vista on come the 22nd ?

I'm still of the "there will be lots of machines with Vista on, and they'll probably be sold a bit cheaper" going on the way things online have been - lots of machines (10,000+ laptops alone, on one site, at rough count) with Vista (understandably) on, but relatively few mentioning any free upgrade to Windows 7.

Now, there are some 'deals' around reducing the cost of Windows 7 from ~150 pounds to ~70 pounds, yet some Vista machines are eligible for free /low cost upgrade (under 30 pounds).

Anyone considering Windows 7 is, to my mind, unlikely to buy a Vista machine and they have to pay something on top for the (dubious) privilege of changing it to Windows 7 themself.

As for any new machines, and service packs, etc, I don't see much point in delaying purchase once Windows 7 has been released - the same argument exists as you have put about Vista machines...

If it is too much hassle to change the content for existing Vista machines, then the same would apply for those which will presumably already be in the supply chain to be available for sale on 22/10, and if there are major updates to Windows 7, it would seem to be a download solution for the first 2-3 months at the very least, before new content is on the drives put into new machines.

Sorry friendly - perhaps you can come back to mention which exact deals you had seen - there might be better options about.

While I would be reluctant to suggest such a deal as first choice, if it is the only way you see to afford a new laptop, then let's hope we can compare whatever you have seen with any other options on the market.

Don't be put off, please, by discussion about Windows 7 - we're just expressing views on how the market might change when it is available, and for the moment, it is perhaps academic about whether this new operating system will have any importance to your use of your new laptop!

Yeah, sorry, that was kind of a ramble....

I don't think that there will be a lot lot of cheap Vista machines available when Windows 7 comes out.

The two main drivers for that being that Windows 7 will run on any machine that can run Vista and that MS will be pushing hard to get massive sales of the new OS.

But we'll see, it's not long now.

The reason for delaying purchase is to see if there are any major nasty bugs in Windows 7 as there were with other Microsoft products.

Yes MS will move very quickly should that happen but if there's a security hole or problem that causes loss of data then that's not much of a consolation.

A month or so out there in the wild should bring any major nasty issues to light and if all is well, as I actually believe it will be, then I'd go ahead and get it.

I hope I've actually made some sense that time

As to the original poster I think all of this is very relevant. A new version of Windows is just around the corner that will seems to be smoother, faster and generally better than Vista. So why not wait a few weeks for it?

Thank you for posting. Been busy in rl and going off to hopefully understand and digest all your posts and get back to you.

Perhaps most important is will you

1. want to use it mobile (ie away from home) or

2. plan to use laptop at home, so will be a deal with a phone and some allowance of minutes, with laptop as a 'bonus' ?

For BadgersPaws... "MS will be pushing hard to get massive sales of the new OS"

Seems that people working for NHS, and full time students, may be able to get the new OS as an upgrade for only 30 pounds, but Tesco had it at RRP of 147 and on Amazon it was about 65 (from some thread I saw on Wednesday).

If they can offer it to potentially hundreds of thousands of students at 30 quid, why not the rest of us ? I'll shut up now, and wait to see how things go once it has launched else we'll go round in circles

Students get offered cheap Windows so as to get them while they're young… It also helps to keep fostering in peoples minds that Word Processing = Word and Spreadsheets = Excel. "Young cool" people are also are very nice market to get for yourself, Apple offer similar deals to try and capture them.

As to why NHS workers get it cheap, well the best I can think of is a bit of a conspiracy theory to keep the NHS, a massive single body, in the Microsoft world and not let it drift off into free Open Source land. Getting Windows 7 into that market will also increase the leverage to get all those old XP systems updated.

It's all a bit of a marketing mystery to me in the end

I'm fairly confident though that MS will be boasting of the initial week's sales/distribution of the OS and comparing it subtly to Apple's figures...