O2 saunters into laptop market Telefonica-owned brand O2 has launched into the subsidised-laptop market, and is giving away a couple of models of Samsung netbook mini-laptop with £30 and £40 contracts. The mini-laptops are nice enough: the Samsung NC10 and basic-comfiguration R510 are free if you sign up to pay 30 quid a month for 3GB of data, while a …
O2's site is pretty light on the details, suspiciously so. My main worries:
- There is no mention of 3G ANYWHERE. No modem speeds mentioned of any kind.
- The allowance is quoted as '3GB'. Per... what? Term of contract (18 months)? Year? Month? Day? The latter is implied, in the quote '3GB is roughly enough to do the following each day:' - but somehow I suspect it is not.
Personally I'd be happy to sign up for one of their USB modem deals, £15 a month, but the lack of specifics makes me highly suspicious.
"NetBook is, of course, a term owned by Psion who have recently managed to get Google to recognise the trademark and refuse ads on that basis, while Psion has been alerting websites to avoid using the term - so we'll stick to mini-laptop."
Well we heard it here first... I hereby call for them to be renamed as laptots!
The NC10, on which this is written, is considered a SCC (Small Cheap Computer) to be honest at the £270 I paid it only just makes this true, however, at 24 x £30 or £720 it most certainly aint cheap.
Add on the 10GB allowance that makes it useable and you are paying out an awful lot of cash.
However if you need this, mobile broadband service, and are going to pay for it anyway then this becomes a free computer, fill your boots.
Even if that's true, Google stopped enforcing trademark protection in the UK last May, and in the US a couple of years ago. I just searched on "netbook" and saw a Dell ad, so I'm not sure where the Psion story comes from. I think laptot may have to wait a little longer for its day in the sun.
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