Last month I explained why Android smartbooks would end up being free. It seems that my predictions were not optimistic enough: free netbooks are already starting to appear! Techradar reported yesterday that Virgin will be offering free netbooks with some of their contracts in the near future. Let's look at the offer in more detail.
The Virgin Freedom netbooks
The machine offered by virgin is at best an average netbook by today standards: Atom 1.6 Ghz, 1 Gb of ram, 10 inch screen, 120 Gb HDD and a 3 cell battery that should be good for 2 hours of usage. The machine will be available in black or red and will come with Windows XP. There are a few signs that Virgin cut corners where it could: 120 Gb HDDs and 3 cell batteries are mostly a thing of the past on modern netbooks. I would have preferred that Virgin invest in a larger 6 cell battery rather than in a Windows XP license (Linux would run great on such a machine) but given the price I won't complain. This netbook however may not be the right one for you.
The deal
To qualify for the free netbook you will have to sign a 2 year ADSL and telephony contract. I don't know Virgin's prices but I expect this to be a commitment of more than $1000 on the life of the contract, so you should give it some thought before jumping on this offer. Also keep in mind that other service providers may soon offer lighter smartbooks or better offers to avoid loosing too much market share to Virgin media.
Conclusion: the free netbooks and smartbooks are coming.
Virgin media is a new player in the broadband business and need to work hard to attract new customers, so other operators may not follow with free netbook offers right away, but I expect these offers to become more and more common. With the arrival of cheap smartbooks and Linux distributions that are more netbook-optimized like Moblin, ChromeOS and Jolicloud the price of entry level netbooks should fall enough to allow fully subsidized netbooks in the near future.
Read more in the netbook category
Image CC by Howad Gees
1 comments:
Free - if you pay.
Under this model all things are free.
I think you do a disservice to claim they are free when you have to go on to say you have to purchase $1000+ to get it.
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