Orange Mobile Asus Eee PC Laptop & Mobile Broadband

• Free laptop (Asus Eee PC 901)
• 3GB usage allowance
• Only £0.0146 per extra MB usage
• 100 free texts from your laptop
• No need for USB modem (already built into laptop)

Orange mobile broadband review: Free Asus Eee PC 901 Laptop Deal

SOME things just go well together: bread and butter, rosemary and thyme and, er, mobile broadband and free laptops – or netbooks, to be precise.

Orange mobile broadband has not missed a trick and is offering customers who sign up to this 24 month package a free Asus Eee 901 PC netbook.

Free Laptop

So is this free laptop any good?

It certainly is. The Asus Eee 901 PC netbook is one of the best little netbooks we’ve seen and arguably the best free laptop on offer from any of the mobile broadband providers.

Weighing less than 1kg (ie. about the same as a bag of sugar) this is an ideal laptop to be bundled with a mobile broadband deal.

It boasts an extraordinarily long battery life of 5 hours and is one of the few free laptops on offer which has built in mobile broadband modem – so no need for an external device. It also comes wi-fi enabled.

Pink anyone?

Orange Mobile Broadband hasn't forgotten about its female customers either - especially young females - who may prefer a pink model rather than the standard black.

Of course, the standard black model is also still available.

Usage Allowance

So what of the actual Orange mobile broadband offering itself?

Orange Mobile Broadband offers a pretty standard 3GB usage allowance along with one of the cheapest extra data charges available: just 1.46p per extra MB.

3GB should be enough for even regular browsing and emailing along with a few streamed catch-up shows on iPlayer or the like. The reasonably extra usage costs won’t sting you too badly, but be aware that even at essentially 1 and a half pence per MB, an extra GB of usage will still set you back £14.95 (£0.0146 x 1024).

Speed

Orange Mobile Broadband is not the fastest mobile broadband available (that title comfortably belongs to T-Mobile), but our tests of the Orange Mobile Broadband system reveal it is not too bad.

To its credit, Orange Mobile Broadband makes no bold claims about its speeds and we found Orange Mobile Broadband was comfortably reaching a very acceptable 1Mbps wherever we found a decent 3G signal.

Freebies

In addition to your free laptop, Orange Mobile Broadband also gives you 100 free text messages a month which you can send from your free laptop.

Going Abroad

Considering Orange Mobile Broadband aims itself at business customers, their roaming rates abroad - particularly outside of the EU (£6.46 per MB) - are ludicrous.

In fairness, its competitors are not much better in this regard and we'd say you should only consider using your mobile broadband connection abroad if you are a millionaire. And a foolish one at that.

So, is Orange mobile broadband with free laptop any good?

Orange mobile broadband may not be the fastest mobile broadband, but it is adequate and the combined mobile broadband and free laptop offer is a good one.

When you consider the free laptop is worth a pound under £350, you're essentially only paying around £10 for the 3GB mobile broadband usage a month which, by all standards, is pretty decent.

A little more detail...

Mobile Broadband		Special Note...	Any good?
Package:	Asus Eee PC Laptop + Mobile Broadband	-
Usage Limit:	3GB	-
Extra Data Charge:	1.46p per MB	-
Max Speed:	Up to 3.6Mb	-
Anything Else?	100 free texts from your laptop	-

Laptop Included			Specifications	Cost
Laptop:		Asus Eee PC 901	Available in Pink and Black colours Built in mobile broadband Windows XP Home Intel Atom Processor 16GB flash memory 1GB RAM memory Built in webcam Up to 5 hours battery life 2 year warranty	Free

Payment & Contract
Monthly Price:	£24.47
Modem Cost:	from Free
Contract Terms:	24 months

Your chosen Orange Mobile Asus Eee PC Laptop & Mobile Broadband package option...

Asus Eee PC Laptop + Mobile Broadband		Up to 3.6Mb 3GB usage		Asus Eee PC 901 Included free		100 free texts from your laptop		24 months		£24.47		Free