Orange rips off customers, charging £25/month for an Eee PC 900

Posted by Katherine Hannaford on Mon 18 Aug 2008

Works out to a massive £600 - just for an Eee PC!

Still haven't managed to pick up an ASUS Eee PC, close to a year after they first launched? Never fear, because UK mobile carrier Orange is here to "save" the day, with their new offer of an Eee 900 for just £25.

£25 a month, that is. The devious company will tie you into a two-year contract, which will add up to £600 in total - a far cry from the £280 you can pay over at Amazon currently. The thing is, Amazon won't offer you 3GB of surfing plus 100 texts each month, which is how Orange can get away with charging the inflated £600 price.

With many flavours of Eee out there at the moment, the 900 Orange is offering is actually one of the better models. There's 16GB of storage to play with, although this 8.9-inch sub-notebook doesn't come with the new Intel Atom processor, it's just the Celeron unfortunately.

If forking out £600 for an Eee that you'll be embarrassed to use in 24 months doesn't exactly thrill you - and we don't blame you - then we'd suggest picking an Eee 900 up off of Amazon for £280. Then, get one of 3 Mobile's USB dongles on an 18-month contract, for just £15 a month. True, you won't be able to send 100 texts from your laptop to your mate's phone, but there are plenty of sites that do that for you for free. Otherwise, there's always Facebook or email.

Orange's Eee offer

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User Comments

By grahamester

19|08|2008 04:26

You tell him! Pedantic muppet!

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By KatHannaford

18|08|2008 16:53

Simon - the 3 Mobile dongle is for 18 months, so you're not tied into using the Eee (and dongle) for 24 months, which quite frankly doesn't appeal to us as by then a far-superior Eee will be available, plus a better USB dongle offering more downloads for less. It's the way the industry works.

£280 for the Eee + £15 x 18 months = £550. You're not tied to Orange for 24 months, plus you get 5GB of surfing per month instead of the 3GB they're offering. Sure, you don't get the 100 free texts a month, but introduce me to anyone who actually uses that. If so, I'll introduce them to sites that offer that service already, or to their emailing account.

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By simonlightman

18|08|2008 13:39

"forking out £600 for an Eee that you'll be embarrassed to use in 24 months doesn't exactly thrill us"

...but forking out £640 over the same 24 month period by paying £280 upfront and then a further £15/month on 3 without any included text messages does?

Another BRILLIANT piece of journalism from T3.

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