Orange gives away free laptop with 3G

What better way to convince people to buy your mobile broadband than by giving them a free laptop? That seems to be the thinking behind Orange’s latest move in the 3G data world.

Now, for anyone who fancies signing up on a two year mobile broadband contract, Orange is giving away a dinky Asus eee PC. The eee PC is a tasty beast – techheads rave about it – and the £25 a month fee isn’t a bank-breaker.

It’s almost a really rather appealing pitch from Orange – almost. It’s only the data cap that lets its down. For their 24 month contract, users will get a mere 3GB. Why would you want such a great mobile PC and then a such a tiny amount of data to use with it? Is it Orange’s way of trying to get users to run up lots of excess charges?