Orange UK launches laptops as well

You can now get yourself a 35-quid-a-month free laptop from Orange.

Although, as we saw earlier, because of their ridiculous .co.uk website design, you’ll need to arse about clicking on their website and be very, very lucky to hit the relevant pages first-time.

The order pages are here, if you can’t be bothered hunting.

Here, then, is what Orange say about their new laptops:

Orange today launches its new mobile broadband and laptop offer targeted specifically at the business market. Small and medium business customers can now sign up to a new Orange Business Everywhere mobile broadband package and come away with a laptop as well.

Laptop and dongle. Nice. Not especially innovative but at least they’re following 3 and the mobile phone retailers and getting an offering to market.

Anything new or different? Yes.

The three new Business Everywhere with Laptop bundles each include an unlimited data allowance and a whopping 500 WiFi minutes per month, which can be used at over 10,000 UK hotspots*.

I don’t think I’d have described 500 minutes as ‘whopping’ but still, reasonably useful stuff.

On top of this, customers will receive a business-spec HP laptop with Microsoft Windows Vista Business. Depending on the package chosen, the laptop will come either embedded with an Orange SIM or with an Option ICON 225 USB dongle, meaning customers can get online instantly without the need for a fixed line internet connection. The new packages range from GBP35 – GBP45 per month for a 24 month contract, with the price varying according to the choice of laptop.

24-months is preeeeety steep. I’d have liked to have seen at least an 18-monther in there, but fine. I like the integrated broadband option.

Following the announcement of its consumer offer in July, Orange is working with HP, one of the world’s leading laptop manufacturers, for its first connected business laptop offering.

I must have missed the consumer offer completely. Unless they’re meaning a consumer-broadband offering. I didn’t catch an Orange consumer laptop range. And their site is especially useless at advertising that? Who knows.

Business Everywhere with Laptop is available direct from Orange through the Online Shop, telesales and the business sales team.

Ah. So you can’t actually buy these in the shops. Slightly annoying, that.

*via the partnerships with BT Openzone and The Cloud

I could have guessed. British Telecom and their sodding WiFi minutes on BT Openzone. How depressing. Are we STILL billing by the minute?

And since the Orange.co.uk site doesn’t have a decent screenshot of a price table, here is the rubbish text-only-version from their press release.

Seriously, this is how they went to market with it. Amazing.