As laptops are so cheap nowadays, every Thomas, Richard or Henry is hell-bent on giving you one with some strings attached. This particular string is a 18-month subscription to mobile phone operator 3's mobile broadband service. But in return you do get a nice laptop to use with the access. 

The laptop in question is a Advent 9912 . This free notebook comes with a Intel Celeron C530 processor, 1GB of memory, an 80GB hard drive and a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium (although you might want to install your own copy of XP as not too many people appear to like Microsoft's shiny new-ish OS).

If you don't want that laptop, then for £129 more you can bag yourself an Advent 9915w, which comes with a Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, 2GB memory, 120GB hard drive and Windows Vista Home Premium.

As for the mobile broadband bit, this comes courtesy of 3 and you get a little dongle which, when the wind is in the right direction will give you speeds of around 2.8Mbps. The 18-month contract will see you shell out £35 a month for the privilege of surfing the web anywhere within range of a 3G basestation.

The difference with this laptop offer is that it comes with a Broadband connection that truly fulfils the portable potential of a laptop," said Glenn Orchard, Head of Commercial Development, PC World. "It's great for those customers who do not require, or have access to a fixed land-line telephone, as the Broadband is delivered via the mobile network. We're delighted to offer this deal, which is another market breakthrough for PC World."

If course the tariff does come with limits such as a 3GB download allowance (which for music and video downloaders does run out sharpish), customers who exceed the 3GB allowance will be charged only 10p per MB thereafter. And there is also software on the laptop that keeps track of customer usage.

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