I came across this offer the other day from PC World, one of the leading electrical retailers in the UK. Working with mobile network 3, they’re offering a free laptop to any subscriber to a 3 mobile broadband package. Or, they’ll offer 350 pounds off a higher spec laptop. Genius!

There is a catch. Obviously. Well, it’s not that bad, really. You get a wicked laptop from Compaq, but you do need to commit to 35 pounds a month for 18 months (with the USB modem).

Here’s the offer:

Celeron processor, aye. A gig of ram, 80gig of disk space, Windows Vista… come on, you can’t argue with that, can you?

Total payable over 18 months? 630 quid. You *could* buy the laptop separately for £329.99 and then do a tenner-a-month contract with 3. That would certainly work out cheaper. But if 300+ is a bit too much to spunk out (as it is for most customers of mobile phone handsets) then this does make sense.

I do like the subsidised model applied to laptops. Very smart. It’ll help get a lot of folk converted. You can, by the way, get a MacBook for just 349 quid up front.

More information here.