Mobile Phones With Free Laptop Computers
Over the last few years cell phone prices have reduced, whilst the cost of monthly contracts sold by network providers has remained pretty much unaltered that said, you can get more inclusive minutes than you once did). This means the value of a handset is proportionately less than it used to be when compared against the total cost of a mobile phone contract. In the past cell phone retailers would give away free handsets as an inducement for consumers to take out a contract. In the past some retailers would actually charge for the mobile handset on top of the cost of the contract. Cell phones were, at that time very expensive, {and often} seen as a premium product or status symbol. Today with more common use and resulting economies of scale even the top cell phones are quite cheap.
This presents something of a problem for mobile phone retailers who are trying to sell mobile phone packages by way of of incentives to offer the consumer. The result of this has been increases in the number of different incentivised deals, such as cell phones with a free broadband dongle, cell phones a free televsion, mobile phones with free instant cash back, and even mobile phones with free laptops.
Laptop computers are another product that used to be prohibitively expensive, but because of increased sales and the resulting high production volumes are now quite cheap. As laptops tend to need upgrading frequently, with a useful life that matches that of mobile phones, the chances are that by the time your mobile phone is out of date, your laptop will as well.
Thus cell phones with free laptops are the most sought after deals currently available. There are a range of different deals on offer, but the most popular are those offering budget laptops by makes such as HP, Acer, HP and Fujitsu Siemens. More recently it has become possible to find Sony laptops available as they have moved into the value sector.
When looking for a mobile phone with free laptop the important thing is to find out the value of that laptop computer, and compare that to the other incentives on offer, specifically, find out whether there are any cash back incentives available on the contract. It could be that you may be able to get a better deal by taking a cellphone with instant cash-back, or a free line rental deal and use the money to buy a laptop from an online computer store.
Be sure to do some research on the laptop computers themselves. Consider looking at a few e-commerce stores that offer customer reviews. For instance, there are a wealth of consumer reviews of laptop computers on Amazon and many other online retailers. Blogs and sites like Yahoo Answers are other good sources of customer reviews, but be mindful of the fact that many of these customer reviews are subjective, so make sure you read as many as you can for a complete assesment of the product.
When looking into which free laptop computer to go for, you will see there are lots of differences between the brands. For example Acer produce highly specified laptops at low cost, but, the build quality is poor. Siemens and Toshiba laptops are usually of superior build quality, but are rarely as well featured as an Acer when comparing laptops within the same price bracket. There are also some other more obscure brands available such as E-Machines which are very good value. The main pitfall to watch out for with the obscure low cost brands is the type of C.P.U. installed. Try to stick to a machine equipped with Intel or AMD processors as these C.P.U’s are the industry leaders and you are unlikely to encounter any problems with these brands.
Whether you are looking for a new cellular telephone, or a new laptop the incentivised cellular telephone deals with free laptop computers are well worth a look. There are some wonderful offers available, but, you do have to be prepared to do a little research to find the best ones.
Automatic Cash-Back Mobile Phone Offers
For anyone unfamiliar with incentivised cell phone offers the term automatic cashback may seem a little peculiar or confusing. I mean, why would a mobile phone company give automatic cashback, and what is meant by automatic?
First of all it is important to realize that if you get a cellphone contract, it is not with one company, you are actually dealing with two (unless you go straight to the network operator). Typically you will purchase your mobile phone from a retailer, be they a store on the high street or on the web. You will then have to pay a monthlly bill to the mobile phone network. The relationship between the shop and the network provider is solely commision based. That is to say that the mobile network company pays sales commission to the store.
The retailer has absolutely no influence over the prices levied by the network provider, they are fixed. In order to sell contracts the store will typically invest some of the commission on incentivised deals for the customer. A few years back it was enough for stores to merely give away a free phone. This after all was a time when mobile phones were probibitively expensive and were a a kind of status symbol.
Today however, things work differently. Cellphones are more common and are much cheaper, so, mobile stores increasingly have to attract their customers with increasingly attractive incentives, for example free laptops or even free televisions.
Even So some consumers do not want additional free gifts, they want the cheapest cell phone offer possible, and this is where automatic cash back comes in. As the store cannot cut the monthly line rental of a cell phone rental, they offer to hand back some money to the consumer there and then. So, for example, if the consumer tries to negotiate a 20% discount in montyly line rental, the cellular phone retailer will simply calculate the value of thatdiscount and give them their cash imediately.
Automatic cashback deals are not to be confused with free line rental or cashback by redemption deals, in which consumers have to claim cash back later on in the contract. Because of unscrupilous terms and conditions attached to these claims for cashback many consumers never received their refund, and therefore lost faith in the cash-back by redemption offers.
So, the automatic cashback offer came into play. These offers promised more modest savings than the cash-back by redemption offers, but, the refund was guaranteed. It was automatic, paid to the consumer as soon as the contract was signed, and so, the term automatic cashback was coined for this kind of mobile phone deal.
For customers looking for an automatic cash-back mobile phone offer, without doubt, the easiest place to get one is online. Whilst it is possible to find one of these offers on the high street it is unlikely. For one thing, the high street phone stores cannot generally offer such good offers or promotions simply because their overheads are higher than those of the online competition (though their consumer service is often superior). Also, it is not easy for shops to make money with these offers. The profit margins associated with automatic cash back offers are so tight that they require constant monitoring, factoring in changes in the levels of commission paid and the price of of the phones themselves. This often means that the life of a certain promotion is quite short, once that ends you (as a consumer) have to wait for the next automatic cash back promotion to come along.
For this reason cell phone comparison sites are usually the best way to find an automatic cashback promotion, as they will show all offers by all online shops on one page. These deals are obscure, representing a tiny amount of the total number of offers on offer, and, you will have to accept an older less well featured handset in order to obtain one. But for the thrifty, automatic cashback deals are by far the cheapest way to run a mobile phone.
Mobile Phone Payment Options
The mobile market has become segmented into three distinct customer types, contract mobile phone customers, pay as you go customers, and most recently sim only contract mobile users.
The first sector are the foundation for mobile phone companies, contract mobile phone customers. Until the last year or two, mobile phones were usually sold on 12 month contracts, with the benefit for customers being that they got a free handset upon agreeing to a contract. Popular since the mid 90s, the annual contract is still a common choice today, although eighteen month and two year contract choices are gaining popularity all the time. The reasons for this are primarily twofold, firstly handsets seem to last longer these days, particularly in terms of battery life time. It used to be true that by the end of your year long contract, your phone might not even hold its charge for a full day, or in some cases you might have needed to buy a replacement battery before your contract finished! The second reason for the growth of the eighteen month and two year contracts is the free gifts. By agreeing to a longer term contract, you can expect to receive a free laptop or games console on some deals, in addition to your free minutes and text allowance. Even if you don’t go for a free gift option, you will normally find the minutes and texts bundled with your handset are much more generous compared to the monthly price of a traditional 12 month option.
The second user group is the other end of the spectrum – no minimum term contract and minutes and messages are paid for as required, usually in denominations of £5, £10 or twenty pounds. The obvious target customer for this model is the under 18 market – unable to apply for credit and therefore unable to access the contract pay monthly mobile phones unless an adult signs up for them. Interestingly, the over 18’s make up for the majority of the prepay market – demonstrating the appeal of the prepay offering against the cheaper per minute and per text contract.
Lastly, the most recent arrival to the market is the Sim only deal – a contract which usually lasts only 30 days, and then renews month to month. It is mainly targetted at the part of the market with existing phones that arent bothered about getting the latest and greatest mobile phone, instead looking for the most cost effective service. This marks a clear shift in the marketplace to great value in service provision, whereas a lot of marketing spend has historically been aimed at the latest mobiles and the most advanced features.
Sim only deals.
Nokia 5800 straight off only £215 on Pay and Go
Another small cost on O2 Pay & Go, just available online. You’ll need need to buy a £10 airtime voucher taking the total price £225. With O2 you can savor 300 complimentary texts when you top off up £10 every calendar month.
It has all the standard wireless capabilities. Pre-loaded with navigation maps so you wont get stranded. Don’t forget it’s also a phone! The on-screen numeric keypad makes dialling simple and there’s a robust of on-screen QWERTY keyboards or hand recognition for text input. 12 calendar month contract on the T-Mobile contract. Subscriber Line rental is £29.36 per month and gives you three hundred min and 200 texts per calendar month.
You’ll find £150 hard cash back from Phones 4U, which can be claimed by sending off your bills in 4 stages at months six, 8, 10 and 12. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Green has got a 3.2 inch touchscreen and the current S60 user interface, especially adjusted for touch control. As the XpressMusic make indicates, this is a special music phone. Backing microSD cards up to 16GB there’s plenty of computer memory for music and video recording files.
There’s an accelerometer, a common 3.5mm phone jack, FM radio and a Tellies out port for viewing video recordings or playing the integral games on your enormous projection screen. The photographic camera on the Nokia 5800 has got 3.2 megapixels and a dual LED flashing.
This might not sound awesome but it has a advanced quality Carl Zeiss and that makes all the difference. Pictures are observably improved compared to those made with an iPhone or with an earlier generation cameraphone. The inbuilt web browser is superior.
The CRT screen provides quickly and net pages can be drawn with a thumb swipe or whizzed with a double tap on the screen. The phone has excellent 3G, HSDPA and Wi-Fi connections. There’s also a inbuilt GPS receiver and a wonderful touchscreen version of Nokia Maps is pre-installed. Don’t forget it’s also a phone! The on-screen numeral keypad makes dialling simple and there’s a selection of on-screen QWERTY keyboards or script recognition for text comment.