For the past six months or so I’ve been receiving a lot of flyers in postal mail touting, "If you sign up for internet service with us, you get a new netbook computer!" For many U.S. residents they’ve been seeing the same, and maybe this is even happening in other countries.
Everybody knows that in order to get the computer, you have to subscribe to the ISP. And of course this never applies to the "basic" internet plan. You’ll almost always have to go with the mid-to-premium plan.
In some instances, getting the computer requires you to jump thru a lot of hoops, such as is the case with Sprint. Where they nail you with first is the mail-in rebate. As you know, once you mail that sucker in, you’re the sucker because yet another company has your mailing address to send junk mail to. And then comes the fact that the broadband modem is embedded in the netbook, so you can’t move the service from the netbook to another computer whatsoever.
Very crappy. This is not a "deal" at all.
There was a time not-so long ago when certain ISPs tried to hock supposedly "free" computers, so this idea is nothing new. Back then the PC you received was annoying slow, riddled with built-in spyware/malware and did nothing but make your computer experience nothing short of a nightmare. The modern variant of this is the netbook, but instead of spyware/malware, they lock you in with ISP-specific proprietary hardware.
Note that not all ISPs who offer free netbooks are shady. Some do deliver on their promise and you do legitimately get a new netbook with no hassle or any up front cost for the computer. But I’d still recommend buying a computer outright instead of receiving anything via an ISP "deal."
This is yet another one of those instances where you have to read the fine print, because if you don’t, well.. you know what happens.
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