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Because this is commodity hardware that's available in almost any IT-related shop, even the dumbest:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/...

Lots of people have bought that router, and they could now all be compromised. Besides that, this is an IT site. If it was Cisco, you'd be up in arms.

Pricing is not that bad. I am posting this from a mobile phone hooked up to my laptop. I pay £15 per month for a mobile with 200 minutes and 300 texts. I then pay £7.50 per month on top for unlimited data. This is pretty reasonable in my book.

I am currently on a train moving between London and Manchester at 100+ miles per hour and get the following:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/404516397.png

Ok, the ping is pretty bad but I cant complain about the price. I think they may cap my usage but I have never hit the cap so it does not make any practical difference. I have certainly used upwards of 2Gb in a month so it is fine for casual browsing. I have not tried bit torrent or any monster downloads but at least I do quite happily let windows update hammer my phone on patch Tuesday. I also quite happily browse on train journeys like this and not care about being charged.

I have even considered signing up to a dedicated mobile broadband account at £30 per month just for an internet dongle for the convenience and fact that they throw in a free laptop:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/editorial/get_connected_free_laptops/?int=home_nav

All this seems pretty reasonable to me.

Roaming charges are a good point but I don't have time to go into that now, I am just about to arrive in Manchester :)

So a free laptop is just one marketing promotion away.

The "free" laptop is already here. As you suggest it's a marketing promotion and you have to spend a lot of money to get your "free" laptop.

In the UK at least, PC World http://www.pcworld.co.uk/ and Disking http://www.disking.co.uk/ have them.

I have also been told Toys 'R' Us have them too, so thats definetly a strange definition of vapourware

and yes, comparably equipped PCs and Macs are comparably priced when you don't build it yourself

I refuse to believe a figure exaggerated as stupidly as that is anything but intentional.

Dear PC Superstore,

No idea why you're writing to me, the issue is with PC World.

Sincerely,

Little Good Computer Shops did not put out aged ultracheap Laptops at £ 299,- Windows Included.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/773552
Thats why. You get what you pay for.
Just don't come in whining and ask for free support
from clueless shop assistants.
Real support costs real money :-)

Someone, please, tell me that PC World is not that stupid. Tell me that web page belongs to someone other than the AC that submitted the original story and was latter identified only as "Tikka". It violates their own store policy. Their PR people told The Register they would take care of it. Tell me the video was taken days ago. I'd really rather hear anything other than some self important moron is making life difficult for a Linux user, against store policy, common decency and half the internet's outrage. No?

Poor Mr. Tank.

"No Strings Attached"

Maybe you should show them that line?

In store they're pretty much rubbish, with a lot the employees being school leavers with barely any training. It doesn't surprise me at all that you met someone who didn't realise the real problem or a manager who wanted to get out of repairing a laptop for free.

Try complaining higher up than in store pointing out that a structural defect can't have been caused by software... there are contact details for their complaints department on their website: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/editorial/Customer_Services (phone/email/snail mail).

Should it not be slashdotted? http://www.pcworld.co.uk/

Lower price? Not really. There's at least one Apple model that's cheaper than the equivalent Windows box (the Mac Mini),

Mac Mini Combodrive - £399
"Core Duo" @1.66GHz
512MB
60GB

No keyboard, mouse or monitor.

Packard Bell 354 - £430
Pentium D @ 2.8GHz
512MB
80GB
Includes 17" TFT monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I think the latter is a substantially better deal.

PC World is taking UK preorders.

First of all, Toshiba isn't exactly a, how shall we say, 'household name' in the U.S./Western market.

There, fixed that for ya !

I could go on and on. In fact I would be surprised if anybody in the UK hadn't heard of Toshiba.

Bollox.

In the UK, the PC World chain is the main purveyor of PCs at retail. It, err...well. How shall we put this? It doesn't have the greatest reputation for knowledgeable staff and customer service. Alternative names I've heard for it are PC Woe and The Purple Temple Of Sadness (which is the best term I've heard for the place).

As you'd expect, it pushes cheap* PCs and whilst the odd Mac sits at the back somewhere, it's pretty much a Windows-only place, happily pushing Microsoft Anything and Norton at people.

It came as a surprise then, when I needed to grab a router right that moment and so went in, to find internal stock lists and part numbers getting checked using OpenOffice spreadsheets. Interested, I had a word with the guy doing the check and he said OpenOffice was used throughout the store.

I'm not certain as to whether he meant just that store or the entire chain, but it was interesting to see OpenOffice having taken over a shop so strongly identified with WinTel and Microsoft-only solutions.

Cheers,
Ian
*Not that I have anything against cheap PCs - all depends on people's needs really.

We all know this but I can't believe that PC World are actually saying it. They are one of the hardest sellers of extended warranties that I know.

FYI, PC World, the American magazine, and PC World, the UK Superstore, are completely unrelated establishments. The magazine does share a common ownership with the UK Mag "PC Advisor."

In the UK here we have PC World, a chain of large out of town stores owned by the wonderful Dixons Stores Group (who also own Dixons, Currys and founded Freeserve).

Anyway, the staff in these places are generally pretty braindead. There are exceptions - two friends of mine currently work in our local branch and they do know their stuff, but most of the staff just read whatever it says on the card next to the PC. Their technical support staff in the little in-store kiosks are usually dire. They know next to nothing about maintenance. I worked for a local company doing much the same thing, and we saw many a PC the guys at PC World had 'repaired'. One they deemed totally dead, never to work again actually turned out to have two bent pins on the hard disk. PCW kept it on a shelf for about 2 weeks before saying it was kaput.

This isn't to say PCW are totally bad though. They've lately started stocking a lot of OEM kit, and case mods. Their prices are coming down, and the range of kit they sell is pretty good. Rough with the smooth I guess.

This is actually very important information! This very commen ADSL modem from PC World UK causes random hangups with Athlons running the VIA chipset. Simply insert a PCI USB card and watch your problems go away.
This one was a cast-iron MF of a problem to solve July 2002, before this article and many like it were written. I went through 2 modems, 2 leads, 7 phone calls to my ISP, the very helpful Demon Internet, 4 trips to PC World, 3 full system re-installs and an upgrade, and many hours of work to solve this one. The internals of this modem belong to a Fujistu model too, and at the time, there was sod all information online about it. So watch out!