Datawind tempts buyers with £99 tablet PC and free internet access

Datawind is hoping to attract the interest of consumers unfamiliar with its Ubisurfer brand with a seven-inch tablet PC under the £100 mark that includes free internet access for a year.

Launched at The Gadget Show Live 2011, the Ubisurfer Touch 7 runs Android 2.2 and has a multi-touch screen. Notably, Datawind has been careful not to use the term 'mobile broadband' in relation to the free web access, as the device supports only the GPRS data network. This network is limited to 14.4Kbits/sec, which is about the same you would have got from a dial-up modem from years gone by.

Datawind insists that compression software supplied with the tablet will give users a "3G-like experience", but with even the slowest mobile broadband services hitting an average of 1.73Mbits/sec, and figures in the range of 2 to 3Mbits/sec for the UK as a whole, this seems a bold claim.

Fortunately, the Ubisurfer Touch 7 has Wifi built in, although it's limited to the slower - but common- B and G versions of the wireless standard. It won't match the speeds of the latest N Wifi routers.

The free GPRS offer lasts one year from purchase and includes 30 hours of web access per month.

The Ubisurfer Touch 7 has 1GB of storage built, which can be expanded with MicroSD memory cards.

We're going to take a proper look at this product when it is released at the end of May 2011. Whether a tablet this cheap can give a truly satisfying user experience remains to be seen, but it's certainly the cheapest tablet we have come across.

You'll find a complete list of our reports on our Gadget Show Live blog.

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