Buy a Lenovo, get free wireless

Buying a laptop from China's largest PC maker these days is apparently coming with no strings (or Ethernet cables attached).

AFX News reports that Lenovo is offering free wireless network cards and three months of free Internet access courtesy of a deal the company signed this week with China Unicom.

The report did not say if the deal was good only with Lenovo's Y200 brand of notebooks or if it includes any ThinkPad brand sold in China, which the company recently acquired from IBM.

The wireless cards use high-speed Internet CDMA (code division multiple access) 1X technology, which transfers data at a rate of 230 kbps. China Unicom helped establish the networking alternative to the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) standard used predominantly in Asia and Europe.

China Unicom boasted upwards of 119.2 million mobile phone users in May, which is north of one percent better than the 117.8 million subscribers the company reported in April 2005. Lenovo's partnership is expected to help China Unicom spike its traffic and catch its chief rival, China Mobile.