UK retailer Carphone Warehouse is reportedly pulling a Linux-powered mini-laptop from its line of computer offerings. The Elonex Webbook is a VIA C7-M powered lapttop that runs Ubuntu Linux. Carphone Warehouse reportedly ordered about 60,000  of the custom notebooks from Elonex, but was finding that customers returned the Webbooks in unusually high numbers. The top complaint seemed to be that the operating system was unfamiliar.

Carphone Warehouse plans to replace the operating system on the computers with Windows XP.

The company gave away the mini-laptops for free with the purchase of a long term wireless data plan. To get a no-strings-attached version of the Elonex Webbook, you had to shell out £264 or about $525 USD. Carphone Warehouse will likely increase the price a bit to cover the cost of Windows XP licenses.

via TechRadar

Despite my earlier skepticism, it looks like the Elonex Webbook is real. And it’s shipping. The folks at Pocket Lint got their hands on one one of these 10.2 inch laptops that Carphone Warehouse is offering for free with a wireless subscription. And here’s what they had to say (nutshell version):

• The Webbook ain’t the lightest or heaviest netbook you’re going to find, but at 1.3kg, it’s a lot easier to carry around than a 17 inch laptop.
• The case is black on the outside, silver on the inside, and has a big Webbook logo on the top.
• As with other laptops with a VIA C7-M CPU, the Webbook is pretty good for web surfing or basic office document work, but it’s not a multimedia or multitasking powerhouse
• You get about 2.5 hours of battery life

You can pick up an Elonex Webbook for about $525 without a contract, and it sounds like the computer might just barely be worth that price. But the idea of getting a Webbook for free with a wireless contract is much more appealing. Unfortunately, this deal is only available to UK customers.

The Elonex webbook looks interesting enough on paper. The laptop packs a 10.2 inch display, 1.6GHz VIA C7-M CPU, 80GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM, runs Windows XP, has 3 USB ports and weighs just 1.3kg. Oh, and you can pick one up for £264 or about $525 USD or get one free when you sign up for a wireless data plan with Carphone Warehouse.

The only thing that gives me pause? The fact that the computer in the pictures seems to have a real keyboard and a digitally rendered display. Call me silly, but I’m always a bit wary of placing orders for a product that doesn’t actually appear to exist yet.

[via Cloudbook UMPC]