The site says "Click here for a free PC!!" and then the price starts rising.

PC Help is actually offering a 500MHz Intel Celery PC for two years if you cough up £50 and answer market research questions once a month.

But once you fill in the application form they stick you with an extra £50 for admin and P&P.

If you want to keep the machine after two years you can hang onto it for another £50. The total is now £150.

PC Help reckons it has 250,000 £600 machines to give out to UK households only. It plans to sell the research results and promises your personal data will be kept confidential and you will not be spammed if you take part.

It is using a variety of hardware suppliers to source the kit but mentioned HP and Compaq as brands available.

For your money you get 64MB Ram, 8.4GB hard drive, 8MB Video, modem, sound, stereo speakers and 15in monitor. The system comes with Windows 98 installed and the Lotus Smartsuite 'Millennium' edition.

The kind of questions you'll have to answer are of the type: How many TVs do you have; Have you ever changed ISP; How many cars have you got; How long do you spend on the Internet?

If you don't fill in your monthly form PC Help will come after you for the money less three per cent for each month you bothered to answer.

Even at £100 for two years use it still sounds a little too good.®