Here is an offer that can’t be beat. In this case it can’t be beat by any cable companies. HP has teamed up with Vonage to give a special offer to purchasers of HP or Compaq computers. Why can’t the cable companies match it? Simply because at the moment cable companies can only offer service in their areas. So this concept wouldn’t work if you didn’t have cable service — and didn’t want to switch. It also wouldn’t work if you lived in an area the cable company didn’t cover.

I wonder how many other similar marketing ideas the company can come up with. I guess the obvious is doing the same with Lenovo and Dell. Then there are myriad e-tailers. Vonage is already working with Amazon but I get the feeling eBay won’t be working closely with Vonage any time soon.