HCL ventures into tablet land with its latest 'leaptop'. The company's products have always tended to be on the value-based side and things are no different with this model. Sporting a shiny pearl black finish, this 12.1incher looks quite plasticky. The HCL logo is generously splashed all over the notebook leaving no room for discreetness or elegance. Opening the clamshell continues the trend with rather loud touch pad buttons and garish stickers. But the latter can thankfully be ripped off.

The keyboard is much on the smaller side so high-volume typing might be trouble some. Then again, this is a tablet pc, which when complemented with Windows Vista's excellent handwriting recognition, will make you forget about typing altogether. The touch pad itselfis decently sized and surprisingly accurate. You don't ne"d to press too much and on-screen pOinter movement is quite precise.

HCL has crammed a nice set of features into the device. There's a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor under the hood with 2GB of RAM. This ensures that the 64-bit flavour of Vista Home Premium employed in this system is always zippy. While the 160-gig hard drive is no show stealer, the notebook does sport an SD!MS card reader, three USB ports, a Firewire port, and ExpressCard slot. There's also a built-in fingerprint reader for the security conscious. Unfortunately, things are not very rosy on the touchscreen front.



For one thing, the stylus is a complete bother to use. Performing double-taps are close to impossible and accuracy is far on the lower side. Thankfully, handwriting recognition works like a charm. Although a tad heavy at 2kg, you can easily hold the tablet in one arm and write away with the other. It's ideal for taking notes at long business meetings and conferences. Battery life at around 2.5-hour is about average.

While there's not much to write home about with this leaptop, it's far cheaper than other brands' offerings. So if you're looking for a tablet PC that won't cost you a bomb then give this one a shot.