They say good things come in small packages, and these new laptops are no exception. The new HCL Mileap is surely a revolution in terms of design and sheer value for money. The MiLeap X Series is the real star here, coming in at a price of Rs 13,990. Essentially based on the Intel ClassmatePC reference design, the X Series is much smaller than you'd think-about the size of a regular organizer diary. It's available in two designs; with a black faux leather case for the male fraternity, and with a pink cover and handle for women.

Even the tablet (Y and V-Series) was cute to look at, with everyone who saw it wanting to hold and touch it. Regarding the X¬Series, it is great to see a notebook coming in for just under 14k, loaded with features like Wi-Fi, a built-in Mic, SD Card Slot, 2 USB slots, and built-in speakers. Sure, it doesn't have a proper HDD, only 2 GB of flash memory, a basic 900 MHz Celeron processor and you won't be able to load a very resource intensive operating system on it. But the flavor of Linux that comes pre-installed (Edubuntu) is good enough for web use, basic multimedia, and documents. But don't expect to run a lot of applications at the same time. It's really not a bad choice for basic mobile use.

The V-series costs more but has a lot more to offer too. Being a tablet, the screen can swivel and is touch sensitive. It comes preloaded with Vista Home Premium, has an 80 GB 1.8-inch HDD and 1 GB RAM. Based on an Intel A 110 processor, it has almost all the features you would expect from a normal-sized notebook, be it Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, touch screen, SD card slot, 2 USB slots, 1.3M web cam, you name it and it's got it. Which is why the 34k price tag is even more amazing. For 34k, in the regular notebook world, you'll only get a basic laptop, probably with a 14 or 15.4-inch screen, 80 GB HDD, 512 MB RAM, and a basic operating system. There had to be a tradeoff though. The processor was constantly struggling, even with regular applications. It will most definitely work a lot faster with Windows XP.

The smaller size in both laptops means that a lot of other things have to be miniaturized as well. The keyboard is really small and the touch pad in the XSeries is barely an inch wide. But to its credit the X-Series also comes with a dedicated pointer option on the left hand side of the screen, mouse buttons on the right, and dedicated launch buttons for a few important applications like web cam and Internet Explorer. Overall, they're not brilliant performers, but they'll surely find takers, judging by the amount of interest they generated in our office alone.

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Specs:-
X-series: Intel Celeron M (900 MHz),
Intel 915 GM, 512 MB RAM,
7-inch wide (8OOx480) LCD,
built-in speaker, 2 GB flash memory,
linux, Wi-Fi, SO slot, 6-cell battery,
1.44 kg Y-Series: Intel AHO (800 MHz),
Intel 945GU, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HOD,
7-inch wide (1024x600), VGA out, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
3-cell battery, 980 g.