The three USB Ports, a dedicated SD Card slot, and a multi-card reader make the machine versatile, the built in Ethernet port and wireless are good, though the switch for turning off the wireless is not all that nice. The mouse is not as good as the HP Mini Note, but is much better than that of the MSI Wind or the EeePC.

The biggest problem I encountered was with the 1024x600 display. Most sites today are designed for 1024x800, so Yahoo’s new interface on email and the Gmail interface won’t load up and my corporate website looked a bit skewed.

I don’t think the machine will be able to play a lot of games as the graphic speed is not very high. I managed to crash Firefox every time I had more than eight tabs open in Windows, for the machine has just 1GB RAM. Upgrading RAM is not recommended as the whole machine would have to be taken apart.

But still if you are planning to buy a laptop, mostly for web browsing and checking mail, and if mobility, and not speed, is what you are looking for, then do check out the Atom machines. The prices are going to fall soon, making them more more attractive. As of now, the cheapest Acer Aspire One model comes for Rs 19,999 + taxes.

Gagandeep S. Sapra is the Chairman and CEO of System3 group of companies, gagandeep@system3group.com