3. The Crunch Point: The Keyboard

The keyboard fills the whole width of the and the keys are still too small for many users.

The overall size isn’t dictated by the 7" screen, but by the keyboard; when you open the chunky rounded hinge you see large borders around the screen that are only partly filled by the stereo speakers on either side and the VGA Webcam above the screen. Screen resolution is 600 by 480, which gives you an image far bigger than what any media player or smartphone can offer. Yet, it can feel as if you’re peering at the Web through the bottom of a cereal box.

Install Windows XP and you get the choice of 800 by 480 filling the screen or 800 by 600 - but you have to scroll down to see the bottom of the screen image, so it’s easier to set the taskbar to autohide and stick to 480. The touchpad is smaller than usual, and has the same aspect ratio as the display.. It comes with the full Synaptics driver in Windows so you can use it to scroll up and down the page without clicking the mouse buttons, but scrolling and clicking on such a small screen is fiddly. The silver bar below the touchpad may look like a single button but it works as two. There is also a right-mouse button on the keyboard as well as a Home key that works as a Windows Start button.

The tiny touchpad has the same proportions as the screen.

With a full set of keys, even with the extra space from the screen borders, the keyboard is cramped. This isn’t as much as an issue for the school market, since child-sized fingers will find the keys the right size. But if you’re used to a full size keyboard, the keys are so small and so close together that it’s hard to type accurately or at any speed. Home, End, Page Up and Page Down are relegated to secondary functions on the arrow keys and the "\" doubles up on the "Z" key.

There’s no room for oversize keys, and letter keys are much smaller than usual.

Apart from the VGA Webcam (which points a little low for adult users but delivers reasonable quality video) there are no frills or fancy touches on the system. But that doesn’t make it hard to work with (except for the typing issue). There are no physical switches for volume, Wi-Fi or other features for example - but the function keys let you control volume and screen brightness, turn Wi-Fi on and off, launch the task manager, switch to an external monitor and put the machine into standby (and they work in Linux and Windows). Press the power button and you get the choice of shut down, stand by and restart. Four LEDs show power, charging, hard drive activity and whether the wireless radio is on.