7. Up Close & Personal: Acer Travelmate C102Ti

Acer's C102Ti is a standard convertible PC Tablet. In other words, it can be used like a conventional notebook or it can be converted to a slate.

As a classic notebook...

Although the flip-turn mechanism on the display feels a little wobbly, we didn't experience any problems during the test. The maximum brightness of the 10.4" TFT display (XGA resolution) was 128.7 candelas per square meter. The maximum black-white contrast at a perpendicular viewing angle was 135:1. While these are both good values for this type of display, they still won't let you work outside. Unfortunately, the contrast is also heavily dependent on the viewing angle, resulting in what is often referred to as a 'small viewing angle.' If your viewing angle isn't perfectly perpendicular, the brightness and color of the screen will suddenly become heavily distorted. And color distortion appears to be a common feature of almost all Tablet PCs available today. The apparent cause of this is a sheet of protective plastic which covers the front side of the display.

...or as a slate.

The keyboard is a little small, but is still easy to work on because it is slightly curved. The computer also has a very practical switch above the keyboard on the left-hand side, which turns the integrated WLAN card on and off (802.11b standard).

The two USB ports and the FireWire port are located on the right side of the housing.

Ports for the peripherals are located on the right side of the housing.

The VGA port, modem jack and 10/100 Mbit network jack are located on the back of the housing behind a flexible cover to protect them from dust.

Monitor, modem and network connectors are on the back.