We enclosed the Asus Eee PC a few days ago. Similar-sized manufactured goods from ACi have now made its way to our test lab. But this one’s not an Eee PC participant; it lies on the high-end side of the “Ultra Mini” series of sub-notebooks from ACi, and it’s also got a few only one of its kind features. But will the disadvantages make you believe too lWe enclosed the Asus Eee PC a few days ago. Similar-sized manufactured goods from ACi have now made its way to our test lab. But this one’s not an Eee PC participant; it lies on the high-end side of the “Ultra Mini” series of sub-notebooks from ACiong and too hard about buying it
Design and Construction
The ACi Ultra Mini Tablet has a small footprint. It’s almost as heavy (or light, rather) as the Eee PC. It’s small sufficient to be easily carried around in a back-pack. The build is attractive polite, though it’s not as sturdy because the Eee PC, I’d say. The holder strap makes the laptop look like a purse. Thankfully for guys, it can be detached!
The 7-inch screen is the same size as that of the Eee PC, but it has a higher resolution. It is therefore sharper; text and videocassette look pretty good. It is sufficiently bright, too, and watching hi-res videos is pleasant. Also, thanks to its 1024 flat pixels (which has become a failure to pay minimum requirement for each and every one websites), it eliminates the issue of side-scrolling while surfing. But on the other hand, due to a lofty resolution on a small screen, fonts look a bit small; this can, however, be fixed by escalating the DPI setting of the fonts.
In contrast, the webcam that sits above the screen isn’t pleasant at all. The output looked grainy even with good lighting, and quite just, it reminded me of the olden-day 0.1 megapixel webcams (even though this one’s apparently a 1.3MP). The speakers placed on also side of the screen hinge are not very powerful; you’ll call for to plug in a pair of earphones.
Below the screen is the small keyboard. Since I’d done a lot of typing on the Eee PC recently, I did not find it difficult to type using these keys. I felt the keyboard was slightly improved than that of the Eee. Below the keyboard is the tiny touch-pad; though it is tiny, it is quite usable. Although it does not have any marking on it, vertical scrolling is get by sliding the finger along the right edge.
Now that’s just one of the three input modes of this sub-notebook. The screen can be tilted off an axis to convert it into a tablet form. In this mode, it can be operated either by the track-point and complementary buttons on the sides of the screen, or by tapping the stylus on the screen.
The track-point is somewhat hard, but working nonetheless. Input via the stylus is beautiful accurate. There’s no handwriting recognition software provided for text entry, so I had to rely on the on-screen QWERTY keyboard. But in fact, I didn’t end up using the touch input mode much.
Battery Life
In our battery test, the laptop was set to high performance mode with full brightness. I did a fair but of non-processor-intensive work, like typing out documents and listening to music. The battery lasted almost 2 hours. Thus, under power-saving mode, we should see 20 to 25 minutes more, so I’d rate the battery life as decent. The laptop’s heating was pretty alike to the way standard laptops heat up. It did have a Silent Mode where it would switch off some of the moving parts to make it run more silently.
In lastly, The ACi Ultra-Mini Tablet PC is available for around Rs 29,000 (exclusive of taxes). While reviewing it, I researched a bit to find gung ho Windows-based UMPC models. Two models that have been available for some time now are the Sony Vaio UX series and the Fujitsu U1010. Both these have similar specs, and are selling at a similar price (about Rs 70,000). And both of them sport a shape that makes them handhelds and not sub-notebooks. Compared to these, the similarly-powered ACi Ultra-Mini is almost half their price, and for myself, I’d prefer it over the latter two because of the slightly bigger screen and keyboard.
Then, I also found that the HCL MiLeap Y UMPC is almost similar to the ACi Ultra-Mini Tablet with respect to physical appearance, features, and price, too! The only difference is, the MiLeap Y has a slightly more powerful 800 MHz Intel A110 processor, a good 1 GB of RAM, a slightly smaller (80 GB) hard disk, and no operating system pre-installed. It’s priced at around Rs 30,000. Even though I wouldn’t advocate installing Vista on the MiLeap either, I think it’ll be able to handle Vista better than this ACi model can.
This brings me to an interesting conclusion. Even though the ACi Ultra-Mini is a pretty decent device, it’s got a few silly snags that can be overcome. But if something better (HCL MiLeap Y) is available for a similar price, why wouldn’t I advocate that rather than this one? Well, I’ll reserve my view till I’ve tested the HCL model myself.
Design and Construction
The ACi Ultra Mini Tablet has a small footprint. It’s almost as heavy (or light, rather) as the Eee PC. It’s small sufficient to be easily carried around in a back-pack. The build is attractive polite, though it’s not as sturdy because the Eee PC, I’d say. The holder strap makes the laptop look like a purse. Thankfully for guys, it can be detached!
The 7-inch screen is the same size as that of the Eee PC, but it has a higher resolution. It is therefore sharper; text and videocassette look pretty good. It is sufficiently bright, too, and watching hi-res videos is pleasant. Also, thanks to its 1024 flat pixels (which has become a failure to pay minimum requirement for each and every one websites), it eliminates the issue of side-scrolling while surfing. But on the other hand, due to a lofty resolution on a small screen, fonts look a bit small; this can, however, be fixed by escalating the DPI setting of the fonts.
In contrast, the webcam that sits above the screen isn’t pleasant at all. The output looked grainy even with good lighting, and quite just, it reminded me of the olden-day 0.1 megapixel webcams (even though this one’s apparently a 1.3MP). The speakers placed on also side of the screen hinge are not very powerful; you’ll call for to plug in a pair of earphones.
Below the screen is the small keyboard. Since I’d done a lot of typing on the Eee PC recently, I did not find it difficult to type using these keys. I felt the keyboard was slightly improved than that of the Eee. Below the keyboard is the tiny touch-pad; though it is tiny, it is quite usable. Although it does not have any marking on it, vertical scrolling is get by sliding the finger along the right edge.
Now that’s just one of the three input modes of this sub-notebook. The screen can be tilted off an axis to convert it into a tablet form. In this mode, it can be operated either by the track-point and complementary buttons on the sides of the screen, or by tapping the stylus on the screen.
The track-point is somewhat hard, but working nonetheless. Input via the stylus is beautiful accurate. There’s no handwriting recognition software provided for text entry, so I had to rely on the on-screen QWERTY keyboard. But in fact, I didn’t end up using the touch input mode much.
Battery Life
In our battery test, the laptop was set to high performance mode with full brightness. I did a fair but of non-processor-intensive work, like typing out documents and listening to music. The battery lasted almost 2 hours. Thus, under power-saving mode, we should see 20 to 25 minutes more, so I’d rate the battery life as decent. The laptop’s heating was pretty alike to the way standard laptops heat up. It did have a Silent Mode where it would switch off some of the moving parts to make it run more silently.
In lastly, The ACi Ultra-Mini Tablet PC is available for around Rs 29,000 (exclusive of taxes). While reviewing it, I researched a bit to find gung ho Windows-based UMPC models. Two models that have been available for some time now are the Sony Vaio UX series and the Fujitsu U1010. Both these have similar specs, and are selling at a similar price (about Rs 70,000). And both of them sport a shape that makes them handhelds and not sub-notebooks. Compared to these, the similarly-powered ACi Ultra-Mini is almost half their price, and for myself, I’d prefer it over the latter two because of the slightly bigger screen and keyboard.
Then, I also found that the HCL MiLeap Y UMPC is almost similar to the ACi Ultra-Mini Tablet with respect to physical appearance, features, and price, too! The only difference is, the MiLeap Y has a slightly more powerful 800 MHz Intel A110 processor, a good 1 GB of RAM, a slightly smaller (80 GB) hard disk, and no operating system pre-installed. It’s priced at around Rs 30,000. Even though I wouldn’t advocate installing Vista on the MiLeap either, I think it’ll be able to handle Vista better than this ACi model can.
This brings me to an interesting conclusion. Even though the ACi Ultra-Mini is a pretty decent device, it’s got a few silly snags that can be overcome. But if something better (HCL MiLeap Y) is available for a similar price, why wouldn’t I advocate that rather than this one? Well, I’ll reserve my view till I’ve tested the HCL model myself.
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