Wipro Little Genius Notebook PC 

An ultra slim notebook that weighs a little bit lesser than it looks. Mostly this reduction in weight comes from its external optical drive. Besides, the 24x DVD-RW drive comes with an extremely short cord-set. It plugs into the USB, but needs a separate power socket as well. The power and data USB cables are a single-piece cord but their orientation makes sure that it can be put only in one place. Except for the security features, the feature-set of the Wipro Little Genius is similar to that of the ThinkPad X40. But this one costs about twenty thousand rupees lesser and comes with a one-year warranty against the ThinkPad's three years and nearly ninety thousand rupees price tag for a similar configuration.

The notebook gives average performance, although we couldn't get it to run Content Creation Winstone on the unit. But the other Business Winstone and 3DMark scores place it 10th compared to the entries in our July 2005 notebooks shootout. Battery life isn't very appealing— a few seconds under an hour (59 mins). The notebook's ventilation needs to be reworked, as it tends to vent really hot air under the top-left of the keyboard and from under the keypad. The keypad-slightly difficult to use-requires you to press the Fn key to access some of the often-used keys, such as home, page-up, page-down, etc. It's one of the few notebooks we've

reviewed that come with two Windows keys. The touchpad is slightly to the left and this might be irksome for some-there is no touchpad scroll either.

It bundles a good set of software, including a recovery CD set. We found the notebook really easy to use and light on the shoulder. It comes with two soft-leather carrybags, one being just for the notebook sans all accessories and cables. 

Bottom Line: Need more battery life and the cord-length for that optical drive needs improvement in this notebook.

Sujay V Sarma