Product Reviews

With sub-notebooks such as Asus's Eee, HP's Mini Note 2133 and, most recently, MSI's Wind stealing all the limelight, it'd be easy to forget about Vye's range of ultraportable convertible tablets.

You'd almost be forgiven for your forgetfulness too, as in that company the Vye S41B's curves are rather ordinary; given the substantially chunkier price tag, this is just a touch disheartening. The acres of black are broken by a silver strip around the Vye's edges, but there's no magnesium alloy chassis to set the pulse racing.

In its favour, the chassis does feel sturdy enough to sling in a bag, and despite the odd creak here and there, the construction feels pleasingly solid. Indeed, its popularity in the education sector is one source of reassurance. If it can survive in the heavy hands of careless schoolkids, business users can expect it to effortlessly shrug off the commute from home to work and back again.

In some regards, though, Vye's S41B does bear a passing resemblance to those headline-grabbing sub-notebooks. It's mere millimetres larger than an Eee and, at 1.13kg, it also weighs roughly the same. But where sub-notebooks are forced to keep budget-breaking features to a minimum, the Vye is positively bursting at its tiny seams.

It still employs a low-voltage 800MHz Intel A110 processor, oft found in UMPCs, but its slimline form also conceals an 80GB hard disk and a DVD writer. To top it all off, it also boasts tablet features to take advantage of Vista's excellent handwriting recognition.

Add integrated GPS and a Digital TV tuner to its list of talents - features that, unfortunately, weren't present in this pre-production unit - and it's clear that Vye has managed to pack a heck of a lot into such a light, portable laptop.

The tiny chassis does have its downsides, though. Place the S41B next to an Eee PC 900 and you might notice one distinct and rather unfortunate similarity: the keyboard. We've moaned time and time again about the cramped layout and tiny keys of the Asus Eee, and the Vye's is practically its twin.

Daintier fingers, and the smaller digits of its intended education audience, won't have too many problems, but accurate typing requires pinpoint precision. Indeed, the shrunken half-height Enter key and narrow shift keys take some getting used to, and even after a week's regular use, we still longed for a more spacious layout.

Thankfully, the trackpad is altogether

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more successful. It may look far too small but, while the buttons feel a little loose, it's actually very usable.

The Vye is forced to compromise when it comes to screen size, however. Despite having virtually the same footprint as an Eee PC 900, the S41B has to accept a 7in screen, rather than 8.9in panel. This is largely because Vye has had to make room for tablet-friendly controls along the display's sides.

To the left-hand edge you'll find a trackpoint, cursor keys and a brightness control, and to the right screen rotation buttons, an Enter key, scroll buttons and extra left and right mouse buttons. These allow the Vye to be gripped in two hands rather like a handheld games console. And thanks to its light weight, it's easy to support the S41B with one hand while sliding out the stylus and scribbling directly into Vista's handwriting recognition window with the other.

Inking on the touchscreen isn't quite as smooth and assured as the likes of HP's 2710p and Dell's superb Latitude XT. The touchscreen caused aggravation, too, as we often found our palm grabbing the cursor's attention just as we were mid-inking. And unlike Dell's Latitude XT, we couldn't find an option to disable the touchscreen functions and just use the resistive digitiser instead. Hopefully this will change with final production models.

Another aggravation is the screen resolution. The 7in panel is limited to a native resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels, and while this is generally alright as long as you work with one application at a time, it often made surfing the web feel more than a little cramped.

And regardless, the limited horsepower of the 800MHz Intel A110 processor precludes the Vye from doing any serious multitasking in the first place. With 1GB of memory, the S41B scored just 0.26 in our benchmarks. Upgrade the memory to 2GB, and that might help to appease Vista's greedier traits, but no matter how much RAM you put at the S41B's disposal, it'll still be all too easy to reach the limitations of the low-power, single-core processor.

Given the low-voltage processor, the Vye's battery life is a touch disappointing. We eked just 3hrs 24mins out of the S41B's 3-cell battery, and that's while it was sitting idle. Our heavy usage test result of 1hr 50mins was a little more encouraging, but we'd still gladly suffer the weight penalty of the optional 6-cell battery in exchange for even longer life.

For all its faults, the Vye is an undeniably unique piece of hardware. Few, if any, laptops can boast an optical drive, a touchscreen and tablet functions in a package weighing just 1.13kg, but the S41B does just that. Opt for the 6-cell battery and an extra gigabyte of memory and, for some people, the Vye's distinctive array of talents may appeal.

But unless you really need the tablet functions and the built-in optical drive, we can't help wondering whether an Asus Eee, or the immensely promising MSI Wind, might not prove a far better choice at a fraction of the price. We'll withhold a final judgment for now, but we'll be sure to bring you an update when we receive the final hardware in the coming weeks.