Hands-on with the World's Smallest Tablet

Tablet PCs have a reputation for being stodgy, enterprise-class tools that are only of any use in warehouses and factory floors. Wipe your mind of such thoughts and check out Fujitsu's LifeBook U810, which, at 1.6 pounds and sized to fit in a coat pocket, is easily the smallest tablet PC in the world.

I've been using the U810 for a few days now and am overall impressed. It's an instant head-turner, so tiny most people don't realize it's a computer at all. But this is no PDA, it's a Vista PC, complete with 5.6-inch tablet screen that you can draw on with the included stylus, plus Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a fingerprint reader, CF and SD card slots, and a full QWERTY keyboard, if handwriting's not your bag.

To keep size and weight down, the specs are decidedly restrained. The hard drive is just 40GB, there's only 1GB of RAM, and the CPU is an Intel A110, which I'd never even heard of before getting my hands on the unit. Thanks largely to Vista, performance can be sluggish: Booting and application load times can be lengthy, and benchmark performance is weak. In other words, don't plan on using it for much more than basic web browsing and email needs. (Even video playback stutters on the otherwise gorgeous screen.)

The $1,099 U810 makes its mark as a spare, fun, and/or ocassional PC: Using the pointing stick (located in the far upper-right corner of the base; buttons are at the top left) takes a fair amount of practice, and touch-typing is largely impossible. You'll soon probably learn that thumb-typing is the way to go when using the tablet display isn't an option. With about 3 1/2 hours of battery life (when running full-out), the U810 is something you can tote around all day and not worry about it croaking on you. It's also plenty rugged: Just toss it in your backpack, and hit the road.