In fact, the folks at Cnet have come up with a list of 25 games that can be played on a netbook and there are some amazingly good titles in there, including the likes of Arcanum and Gabriel Knight and even a browser-only version of Quake. Yes, you might need an external optical drive (DVD or CD drive) to play some of them, but one thing you can be assured of is stacks of fun. Read the list here.

1. Make sure the screen is big enough, else it will get obscured every time you put your finger on it to touch an element.
2. Check if the screen has a protector around it - scratches and dust particles are fatal for touchscreens. If it does not, get one!
3. See if the interface is actually designed for a touchscreen. If you are going to be fiddling around for a stylus every time you have to do something or search for a small scroller to move the screen, you will spend more time gnashing your teeth in frustration than using the device. A rule of thumb: the bigger and more finger-friendly icons, the better.
4. While you are messing around with the interface, also check which operating system the touchscreen runs on. If it is on a popular operating system like Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android or iPhone, there’s a chance you might get lots of applications to run on it. Otherwise, you could be stuck with what comes on the device. We would always recommend picking a device running on a popular OS  - you never know when you might need an app./
5. Do try out the sensitivity of the touchscreen - how quickly does it respond to your touch? When faced with a choice between resistive and capacitive touchscreens, go for the latter. They are more responsive and can support multi-touch more easily.
6. This might sound very elementary, but do check how to switch off the screen when not using it - it is amazing how many times people accidentally do things on their touchscreens just because they forgot to switch it off. So just check out the screen switch off mechanism. The easier it is to use, the better.
7. Check on the battery life. The bigger and brighter the touchscreen, the bigger drain it is likely to be on the device’s battery

The device’s screen at 2.4 inches and 240×320 QVGA resolution is pretty much par for the course, but what really caught our attention was the fact is that SPB Mobile Shell interface with panels (as seen in the Xperia X1 and X2) which throws a whole new look on Windows Mobile 6.5.3 (yes, it is the first phone in India to get THAT advanced a version of Win Mo) - and the fact that the screen is a touchscreen which gives it a leg-up on standard QWERTY devices like the E71 and the BlackBerry Bold, and takes us back to the era of the Treo.

Apart from that, there is of course the 3.2-megapixel camera  that comes with distinctly un-enterprise features like multishot and self-timer and the usual connectivity options including A-GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. For the eco-friendly, there is the GreenHeart panel, the eco-friendly packaging material and eco-mate application - stuff that might not sway a person into buying this baby, but heck, does not harm either.

We do not know the price yet, but if it is around Rs. 15,000, then Sony Ericsson could be getting right back into the enterprise market.

Seems pretty perfect for most travellers. Mind you, the only thing we would be terrified of is mislaying it. It is so darned small that it would be difficult to find and of course, it is so light that we guess we would not even be able to sense that it has slipped out of our pockets. That apart, the SanDisk Cruzer Blade seems an excellent option for those wishing to lug around digital data without burdening themselves too much.

1. We like the six inch, eight-level greyscale E Ink display which is very readable even in broad daylight and works both in horizontal and vertical layout. However, the representative at the Infibeam stall said that reading in pitch darkness would require an additional accessory. Now, that seems a tad disappointing.

2. The reader supports a number of formats including PDF and .doc. Now we call that really handy, considering that Amazon added PDF support to the Kindle only now. A lot of people might end up using it to view not just books but even lengthy official documents.

3. At less than 200 grams, the Pi is very portable indeed. It comes with 512 MB onboard memory which can be upped to 4 GB with the help of an expansion card. Nope, we do not know if one can store one’s library on the cloud as in the Kindle, but even 512 MB is a decent start for most readers.

4. The Pi blew us away with its ability to handle Indian languages. Now, this is something we really wanted in an e-book reader. Right now, content seems to be coming from Infibeam’s online bookstore which has over a lakh titles, but if we could download content from other stores and still read it on Pi, well, that would be nothing short of awesome!

5. Our main quibble with the current model of the Pi is the fact that it does not seem to have any data connectivity. There is no onboard Wi-Fi or EDGE/GPRS/3G chip, which means that one needs to transfer books from a computer to the device using USB. Now, that can be a bit of a pain at times, as it necessitates lugging a notebook around every time one feels like a new book.

How much difference can the network it runs on, make to a device? Well, a whole lot, as we discovered while using the BlackBerry 9630, also known as the Tour. We have used a number of BlackBerry devices in the past, but this is the first to have performed at such a blazing rate of knots, thanks mainly to the CDMA network on which it runs, which is markedly faster than the EDGE/GPRS networks provided by the likes of Airtel, Vodafone and Idea. In fact, thanks to the network, browsing the Net, which has never been a forte of BlackBerry devices, suddenly seemed a pleasure with pages loading up in a snap. Accessing the App World and downloading apps was also so much easier. Voice clarity was of course, a no-brainer, as CDMA networks are so much better than GSM in that department. Top that off with the fact that the Tour is in fact a magnificent device with the best camera (3.2 megs) that we have seen on BlackBerry and a terrific screen that is so reminiscent of the Bold, and you will understand why we rate it so highly.

Yes, we know that the new Bold, the 9700, has been launched in India today (we will be getting a review across soon). But if you ask us right now which is the best BlackBerry in India, and we would go with the Tour.

It may not be as magical as Steve Jobs made it out to be, but we still think Apple’s iPad packs enough in it to turn the tech world upside down. And no, not because we got five of our seven predictions about it right. In fact, it is the prediction that we got wrong that might make the biggest difference.

1. Price warrior: Like most pundits, we were expecting the tablet to be priced at around $1000. But by pricing it at $499, Apple has pulled off a tremendous coup, offering staggering value for money, especially considering the fact that its rival tablets start at twice the price.  There are many people who have said that it is unusual for Apple to be coming in at a relatively low price - they clearly have not been following the company’s policy on the iPods.

2. The App edge: The first “wow!” moment of Steve Jobs’ Union of the Slate address yesterday was not his announcement of the tablet but the fact that almost every - yes, every - app in the App Store would run on it. Frankly, this takes the device to another level. Imagine an iPhone or iPod touch with that amazing screen, backed up by some 1,40,000 apps, ranging from the amazing to the trivial. Perfection!

3. E-book winner: Jobs small tribute to Amazon and the amazing work they have done in e-books was ironically followed by the announcement of the iBooks app, which we are sure will slaughter the Kindle. The Kindle comes at $250, while the iPad offers far more at around twice the price, besides an excellent bookreading facility. RIP, Kindle.

4. Netbook killer: It is lighter than netbooks (weights around 700 grams), has a battery life of twelve hours, has far more apps (including the recently launched iWork), an inbuilt 3G data connection, GPS…and yet costs around the same as middle-to-high-end netbooks. Call us cynics, but we really feel that this product is going to decimate high end netbooks, and perhaps even low end laptops. Yes, the practical minded ladies and gents will point out that those devices are more useful as they have better keyboards, but they are unlikely to pack in as much functionality as the iPad and are totally lacking the “style factor” that the latter has!

5. Portable entertainment redefined: We think that the iPad might have just redefined what portable entertainment is. The iPod touch and iPhone were pretty good at playing video, music and games, but let’s face it, the screen was a bit on the smaller side. But with the 9.7 inch dazzler that the iPad sports is quite another matter. Imagine being able to do everything - and more - that you could do on the iPod touch at a larger scale and you get what we are talking about. We are betting portable consoles and DVD players are not going to be the same again.

In sum, we have a gadget that can change netbooks, e-book readers and portable entertainment as we know it today. Typical Apple!

1. Ten inch screen: We would have rather wanted something smaller, say about seven inches, but all indications show that the Apple Tablet will be a ten-inch affair. We are still hoping that it will be six or seven inches, but common sense indicates ten.
2. iPhone OS: The tablet will run on a version of the iPhone OS, not the famed Mac OS. We are not too sure that is good, given the rock-solidity of the Mac OS, but it does have its advantages.
3. App Store: Just as on the iPhone and iPod touch, tablet users will be able to download and purchase from the App Store in the device. Mind you, we feel that the apps for the tablet will be different from the ones for the iPhone and iPod touch.
4. Multi-touch: Yes, this we can stake our lives on. The interface is going to be the iPhone multi-touch with users using their fingers to scroll, zoom in and out.
5. Inbuilt data connectivity: Unlike the iPod touch which relied on Wi-Fi to go online, the tablet will come with inbuilt data connectivity, allowing users to go online directly from it. That’s good, because it will save one from looking out for Wi-Fi hotspots all over town. It is bad, because it will mean depending on a service provider for connectivity, and the lord knows what they will charge for it.
6. iTunes Sync: This is something we are really not too pleased about, but everything points towards iTunes being the centre of most transactions and synchronisations between the tablet and your computer. We just hope Apple spruces up iTunes a bit. Right now, it can be a pain to use.
7. Great specs…for a price: As with all things Apple, brace yourself for a stiff price tag. However, do consider the specs before you start complaining. It is a fair chance that while the tablet will not be for the mass market, it will deliver plenty of bang for plenty of bucks!

All right, that’s it for now. You can tick off what we got right and wrong in about sixteen hours!