The concept of a laptop fused with a PDA is not exactly revolutionary. Then again, it's not every day that a top brand like Dell does it.

However, Dell did launch a new range of laptops, of which some are embedded with rather interesting proprietary features. One of those laptops, for example, boasts proprietary technology that allows you to instantly access features such as web, attachments, email and calendaring--all without having to boot into the main operating system. Battery life when in this mode is expected to be in the region of days.

If I am the chief engineer over at Dell, I know I would simply grab an already tried-and-tested, instant-on operating system with organizer functionalities, and just fuse it to the laptop. The Windows Mobile operating system certainly sounds like the perfect candidate to me.

Moving on, one thing that I kept forgetting to mention was my experience with DataViz's wonderful Documents To Go (DTG) for the BlackBerry [1] application. I actually managed to flash my BlackBerry Curve to the new version 4.5 operating system--which comes with Documents To Go--a while back. There was a newer revision of Office To Go already out, so I installed that and also upgraded to the Professional edition of DTG.

I have been using both Word To Go and Sheet To Go intermittently over the last few weeks, and I must say that they work very well. Sheet To Go especially was a delight to use, allowing me to copy all my Excel spreadsheets with the piece of mind to know that they will work. Overall, DataViz has integrated the BlackBerry look and functionality into the application, and has done an excellent job at it. Despite the lack of a touch interface, menu options are intuitive and feel just right.

Kudos to the DataViz team for that. - Paul [2]