All you wanted to know about Milagrow TabTop PC!

BANGALORE, INDIA: "Laptops and tablets are now history!" is the loud and clear message that stares you in the eye when you visit Milagrow's website. From the marketing promo, even we were curious to know what this means, because from far off, it looked like a tablet only. The company calls it TabTop, which is a cross between a tablet and a laptop.

A further drill down helped us understand this definition somewhat--the machine has ingredients that are as good as a netbook--DDR3 1 GB RAM, 1.2 GHz processor and multiple connectivity ports (explained later). Plus, it's based on the Android 2.3.1 Gingerbread OS, and has been customized for content creation with similar ease and comfort as a laptop offers. In fact, it comes with 50 pre-installed apps for specific industries and work functions.

So you can get a device for sales force automation, and for different industries like hospitatility, education, and medical. Most of the applications that have been added were demanded by industry players to cater to their specific needs. Moreover, none of these apps are freely downlodable from the Android market. They've been pre-loaded by the company for free.

So it's this combination of specs and apps that the company has used to call this device a TabTop. There's no built-in keyboard or touchpad in case you're wondering.

The TabTop comes in two variants—A 16 GB one with 512 MB DDR3 RAM of internal memory (the one we reviewed), and a 32 GB version with 1GB DDR3 RAM. The company even bundles a protective leather case worth Rs. 4,000 for this price.

The TabTop has an 8-inch multi-touch display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels in a 4:3 aspect ratio (like the iPad). It also sports a 2 Megapixel rear camera and a VGA camera on the front. Battery backup is good, standing at more than 10 hours with its 5000 mAH Lithium Polymer battery.

The TabTop has an impressive line-up of ports, which is usually not found in most tablets. These include an HDMI port, USB 2.0 interface, USB host, line out, microSD card slot and a SIM card slot. The device supports both 3G and WiFi. However, there's no bundled HDMI cable.

Usability

While the TabTop works quite well, we did find a couple of minor quirks. For one, the Back button has been placed between the Volume and Menu buttons. As a result, you invariably end up tapping the Volume button instead of Back button. Possibly, you'll get used to it over time, but initially, it becomes a little irritating. However, physical buttons for both are also available.

The TabTop's interface is intuitive, but the touch response could have been a little more smooth. Video playback quality is excellent, and the battery also lasted for more than 9 hours.

Bottomline: Given the specs, features, and application bundle, the TabTop sounds like an exciting deal if you're looking for a tablet that can cater to your industry's

specific needs.