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There are people who will never see the point of a UMPC (ultra-mobile personal computer). These devices don't have the portability of a smartphone or PDA and they don't have the processing power or storage of laptops. So what good are they?

That's missing the point, however; and using the TabletKiosk EO i7210 made us believers.

For those times when carrying a laptop is too much of a burden and working with a smartphone is impractical, a UMPC is just right. The i7210 weighs 1.8 pounds and measures 8.9 x 5.7x 1.0-inches, so you'll hardly know you have it on you, but when you need to work you have the power of a full computer at the ready.

Design
The i7210 we tested has a handsome black design that looks both cool and business-ready. (It also comes in silver.) The front offers a 7-inch TFT LCD that gives you a big view of your work, although occasionally not big enough. Some menu screens are too large for the screen and the on-screen buttons aren't visible.

There's no keyboard, naturally, but you have other input options available so you can find a combination that works for you. The rear upper-right corner holds a stylus and the screen is touch-sensitive. You can choose on-screen items as you would with a mouse, or tap an icon to call up an on-screen keyboard. And it allows you to call up an input field where you can write naturally.

The i7210 has convenient combinations of buttons placed for the left and right thumbs, which let you perform common actions. The left buttons let you make left and right mouse clicks or control media playback; the right buttons let you mouse around or scroll up or down.

In addition, the right-side buttons also let you call up the i7210's camera or video camera, which is placed on the upper right corner and faces the user. The i7210 has a 1.3MP CMOS camera capable of 15fps video capture. While we like the idea of including it, so that the device can be used in videoconferencing, we weren't crazy about the camera itself, which produces a dark, pixilated image.

The other buttons and ports are placed along the top of the machine, so that you won't press them accidentally during use. The top holds the Power button and a Hold slider, as well as status lights. The left top and side holds two USB 2.0 ports, which are covered by a thin rubber flap. The upper right side holds the volume controls.

There's no room for a CD/DVD-ROM slot, unfortunately, but the i7210 does offer a 4-in-1 memory card slot on the top, that supports SD, SDIO, MS, and MMC formats.

While the i7210 has less power than a notebook, it's not as much less as you might think. It runs off a 1.0-GHz Intel Pentium M chip, with 2MB of L2 cache, and offers 1MB of RAM. It can also store plenty with a 60GB hard drive running at 4,200 rpm.