Laptop named desire

GIZMO GALLERY

There are at least a couple of thousand laptop models on sale at any given time, most are dark (or light) grey, have similar specifications, varying prices and mostly, they all work just fine.

This one's different. Say hello to the Asus-Lamborghini VX1. Designed as an aspirational laptop (a first for the Taiwanese hardware firm), it certainly looks right. A neat, glowing Lambo-yellow top, colour-matched to the gorgeous Gallardo supercar.

The spoiler-like detail with the de rigeur honeycomb mesh grille is befitting. Open the book, noting that the screen does not actually 'latch' closed by design and take in the glossy, mirror-like 15-inch screen and the metallic black keyboard surround.

It'll set your teeth on edge. But that's easy to fix. Just peel off the acres of spec-announcing decals that mess up that area and you'll love the way the simple black workspace looks. We did think that carrying the yellow theme into the keyboard area was an idea worth exploring.

And while you're peeling the offending stickers off, notice what they're saying. 2Gb RAM, 160 Mb hard disk, custom-made NVidia graphics card, Core Duo processor plus all the bells and whistles (IR, Bluetooth, WiFi, USB, ABC...). Nice, eh? Not to forget to include the DVD writer (which has all the stuff - four mathematical symbols, three or four alphabets following them and a fair number of abbreviations as well!)

On the move, the VX1 works hard at keeping up with its rather racy-wheeled namesake. Hardly a hardcore gaming laptop by design, the VX1 does play graphics intensive games like MotoGP3 at above intermediate resolutions fluently.

The glossy screen shows colour very well, and looks nice and bright. Watching DVDs in the office never looked this good. But when you return to a game and crank the resolution to full, you'll see the struggle to hold the frame-rate up now and then. Not often, but it happens.

You will also notice that the in-built speakers sound quite impressive and that the batteries really last. We reformatted a stack of videos into iPod-ready files during a cab ride and after 40 minutes of frame-munching, the battery still showed almost three hours of life.

But it isn't perfect. The glass finish works like a rearview mirror, especially if your screen is dark and no one can ever sneak up on you while you're working on the VX1.

Further, for a top-spec laptop, Asus has stopped a bit short in certain areas. Like a 2 Ghz processor, when the 2.2 Ghz would have been the fastest Core Duo on sale. And now the Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Extremes are out.

We do hear that the VX1 Golden Edition exists, which bundles in a Core 2 Duo, but not in India, yet. Similarly, the DVD writer went the whole hog, but stopped short of the ultra-cool LightScribe. Why didn't they go widescreen?

Then comes the hard-hitting pricetag. The VX1 will set you back roughly Rs 1.7 lakh "� a lot of dosh. In fact, we're not sure that the VX1 could be described as value for money. But remember, we did mention that this was an aspirational product. Still, it must be noted that this much money could buy you a much faster laptop.

But here's the nub of it "� it won't be Lambo-yellow. It won't come with a bag that says Lamborghini in the right places. The Lambo laptop will make your colleagues look at your desk twice. And you will stand out.