This is HCL’s compact offering, and while it doesn’t even claim to be in the same league as the ones before it, the Z29 C2D is a Core 2 Duo T5550 (1.83 GHz) based 12.1 notebooks. We couldn’t figure out why HCL added the diamond cut patterns on the lid— this brings back unpleasant memories of Nokia’s Prism.

This notebook is well built, and except for its lid, which seems flimsy and doesn’t tilt back, we couldn’t find much to complain about. Oh!–Wait a minute, there was the issue with the keypad where the ‘function’ key is placed to the extreme left where the [Ctrl] key should be. This causes a lot of inconvenience when using the [Ctrl] key for any purpose, especially shortcuts. And did we mention that it’s a little too thick for a 12.1 inch. In fact, any thicker and we wouldn’t have put it into this category.

This is HCL’s compact offering, and while it doesn’t even claim to be in the same league as the ones before it, the Z29 C2D is a Core 2 Duo T5550 (1.83 GHz) based 12.1 notebooks. We...