These days I rarely watch television without a portable PC on my lap. With one eye on the TV, I use it - connected through my wireless network to other PCs in the house and my cable broadband connection - for e-mail, web browsing and writing.

I am therefore the ideal target for a relatively new class of computing devices variously called UMPCs (for ultra mobile PCs), internet tablets or web pads. Pepper Computer, a Lexington, Massachusetts company, launched one of the first of these devices - dubbed the Pepper Pad - in May last year. I was intrigued by it, even though, like most other reviewers, I thought it was somewhat underpowered, rather heavy and, at $800 in the US, definitely overpriced.