An affordable  Win10 laptop  -- if you're  ready to work on the Cloud

Bangalore, June13 2016: After the initial hype surrounding  touch  devices like tablets,  many PC pundits rushed to write off  more traditional portable computing platforms. Big mistake. The laptop PC might reasonably say,  like  Mark Twain when he found his own  obituary in a newspaper: "Rumours of my death are an exaggeration!" 
iBall, the Indian maker of  many  tablet models,  clearly agrees. The company has just launched  a compellingly priced  Windows laptop,   whose  weight --  a whisker over 1 kg  for the  11.6 inch screen  model -- challenges the  pricier  Ultrabooks of a few years ago.
The iBall CompBook  Excelence,  comes  with  Windows 10 Home  and  the quadcore  Intel Atom processor is okay for what one can  do on this machine.  Costs are kept down by eliminating such things as   DVD drives. It comes with 2 GB RAM and 32 GB of solid state storage expandable  to 64 GB with  microSD,   audio  and  mini HDMI ports.
When on board storage is of this level, you can't  install any serious application software. Even   an Office suite is a no go.   One has to subscribe to a cloud based version  like Office 360. The typical user of this machine would be 'always on' with Internet  and  mostly work with cloud-based tools and apps.  The built-in camera  seems a bit under powered at 0.3 MP  and  one might  have liked to see  a Type C USB connector to future-proof the laptop  -- but the  attractive asking price of Rs 9,999   probably explains  the Spartan specs.  The 14 inch model, CompBook Exemplaire  costs Rs  13,999 and weighs an extra half  kg.
If your working style has already embraced the Cloud,  and if you  seek the familiar feel of a Windows platform for work or play, the CompBook will seem a very paisa vasool proposition.- Anand Parthasarathy