I heard about the Nokia Booklet 3G through someone I follow on twitter and wondered what sort of new smart phone Nokia had now brought out. I was surprised to find it wasn’t a phone but a little laptop. I had been thinking of getting a netbook for a while and this one ticked all my boxes – small, light, long battery life and in built 3G (so you don’t having to plug in a dongle). I contacted the lovely people at WOMWorld and they sent me one for free for two weeks to test.

First impressions were amazing. Even the box it came in was small! I took it out and booted it up. It connected easily to my wireless network and I was off. I wrote my first ever blog post using it to test the keyboard usability and I love the feel of the keys. They are quite close together but I don’t have any difficulties with getting the right letter. They also give a firm feedback so you know you have hit a key properly. After a few hours playing with it I got the battery running low warning and I had to laugh because it said I ONLY had 3 hours remaining!

I had two reasons for wanting a netbook with 3G:

• I wanted to use it when exhibiting at baby shows to demonstrate the Baby Loves Shopping website and show customers other products in our range. Below is a picture taken at the Brighton Baby Expo, and it shows that the Nokia Booklet 3G is so light I could easily hold it up in one hand and use the other to show this potential customer our website. I didn’t have to worry about needing a power cable or a wireless network.  It worked rather well!

• Secondly with juggling childcare and my own business I need to be able to work where ever the kids are being amused – particularly during the school holidays. I have used the Nokia Booklet 3G on holidays at a caravan park, at a soft play centre and right now sitting by the pool whilst my son has swimming lessons! Putting my Vodafone Sim card in was a doddle and switching the 3G on and off is easy too.

So it really is a useful bit of business kit.

However I have a couple of issues. Sometimes it is a bit sluggish when I have multiple applications open. I also don’t like the restrictions imposed by Windows 7 Starter edition – why can’t I change the background to a plain one at least?  Most netbooks will have these issues though but I wish Nokia offered a range of Booklets with more RAM and a choice of Windows 7 versions.  One finally issue is the price. At £650 it is expensive compared to other netbooks.

When I have read other peoples’ reviews the question I always wanted to know the answer to is “Would you buy one?” I can answer that question because I have done. After sending my trial Booklet back to WOMWorld I trotted down to the lovely Nokia shop in Guildford where they sold me one discounted on a Vodafone mobile broadband package. Deal done on a lovely little blue one. Thanks very much!