The Double Vision Notebook from VTech is a learning laptop. Besides just being a laptop toy to take with you, it also can connect to your TV with the included A/V cable for even more activities.

The laptop has a black and white LCD screen with adjustable brightness, but not to the point that you would see it in a dark room. It has no backlight. It has volume control buttons and a headphone jack. Besides the track pad (VTech calls it the cursor pad), it also comes with a mouse and mouse pad, in case you prefer to use that instead. Also included with the laptop were 4 bonus activity cartridges - Explore Nature, Spanish Challenge, Secrets of the World and Word Workout. They each have different activities, which also differ depending on whether you are playing on the LCD screen on the laptop or connected to the TV.

Laptop-mode has 22 activities including the 4 cartridges. TV-mode has 34 activities including the cartridges. Besides the cartridge categories, the other categories include Language Booster, Math Explorer, Brain Trainer, Creative Studio, Cool Tools and My Office.

My Office in laptop mode allows you to set your preferences, create a personal profile, type in friends' information and make a budget.

In the Creative Studio you can create a silly story, or write a song. The laptop includes a word processor that allows you to save so you can view it later. It doesn't have a way to get it off the computer, greatly reducing this feature's value, but it's still a nice feature that allows for journaling and brainstorming.

When the laptop is connected to the TV, you can put together a presentation with photos, text, music and transitions between slides. You can save your work and play it for others. My 12-year-old wasn't impressed with the limited options of the presentation software, but she has made Powerpoint presentations for school. This software is designed mostly as an introduction to making a presentation.

My 6-year-old played with this and said some of it was hard for her. I think the more she plays it, the easier it will be for her. My 12-year-old liked some of the games, but said it got boring after a while (although she played with it for over and hour). She and my 9-year-old also said it was hard to get used to the keyboard, complaining that their keystrokes often didn't register, as they are used to a regular computer keyboard.

The games are fun to play: typing, mixed up words, driving boats over the right answer, number and letter bingo and more. If you have auto-leveling selected, the game levels will adjust depending on how well you are doing. It has a lot of great activities that can help reinforce concepts taught in school. It gives extra practice in activities, while making it fun at the same time. The Double Vision Notebook expands on its array of games with the innovative TV hookup that you won't find in most laptop toys. So many laptop toys are almost identical in function with just minor variations in case design and available games. It's good to see VTech taking a different direction to produce something all new.