A chap from Tesco Car Insurance came round yesterday to investigate the damage to my vehicle after its recent bump.

My wife said that the chap carried a "funky laptop that folded back on itself" and it was running software that allowed him to view a 3D model of the car and expand out the constituent parts (like a furniture assembly diagram) in order to identify the damaged parts, which he marked with a stylus.

The Tablet PC clearly has a place in the portable computing market alongside traditional laptops and PDAs, certainly for data-capture type jobs.

My sister, who works as an Occupational Therapist in the NHS, has also been given a Tablet PC for capturing the results of the assessment interviews she conducts with patients in their homes.

Disaster! On the way to work on Monday, a driver went into the back of my new car. He was only a young lad and I think it was his first accident. We exchanged details whilst we both tried to ignore the shouts and honking of annoyed drivers stuck behind us.

The damage is relatively minor, but there are some dents and scratches in the rear bumper, as you can see quite clearly in the picture.

The other driver admitted full responsibility, so it won't cost me anything, but it will cost his insurance company somewhere in the region of £800 to put right. At least, that's what my local Toyota dealer reckons it will cost to put right anyway. The other driver's insurance company are sending out their own inspector on Monday to assess the damage.

I generally don't have much luck with cars. I once bought a car that in the short time I had it, had a tyre blowout whilst I was driving down a dual carriageway at 60mph; I also put a massive dent in the passenger door whilst trying to park in multi-storey car park and I also took the nearside wing mirror off by pulling off too fast from outside our house and clipping the pillar of the front garden wall.

Well, I've finally got rid of my troublesome Peugeot 206 and traded it in for a 3-year old Toyota Yaris.

Now, I know the Yaris has a reputation for being a woman's car but I'm not bothered about that. All I want from a car is to get me from A to B reliably, comfortably and economically (especially with petrol prices as they at the moment). So, the Yaris ticks all the boxes and this particular model has a few nice extra touches such as alloy wheels, air conditioning, on-board computer and fancy interior trim, which is rare to find in a small car.

It has a 1.3L engine, so it has a little more poke than the 1.1L of the 206. Having that extra bit of power makes a big difference, especially when you need to overtake a lorry on a hill. Previously, I had to wait until the wind was behind me before I would even attempt such a manoeuvre.

One of the more unusual features of the Yaris is  that the speedometer, rev counter and fuel gauge displays are not directly in front of you behind the steering wheel as you would expect, but set into a console which is slightly offset to the left, yet still facing towards you, as shown in the photo. The displays are also sunken into the console, so it feels like you're looking down a periscope. It's strange at first, but you soon get used to it and after a while, it feels completely natural.

Anyway, I love it and I'm looking forward to many years of trouble-free driving in it!