| 05 JUNE 2005 |
| Fujitsu
P7010 Notebook |
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One of the main
reasons that people purchase a notebook over a desktop is
because of its portability. When we took a look at the
Fujitsu S7010, we noticed its very slim and portable design.
Fujitsu has taken the term 'portability' and has taken it to
another level with the Fujitsu P7010. Unlike your typical
ultra portable notebook, this notebook is extremely small.
In fact, I'd say it's about the size of a textbook.
With an ultra
portable notebook, usually sacrifices have to be made in certain
features or performance in order to maintain its small
footprint. The P7010 makes little sacrifices in either of
these categories. It contains nearly all the features that
a user could want while still maintaining a high level of
performance all packed into an inspiring Fujitsu stylish design.
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The P7010 has an
interesting look. While the top of the lid is a solid
black, the edge of the lid as well as the hinge give the
notebook a stylish look. Even though the notebook is
slightly thicker than the Fujitsu S7010 with a larger height of
1.42 inches, the notebook still manages to look compact and
portable. The front lid of the notebook does tend to pick
up fingerprints quite often. The fingerprints can't be
seen straight-on, but you can see them easily at an angle under
lighting.
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The hinge area of the notebook
looks solid with its thick look. The hinge area is covered
with a metallic mesh that looks similar to an electric shaver.
The power button is easily accessible near the middle corner of
the notebook. Right next to the power button is a solid
silver strip. That strip is actually used for status
indicator lights. When the laptop is powered on or if
there is hard drive activity, an LED will shine through that
silver strip.
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With a plethora of card reading
ports, this notebook can easily take in flash memory cards such
as CompactFlash, Secure Digital (SD), and Memory Sticks.
I'm a bit surprised that Fujitsu was able to fit that many card
readers into this notebook.
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On the left side of the notebook,
you will be able to find a single PCMCIA slot, a modem jack, and
the power plug. It is questionable why Fujitsu bothered to
include a modem jack with this computer with less and less
people using dial-up Internet, but I suppose it is always a
welcome feature. The right side of the notebook has a
headphone port, microphone port, two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire
port, an S-Video port, and the ability to hook up an external
monitor.
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The back of the notebook allows you
to have access to the battery, the removal of the optical drive
and memory. I do not like how you don't have access to the
hard drive. If it ever fails, you will need to send it
back to Fujitsu and have them replace it. Otherwise, you
will be stuck with a dead unit. Typical of Fujitsu's
notebooks is a small cloth area that does make putting the
notebook on your lap a little more comfortable and to protect
your lap from unnecessary heat.
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The beauty of this notebook is
revealed when you open up the notebook. When opening up
the lid of the notebook, I immediately noticed that this
notebook does not have a clasp to keep the lid shut. So
far, I haven't had any problems with the lid of the notebook
accidentally opening up, but I imagine that it puts more strain
on the hinge of the notebook.
When looking at the keyboard, you
will immediately notice that the keyboard does not contain your
standard-sized keyboard keys. I thought that I was going
to have trouble using the keyboard, but that was not the case.
I was able to get used to the keyboard easily. When
reaching for keys, nearly all of them were where I expected them
to be. The only keys that I had to pay a little more
attention to were the period, comma, and forward slash keys
since those keys are nearly half-the size compared with the
other keys.
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The mouse on this notebook is your
typical touchpad, with two mouse buttons. Since this
notebook includes a finger print reader, Fujitsu chose to use
the fingerprint reader as a scroll wheel also by placing it in
between the left and right mouse buttons. When pressing
one of the mouse buttons, the 'click' noise is a bit louder than
I desired.
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Noise is always a factor when
choosing a notebook. When working in a quiet environment,
you want your notebook to be as quiet as possible. This
holds true especially if you are in a classroom or if you are in
a meeting where everyone's attention is on the speaker.
The noise from the notebook is a mixed bag. If you are in
a quiet environment, you will hear the fan in the notebook
gradually increase in noise for a while than become silent.
This process repeats over and over again every 5-10 minutes.
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With an ultra portable notebook,
many people are concerned with the screen size being too small.
The screen on the P7010 is a widescreen 10.6 inch screen with a
glossy surface. The glossy surface does seem to make the
screen bright and vivid, but the glossiness may make the
screen's visibility differ in various lighting conditions.
Overall, the default background really does show how bright and
sharp the screen can look.
The screen has a native
resolution of 1280 x 768 which is actually not too large or
small for its size. Having been used to a 14 inch laptop
screen, the 10.6 inch widescreen wasn't too hard to work with.
There may be times where you might find yourself having to lean
a little closer just to be able to see certain things because of
its small size.
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This notebook is built with an Ultra
Low Voltage 1.2Ghz Pentium M processor which carries the
Centrino name. Because of the Ultra Low Voltage processor,
the battery life on this notebook is amazing. The
advertised 10 hours of the notebook was overestimated, but I was
able to easily obtain a real usage of 5 hours. This
involved tasks such as browsing the Internet, doing word
prcoessing, with some light music listening and video watching.
Don't underestimate a 1.2GHz Pentium M processor. When
doing light work such as browsing the Internet or word
processing, you will be hard-pressed to notice any difference
between 1.2Ghz and something like a 2GHz Pentium M. With
this notebook packed with 512MB of memory, this notebook is more
than capable of tackling heavier tasks such as working with
Photoshop.
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The software included with the
notebook is minimal, but is just enough to allow you to get work
done while keeping your protected. The main applications
included are Microsoft Works and Norton Antivirus. This
notebook comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition,
therefore, lacking the advanced network capabilities of the XP
Professional Edition. In the case that you need to
reformat your computer, just use the provided recovery disks
included with the notebook and it will restore the notebook back
to its original state. The Omnisoft FingerPrint software
is what allows you to use the fingerprint reader. You scan
your fingerprint by sliding your finger over the gold strip.
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| Conclusion |
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The Fujitsu P7010 is a very nice
ultra-portable notebook that will certain catch many people's
attention simply because of its size. I had many people
come up to me to be able to look at the notebook. They
were simply stunned at how small the computer was and how good
it looked. This notebook works well for those who are
either on the move a lot or don't want the bulk of a larger
notebook. Although the model that I reviewed today is
approximately $1999, this notebook can be bought as low as $1599
at Fujitsu's website. If you live without the lid clasp as
well as the occasional noise of the fan, then this notebook will
offer a lot of a benefit to the user.
Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net
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