By Craig Simms, CNET.com.au
07/04/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050488,42797359p,00.htm

From a design point, Fujitsu's latest tiny competitor threw us for a while. While the thin bezel screen and compact design are pleasant, the plain gray wrist rest area dominates so much of your attention as it looks like an old Dell machine from the early 1990s. We've gotten so used to customized and pretty wrist rests (even on business machines) that it came as a small shock to see something so banal.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com.au. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

The 12.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 glossy screen and its surrounds are nicely attractive, and while the back is meant to be inspired by bamboo, what this amounts to is a raised, inch-thick glossy black section near the lip, and a slight kink in the sparkly surface about halfway down.

Four quick access buttons are available above the keyboard, although it's really quite hard to see the icons above them and hence what they're used for, without rotating the keyboard so it's parallel with your face. Even then the icons are difficult to decipher without having to experiment with pressing the button first to see what it does. Incidentally, they give access to Fujitsu's support application, power-saving mode, display manager and quick access to the default browser, although these options can be customized through the Button application found under the control panel.

Considering their size, the speakers were surprisingly good. There wasn't an amazing dynamic range and tonal quality was hollow and flat at best, but it certainly survived Muse's Map of the Problematique, a test track that usually induces a large amount of clipping and distortion in laptop speakers. While it did this by dynamically lowering volume, it still produced a better experience overall.

Features

Like all Fujitsu laptops these days, the P8010 features a shock sensor utility that stops the hard drive heads whenever a shock is detected. We know this because it seemed that even the smallest bump caused the icon on the system tray to tell us it had been activated, an annoyance we swiftly turned off. There are moments when things should happen without having to alert you, and this is one of them.

Three USB ports are a luxury for a laptop of this size, and the FireWire port, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth and Draft-N wireless mean that connectivity is reasonably good for a business laptop--the lack of HSDPA, however, is an obvious omission. The inclusion of a PC Card slot and VGA, with the lack of a digital video-out like HDMI, are also signs that business laptops move considerably slower than the consumer market in some areas. An SD card reader is situated at the lip of the laptop, neatly excluding Memory Stick and xD-Picture Card, while the mandatory fingerprint scanner is nestled between the unsatisfactory-feeling mouse buttons.

Performance And Battery Life

Being a business laptop with an integrated Intel GMA X3100 graphics chip, the P8010 was never going to be strong on 3DMark06, netting a dismal score of 447. PCMark05 was a bit better at 2,999, thanks to Intel's Core 2 Duo L7100 CPU--and with the 2GB RAM by and large, this machine should be just fine for application use.

Turning off all power-saving features and setting the screen brightness to maximum, we inserted a DVD and played it back to strain the laptop's battery supply--it gave us a reasonable 1 hour 57 minutes and 51 seconds in return.

Service And Support

Fujitsu LifeBook has a one-year international warranty with second-year and third-year local warranty. At Fujitsu's support Web site, LifeBook owners can register their warranty online as well as download the latest drivers. For simple problems, the company offers a helpline and email address for troubleshooting. Should the unit require further diagnosis or repair, the customer will have to send the unit to any service center worldwide during the first year. Subsequently, Fujitsu will only honor the notebook's warranty for the subsequent two years at the original country of purchase. For users who use their laptops for time-critical work with no margin for downtime, it must be noted that most Fujitsu service centers in Asia Pacific operate only during office hours. There is no option to upgrade the warranty terms.