LifebookP1610
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Fujitsu's LifeBook P1610 reviewed
It's sexy, it's small, but is it any good? Laptop Mag took Fujitsu's LifeBook P1610 out on the town and they sure seem to think so. Despite the "cute" comments they received on the street, there's enough going on here to suit the demanding road warrior that wants to pack light. Notably impressive on this 8.9-inch screened unit is a "remarkably usable" keyboard, along with a quite impressive LCD, which might be a bit squint-inducing at 1280 x 768, but fended off ambient light quiet well. With a Core Solo processor, 1GB of RAM and an 80GB HDD the reviewer found performance to be quite good under Windows XP Professional, though Vista Business is also an option. The 3-cell battery musters a respectable 3.5 hours of battery, but a 6-cell battery doubles that time, and the 5 additional ounces aren't going to ruin your day when the laptop only weighs 2.2 pounds initially. There's no touchpad, and the stylus isn't of the fancy RF variety, but the pointing stick and included plastic stylus both worked quite well for input, and the convertible tablet switches quite nicely to tablet mode. Other perks include a PC card slot for adding 3G data, and a refreshingly small palm-sized power brick -- Fujitsu doesn't seem to have cut many corners. The main complaint of build quality is a weak latch that doesn't do much to secure the tablet in slate mode, but shouldn't be a deal breaker. As Laptop Mag warns, this form factor obviously isn't for everyone, but if it is you can't go far wrong with the P1610.
