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Fujitsu Lifebook P7010D Notebook Review

I received my P7010D today and I must say I am definitely impressed. As some of you may know, I am an ultraportable fan, and just came back to Pentium-M, after having abandoned it for about 6 months. I am also a previous Fujitsu Lifebook P5020D owner, so I am not entirely new to the good quality of notebooks that Fujitsu makes. I am going to be quite critical of my little notebook and will try to make this a good review. It will be somewhat of a work in progress, and it will be updated frequently, as I put the P7010D through different tests, besides benchmarks and such.

So, be patient, it might take a while for this review to be finished.




I didn't really review anything here, but I will post this up and then add to it.

Screen:

The screen makes use of Fujitsu's CrystalView screens. This is the first of the P-series notebooks to use it. While I plan on posting pictures of the notebook, I doubt that I will be able to take pictures good enough to show off how spectacular the CrystalView screen is. However, forum member Michae42 took some pictures of his Fujitsu N6010 notebook which also has the same screen technology and I believe they do the screen justice:

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=54942

While the screen is glossy, it is not as glossy as Xbrite screens and thus reflections are not really a problem. Movies looks great on it, as do the few videogames that I played on it. While some people might be skeptical about the size of things on a small 10.6' widescreen, I have no problems with it. However, keep in mind, that I am an ultraportable enthusiast and have probably grown accustomed to the small screens on these notebooks.

One bad thing about my screen is that it came with 2 dead pixels. 1 green and one red. They are invisible until a background is black and to my great fortune, they are located above the black bars in movies, meaning, they dont show when I am watching widescreen movies. Besides that, viewing angles are great, especialy when compared to those found on the Compal CL56 and HP/Compaq TC1000. Horizontal, as well as vertical, viewing angles are both superb, something that is probably due to the P7010D's screen being wide.

Noise:

Whenever the time comes for me to buy a new notebook, the sound emitted by the unit is of real importance. I have had to skip on some notebooks because of fan noise, but I jumped on the P7010D without having seen or heard one in person, as I assumed it would be the same as the P5020d (its predecessor). With most other notebooks that I have owned/used, fan noise has not been a problem because SpeedSwitch or its equivalent in Transmeta processors have always saved me, by allowing me to downclock the processors. The same is true of the P5020D which would get hot and turn on its fan, if not locked on to 600MHz. But, with the P7010D, even downclocking the notebook to 600MHz does not stop the fan from coming on, or at least this has been my experience so far. I was really surprised by this and hope to look further into this, because I see no reason for this to be happening, if it is downclocked at 600MHz.

The fan is not always on and in fact, for the most part, is is completely off. However, it will come on after a short while of surfing then net. This is a matter that need to be studied further and I will report back here again.

Update - 2/3/05

My previous observations concerning the fan have not changed. I have been thinking about what I am to do with the notebook, and I have decided to keep it for the moment. I got an extremely good deal on it and despite the fact that I could sell it and gain some profit, I really do like it and am willing to make do with the fan noise. In fact, just right now, I had the notebook beside me idling while typing this message on my desktop, the notebook is downclocked to 600mhz, with the screen off, and all I have open is aim and a FireFox window. Keep in mind that the notebook has been sitting there for about 10 minutes without any interference on my part, and the fan just turned on. The fan only stays on for about 75 seconds. In the initial 15 seconds the fan goes from a really faint hum to what I believe to be the medium-high setting. Then it cuts off completely and you are left with a dead silent laptop (except for the hdd).

2/8/05

Yesterday... I had the unit on for about an hour, continuously streaming videos from ign.com while having several windows open and not once did the fan turn on I dont know how this happened. One possible explanation is that having uninstalled the newest version of speedswitch and installing the previous one could have worked somehow.

Update - 2/10/04

I believe this will be the final update to the fan section of this review and I will now be ablet o move forward with the rest of the sections that are yet to be made. As I stated earlier in my thread, I employ SpeedswitchXP to handle heat/fan problems, with most of the notebooks that I have owned. I had previously been using the latest version of speedswitch and would set it at "Max Battery," which I believed was the best setting with which to keep the processor speed load at a low. After uninstalling the newest version of SpeedSwitchXP and installing the previous version, I decided to read through the site and make sure that I was not overlooking some other option that would allow me to better control my notebook. Sure enough, it turns out that "Battery optimized" is the one that worked.

I took the notebook with me to a meeting of about 7 people, sitting in a small enclosed room with only one table in the center. I had about 8 different Microsoft Word windows open as well as FireFox, and not once did the fan turn on, in the two hours that I was there. I can now say that I am truly happy with the notebook and I in no way regret my purchase.

Build Quality:

The quality of the notebook is quite good. as is expected from Fujitsu notebooks, but there are some flaws in the overall build quality. The Fujitsu P5010/5020 both suffered from the cheap plastic feel of the notebook. While they were pretty sturdy, you could feel the plastic flexing if you tried holding the 3-4lbs notebooks with one hand. Unfortunately, the same holds true with the P7010D, to a certain extent.

While it does feel somewhat more sturdy and tighter than the 5010/20, the notebook is still made out of plastic. This results in some creaking while holding the notebook with one hand, especialy when holding it on the left side. This is a result of the plastic body and also of the fact that it is hollow below the left hand rest, as the hard drive is on the right, and the Compact Flash slot, is right below. Even pressing on it with one's thumb makes the left hand rest bend in somewhat.

While I realize that these things are found in a lot of other notebooks, I dont feel that makes it right. I can only assume that the plastic chasis was chosen because of price, weight, and maybe heat dissipitation. But these things aside, the notebook is very solid and the quality is as good as other Fujitsu notebooks.