Fujitsu LifeBook P8020
Light and powerful - Fujitsu means business
Review Hot on the heels of Sony's Vaio TT and the Toshiba Portégé R600, Fujitsu's LifeBook P8020 is a similarly small and light affair looking to tempt business types away from the likes of Lenovo and Dell. Netbook fans will yet again baulk at high price tag, but there's clearly still a market for premium ultra-portable laptops offering more oomph than an Atom processor can muster.
Fujitsu's LifeBook P8020: small, light and (fairly) stylish
Incidentally, if you're wondering what happened to Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Fujitsu went and guzzled up all of Siemens' shares in the partnership earlier this month – the company is now officially known as Fujitsu Technology Solutions.
Back to the LifeBook P8020, and its 12.1in screen, 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor, 2GB of Ram and built-in DVD writer are all a step above what you'd find on a netbook. And at just 1.3kg - or 1.6kg including the power adaptor - you'd be hard pushed to find a similar spec’d laptop that's any lighter.
With its all-black chassis, the LifeBook makes a good first impression – give it a couple of days, though, and the glossy lid will become a holiday park for smudge marks. There's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of ports. The right side of the laptop is home to a DVD writer, PC Card slot and USB port, while on the left a further two USB ports are joined by mini-FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA, power and audio sockets. On the front lip, you'll find a Wi-Fi switch sitting alongside an SD card slot.
With the keyboard, Fujitsu has resisted the temptation to shrink the likes of the Return, backspace and the two Shift keys. However, with the other keys measuring just 12mm x 13mm, it's fiddly to use and very tricky to type on at speed if you've anything but petite pinkies. On the plus side, the keys have a decent amount of travel and there's very little flex.
The glossy lid will soon become festooned with finger marks
The textured trackpad is of a decent size and feels good to touch, although the left and right buttons are a little too spongy for our liking. Being aimed at corporates, it's no surprise to find a fingerprint reader between these buttons.
COMMENTS
Anbd if it's anything like any other Fujitsu....
....it'll fall apart after three months daily use.
Also, that looks truly dreadful. Alll the innate style of a house brick.
Steven R
Total Failure
So low powered chips (CPU and GPU), poor res screen, chunky build and tacky plastic now equal premium price?
Nearly 1800 and no BluRay?
Wow... What a wasted opportunity for them.
Why
I have a Philips freevents X67, which is really a twinhead f11y.
Core duo u2400 @ 1.06ghz
2gb ddr 667mhz
11.1" glossy TFT 1366*768
DVD rewriter
Did have Vista Home Pre now got legal Xp Home
120gb sata HD
Cost new £850
looks loads better than this fuji netbook come decent laptop
But no bluetooth or finger print reader.
I only paid £240+£25 to re'cell the battery.
only 1.6kg plus 400g for mains cable. but still over a grand cheaper
Ye frickin' gods ...
... my first thoughts were "Jesus Christ, that's fugly", even before I looked at the price tag. It actually looks like the old ThinkPad that was my first laptop many, many moons ago. Except that the ThinkPad was probably a bit more svelte than this brick.
Good call with the 'glossy' finish too - I've recently acquired a Dell Studio desktop with a similar glossy black finish and, sure as eggs is eggs, it's a magnet for dust, fingermarks etc.
At this price point, it'd be MacBook Pro FTW (SWMBO has an aluminium MBP and, apart from the horrible Spectrum-esque keyboard, it is a very *very* nice machine)
