Jason Dunn
10-08-2004, 05:00 PM
<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/p5010D.jpg" /><br /><br /><b>Product Category:</b> Laptop<br /><b>Manufacturer:</b> <a href="http://www.fujitsupc.com">Fujitsu</a><br /><b>Where to Buy:</b> Discontinued, replaced by the <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/search_deals.php?ofb.set%28keywords%29%26=P7010">P7000 series</a><br /><b>Specifications:</b> 10.3" x 7.8" x 1.6" @ 3.85 lbs., 10.6" WXGA (1280x768) TFT LCD Display and Intel Extreme2 Graphics with 64MB Shared Memory, Realtek ALC202 Audio.<br /><br /><b>Pros:</b><li>Impressively small size, great design;<br /><li>Amazing battery life;<br /><li>Full featured laptop with all the ports you need.<b>Cons:</b><li>Buggy SpeedStep implementation;<br /><li>Speakers are too quiet;<br /><li>Painfully slow memory card slots.<b>Summary:</b><br />The Fujitsu P5010D is the laptop I've used for the past year, and it's both a powerful (for it's size) workhorse, and a great mobile tool. The small size allows me to use comfortably anywhere from my bed to an air plane seat, something that a 15" wide screen laptop can't accomplish with such ease. The screen is absolutely fantastic, the wireless is solid, and I only have a few quibbles. This notebook simply rocks.<br /><br />Read on for the full review!<!><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><i>This review is a little different than most – I'm not focusing on performance metrics or benchmarks. Instead, this is a report of my real-world use of this laptop over the past year that I've owned it. The P5010D has been replaced by the P5020D (the only difference being a 1 Ghz CPU instead of the 900 Mhz CPU that the P5010D has) and by the <a href="http://webshop.fujitsupc.com/fpc/Ecommerce/PrdBridge.jsp?pclass=P">P7010D</a>, which adds a black chassis and a biometric security system. As far as I understand it, the guts of the laptop are the same, so this review should help you make a decision on buying a P7000 or a used P5000 series.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Through the Looking Glass</span></b><br />Perhaps the most important feature on any laptop is the screen – if you have a less-than-satisfactory screen, you’ll likely to loathe the entire laptop. I was especially nervous about the screen since I had never seen the laptop in person. I called Fujitsu Canada and every single Fujitsu dealer in my home city of Calgary, and no one had a P5010D I could see in person. Dropping two grand on a laptop I'd never seen before made me nervous – what if the screen was bad? What if the laptop wasn’t what I was expecting? Thankfully, the P5010D has a superb screen, so it was love at first sight for me. It has exceptionally strong contrast, so digital images look vivid. The screen is susceptible to glare however, so this is a trade off.<br /><br /><span><b>Strong Wireless Access</span></b><br />With my previous laptop, a Fujitsu Lifebook E-Series, I use a Microsoft WiFi PCMCIA card to access the Microsoft MN-500 wireless access point in my basement. While on the top floor of my house, with the old setup, I’d typically get one bar of signal strength if I was lucky (Windows XP has a five-bar signal measurement system). More often than not, however, I’d lose the signal completely. Needless to say, this was frustrating – I’d often have to move down the hallway in order to get signal. With the P5010D, sitting in the same location, I get four or five bars of signal! The Broadcom 802.11g chipset is obviously more powerful than that PCMCIA card I was using before.<br /><br /><span><b>It Keeps Going, and Going, and Going…</span></b><br />Since battery life was one of the most important factors in my decision making process, I’m happy to report that the Fujitsu met all my expectations for battery life. Compared to my Lifebook E Series that I purchased in 2001, it’s not so much that the Windows-reported runtime is longer – it’s that it actually lasts as long as it says it will! Fujitsu reports that on the main battery, the P5010D will run for 5.5 hours. Although I haven’t done any benchmarks, I find that number to be accurate and several reviews I’ve read support that claim.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/fujitsup5010d-2.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 1: The P5010D is a little "chunky" (thick) but it's short and easily fits on an air plane tray table in economy class</i>.<br /><br />With both the main and drive-bay battery installed, this notebook is truly an all-day notebook. I’m honestly in awe of how long it lasts with both batteries installed – this is the first notebook that I can say could easily be used on a trans-Atlantic flight. I’ve given up on ever flying in an air plane with the elusive AC power jack. I fly several times a year, and even on flights from Calgary to Europe, the planes I’ve been on still don’t have power jacks! Thankfully, this is no longer much of a concern for me – the P5010D will run for over 10 hours of non-intensive use (word processing, etc.).<br /><br />I never use hibernation, preferring to use standby instead. With only the main battery installed, it went from 100% power to 97% power after 10 hours overnight in standby. This should allow the laptop to last for just under two full weeks on standby without a charge, although if you’re prone to leaving the laptop off for more than a day, you might as well shut it down completely.<br /><br />It’s also worth noting that the P5010D is smart enough to rely more on the second battery, draining it before dipping too deeply into the main battery. The battery in the drive bay is 3400 mAH, while the main system battery is 4400 mAH. That's 7800 mAH of power, and when you consider the small 10.6" screen, and low-power 900 Mhz CPU, it's not wonder the laptop lasts so long.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Did You Hear That? Probably Not</span></b><br />As you might imagine, audio output from such a small laptop is sadly lacking. The speakers produce tinny, quiet audio. Even when cranked to full volume, the speakers never approach what you’d consider to be “loud”. This, sadly, makes them ill-equipped to drive audio for a DVD. If you’re the only one watching, this problem is easily solved with headphones, but in some scenario's that's just not practical. I wasn't expecting excellent sound, but I was expecting it to be louder.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/fujitsup5010d-1.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 2: The P5010D makes a great DVD player...as long as you can sit close. With a 10.6" screen, it's like watching movies on a very small screen TV - although the wide screen certainly helps a great deal with 16:9 ratio DVDs.</i>.<br /><br />However, on the plus side, the internal audio chipset does an excellent job – I connected the P5010D’s headphone jack to a small SONY stereo system while watching a DVD, and the audio quality was excellent. You could use this to drive a bigger sound system as well, because the headphone jack doubles as an SPDIF optical out, which is something I didn't know until I read the manual. Definitely not something I was expecting! I was able to purchase a 3.5mm male to twin RCA left/right female jack adaptor, although I had to go to three different stores in the small town of Sundre, Alberta, until I found the right one (Radio Shack – you rule!). Once connected to the Sony stereo system, the sound quality was excellent.<br /><br /><span><b>All Isn't Perfect</span></b><br />I only have a few true “gotchas” for this laptop – the SpeedStep implementation is somehow flawed. When plugged into AC power, I was unable to get the CPU to go the full 900 Mhz – Windows would always report it as 600 Mhz. I went into the BIOS and changed the setting to be “Maximum performance” when on both battery and AC power, yet still Windows reported the speed as only 600 Mhz. I tried disabling SpeedStep in the BIOS, which you’d think would mean it would run at the full 900 Mhz constantly, but again I was stuck at the 600 Mhz barrier. It wasn’t until I downloaded a program called Speedswitch XP that I was able to control my CPU and set it to run at 900 Mhz. I’m not sure why I had to do this, but no end user should have to do so. The laptop should always run at 900 Mhz when on AC power, and 600 Mhz when on battery power. Speedswitch does allow me to do one very useful thing: I can force the CPU to go to 900 Mhz when on battery power, perfect for those intensive games. This is something Windows should allow you to do anyway – I’ve never understood why there isn’t a SpeedStep item in the control panel to allow the user to configure the settings.<br /><br />Another thing that I found quite frustrating is how slow the integrated media card slots are. You'd think that being integrated directly onto the motherboard would mean the fastest speed possible, but Fujitsu screwed this up – badly. How bad is it? Well, I was testing a Kingston 4 GB CompactFlash card, and using a Sandisk 8 in 1 reader connected to the USB 2.0 port, the 4 GB card clocked 6552 KB/s for 1 MB reads, and 6040 KB/s for 1 MB writes. The same 4 GB card in the CompactFlash port clocked a pathetic 1330 KB/s for 1 MB reads and exactly 1330 KB/s for 1 MB writes – meaning this is a hard limitation of the port. The SD slot is just as bad, making using the slots an exercise in patience.<br /><br />The 3D performance of this laptop is abysmal, but that shouldn't come as a big surprise. I've been able to play Warcraft III by turning down the quality to as low as possible, but this laptop is definitely not designed to play 3D games. It would be nice for Fujitsu to integrate something a bit more capable, but this is not a gaming laptop in any way.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Room For Improvement? Sure!</span></b><br />Beyond the glitches above, the P5010D does exactly what it says it will do, and as long as you keep in mind the inherent limitations of a laptop this size, you won’t be disappointed. However, there’s room for improvement, and in future versions of the 5000 series I’d like to see Fujitsu do the following:<br /><br />• Include a 3.5mm male headphone adaptor that ends in twin RCA female jacks – this would allow connection to a TV set or DVD player right out of the box. An S-Video cable is already included, so why not this adaptor? Give customers a more complete experience right out of the box.<br /><br />• RCA audio outputs! This laptop is chock-full of multimedia options (USB 2.0, Firewire, memory card slots, S-Video out, VGA out), but lacking RCA audio out. Granted, this is something I've never seen on any laptop, so perhaps there's a reason for that. <br /><br />• Although the 900Mhz CPU is snappy enough, I’d like to see faster processors offered in future versions, like the 1.4 Ghz Pentium 4-M. Something just felt very wrong about buying a laptop two and a half years after my previous laptop, and having it only be 150 Mhz faster. I know that, per clock cycle, the Pentium 4-M is much faster than a Pentium 3 or Pentium 4, but consumers won’t understand that. Even if the cost is slightly less battery life, a faster CPU would be welcome.<br /><br />• A faster hard drive. The 4200 RPM 40 GB hard drive is a little on the pokey side – assuming the power and thermal issues can be brought under control, I’d very much like to see a 5400 or even 7200 RPM drive. But if the faster drive were to severely impact battery life, I'd opt for a 4200 RPM drive.<br /><br />• A DVD burner! In this market, most laptops have an option for a DVD burner (usually DVD-R), so it was unfortunate not to have that choice on the P5010D. I’m hoping they’ll release it as an accessory in the future.<br /><br />• The audio control seems to be Windows-based now, rather than low-level hardware based, which means you can’t mute the audio until after you’ve logged into Windows. If you have a startup sound, this means you’ll disrupt those around you, which I’ve unfortunately had happen several times since buying this laptop. The only solution is to go into the control panel and change the Windows Start-up sound to “none”. On my older E-Series Lifebook, the audio could be muted as the notebook was booting up. On the up side, when the laptop audio is muted, it makes no sound, even when going into standby or hibernate mode (my E-Series would emit a loud “beep” when it entered standby mode, even when the audio was muted).<br /><br /><span><b>All in All, Still a Dream Laptop</span></b><br />Despite my suggestions for improvement, the Fujitsu P5010D is the most useful laptop I've ever owned. The small size and long battery life have allowed me to take it with me more than any other laptop I've owned, and that means being even more productive. I heartily recommend this laptop for anyone who's primary goal is mobility and long battery life.<br /><br /><b>Oct. 13th Update:</b> One of my pet peeves with this laptop that I neglected to mention is the VGA dongle. In order to hook the laptop up to an external projector, you need to bring a small dongle. The problem is, because the battery life is so awesome, I never think to bring anything with me when I go teach a class - I just put the laptop in a slipcase, and off I go. Three times I've forgotten to bring the VGA dongle and I've had to transfer my presentation to my USB Flash drive to get it onto the computer in that room, while my laptop sits there doing nothing. I would have greatly preferred to have had a real VGA port directly on the laptop.