Fujitsu has officially joined the Penryn party with multiple LifeBook models now available with Intel's newest generation of Core 2 Duo processors. We took a closer look at the LifeBook E8410 to show you exactly how much a new processor can improve overall system performance.

Our review notebook features the following specifications:
Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 Processor (Penryn, 2.1GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
Microsoft Genuine Windows Vista Business
15.4" Crystal View (Glossy) WXGA Display (1280x800)
Integrated 1.3MP Webcam
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
2GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM
Fujitsu 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Modular Dual-Layer Multi-format DVD Writer
Modem, Intel 4965AGN (802.11a/b/g/n) WiFi, 10/100/1000 GigE LAN, Bluetooth
6-cell, 10.8V, 5200 mAh, 56.2 Whr Battery
One year international warranty
Price as configured: $1,589
Build and Design



At first glance the E8410's exterior looks rather plain with black matte plastic with some glossy highlights in the front edge. Granted, this business-oriented notebook isn't designed to attract consumers who are looking for the latest "eye candy" but the design isn't too professional looking either.


The interior of this laptop is mostly light-silver/gray with a white keyboard. The keyboard, palmrests and most of the other surfaces are all plastic. The speaker grills on either side of the keyboard are the only parts that stand out as having metal construction. Unlike most consumer laptops there are no LED status lights. Instead, Fujitsu uses a black/white LCD display that provides a range of information about the current status of the notebook without any annoying bright lights.



As shown in the picture below, the LCD "status display" shows symbols for power status, if the battery is charging or discharging, the remaining charge in the battery, optical or storage drive activity, wireless activity, and more. Overall, the status display is a great feature ... particularly since it doesn't have those annoying blue LEDs. However, it might not have been a bad idea for Fujitsu to have included an LED warning light for the low battery indicator.




Despite the fact that the E8410 is designed for business users the build quality isn't quite what we expected for a business laptop in this price range. Fujitsu has built some genuinely sturdy (almost rugged) business laptops in the past. While most of the notebook chassis has a solid feel the areas around the optical drive and RAM bay cover have some pretty obvious flex. Granted some amount of the flex is due to the modular optical drive bay ... which has to be built in a way that makes it removable. We were just a little surprised by the flex in the plastic.

The screen housing also suffers from similar plastic flex. I can twist the screen a little bit more than I should, but the screen does not distort when being flexed. Additionally, I can only produce ripples on the screen by pressing quite hard on the back surface. It would be very difficult to damage the LCD under normal usage and the notebook should survive regular travels in a backpack or shoulder bag.

As mentioned above, the optical drive is modular, meaning that any type of optical drive supported by Fujitsu can be placed in the E8410. Or, one could put the included weight saver plastic insert in the slot to reduce the weight of the laptop. Users can also insert a secondary battery instead of an optical drive to get a longer battery life ... a serious advantage for road warriors.

The one negative aspect of the modular optical drive is the position of the release. I accidentally ejected the drive several times while transporting it to and from the office. Yes, the modular drive is a great feature, but I would have liked to see a lock switch or button to prevent accidental release of the drive.

Screen and Speakers

The Fujitsu E8410 features a 15.4" wide-screen WXGA display with a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. This resolution is "acceptable" but still pretty low for a 15-inch notebook. Luckily, you can configure the E8410 with a display resolution as high as WSXGA+ (1680x1050 pixels), and the better screen only costs an additional $75 at the time of this writing.




The low-resolution screen in our review unit is bright enough for office and home use. In fact, it's bright enough that you can easily set the display at 50% screen brightness in average office lighting (which is great for battery life).

Unfortunately, the screen in our review unit has poor vertical and horizontal viewing angles. When you view the screen head-on it looks fabulous, but move a few degrees above and the color washes out. Move a few degrees below center and the colors become inverted. Move a few degrees left or right and colors will again appear distorted.

Keep in mind that these type of viewing angle issues might not be common to all versions of this notebook. The older version of the E8410 that we reviewed last year was praised for having excellent horizontal viewing angles.

There are two speakers located on each side of the keyboard when you open up the laptop. The speakers produce distortion-free sound at even the highest volumes. However, like most laptop speakers they do suffer from a little of the "tin can" speaker effect and lack bass. For business purposes the speakers are fine.



Processor and Performance

The E8410 features the latest in processor technology with the newest Intel Penryn CPU. Our review unit of the E8410is equipped with integrated Intel X3100 graphics but Fujitsu offers the Nvidia GeForce 8400M G dedicated graphics card as an option in other configurations. The benefit os integrated graphics is lower cost and slightly lower power consumption, and most business professionals don't need dedicated graphics.

All of the following synthetic benchmarks were performed with the laptop set into 'Performance' mode.

At 2.1GHz, the T8100 (Penryn) processor found in the review laptop does quite well in PCMark05 benchmarks. As shown below, it managed to pull a score of 4,211 PCMark points. That said, a previous version of the E8410 equipped with the older 2.2GHz T7500 (Merom) processor produced a score of 4,618 PCMark points

Do you remember Dell’s compact 13.3-inch XPS M1330 laptop? Well, the company will soon make the UBuntu version of this notebook PC available in U.S market. Previously, UBuntu 7.10-powered M1330 has been released in Europe, packed with Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor, 1GB of main memory, 120GB of HDD, DVD burner, Intel GMA X3100 graphics engine, and built-in 2 megapixel webcam. This kind of configuration is retailed for 848 EUR in Germany. No words how much it will be priced in States store.

Additionally, customers can subscribe for either a 30-day UBuntu beginners support (55 EUR), a 1 year basic support (60 EUR), or a 1 year standard support (90 EUR).

HP tx1000 Convertible Notebook Review

If you have been searching the market for an entertainment notebook with Tablet PC features, your search may be over. Thanks to HP's tx1000 convertible notebook that starts at $1,299. Though the tx1000 is targeted toward the average consumer, business professionals are still welcome. This portable notebook packs a 1.3-megapixel webcam, 5-in-1 digital media reader, a mini remote control for movies, music and photos and it comes with Windows Vista installed.



The HP Pavilion tx1000 specs as reviewed (tested price $1,849)

CPU AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60 / 2.0 GHz processor
OS Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
RAM 2 GB DDR II SDRAM
Display 12.1" WXGA High Definition BrightView Widescreen with Touchscreen (1280 x 800)
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 graphics
Audio Altec Lansing speakers and integrated microphone
Hard Drive 160GB (5400 RPM)
Optical Drive LightScribe Super Multi 8x DVD/RW
I/O ports 3 x USB
1 x VGA - 15 pin
1 x TV-Out (S-video)
1 x Microphone-in
2 x Headphone (one offering S/PDIF output)
2 x Infrared - IrDA
1 x Modem - RJ-11
1 x RJ-45 LAN
1 x Express Card
1 x notebook expansion port 3

Communications 10/100/1000 Ethernet
802.11a/b/g/n (draft 802.11n)
WLAN
Bluetooth

Dimensions/Weight 12"(width) x 8.8"(depth) x 1.5"(height)
4.2 lbs.

Battery/power 6 cell, 4-5 hours
4 cell, 3 hours



Design and Build

The tx1000 has a sharp appearance. Its unique inlaid wave design extends from the glossy black lid onto the silver inside surrounding the keyboard. HP went for a modern, portable design. Weighing in at 4.2 lbs., the tx1000 can go wherever you go. If you want to save even more weight the optical bay is removable and can be replaced by the included weight saver.




The chassis has some flex in parts due to the fact the tx1000 uses a plastic housing, though it can't be called flmsy, it's not the sturdiest notebook on the market either. The advantage of a plastic casing is in keeping weight and price down. When you tap on the left palmrest area the sound is hollow and you'll get some flex there. The keyboard itself has a solid design with minimal flex.


The screen swivels in a clockwise manner with ease to turn the notebook into a Tablet. The hinge has some flex, but works great. The Tablet or swivel mode is nice for watching movies or giving presentations. There is also a mini remote control that can be stashed in the ExpressCard slot, this comes in handy for those lazy days when you want to stay in bed and control a movie as the tx1000 sits on your nightstand!


Display

The 12.1” screen is the perfect size for a portable notebook used to travel and for working on the go. There are even media QuickPlay buttons on the right side of the screen for your entertainment convenience. The screen is slightly grainy, but you will get this with any Tablet PC due to the extra layer needed for tablet funtionality. The glossy screen is good for presenting bold colors and watching movies, but bad when doing a lot of reading in strongly lit areas as it is quite reflective. One small annoyance is the fact it is difficult to see what level brightness you've got the screen adjusted to because there is no on screen feedback when you toggle brightness -- same goes for volume.



The fact that the tx1000 has a touchscreen is nice. You can use your fingertip to close applications, move them around or, if your fingers are small enough, to poke around in menus. I actually liked using my finger more than the stylus, you might as well take this approach since the stylus is a passive pen design and offers no real advantage other than being smaller and more accurate when necessary.

Processor and System Performance

HP chose to go with the AMD Turion X2 TL-60 dual core processor and Nvidia Go 6150 graphics for the brains of this system. It’s good that they didn’t choose a low voltage underpowered processor, commonly found in 12.1” screen laptops. Though in our opinion, a low-end Intel Core 2 Duo processor might have been preferred as it would offer slightly better performance. Nevertheless, thanks to 2GB of RAM combined with the Turion X2, performance was more than acceptable for general tasks such as Office, web and multimedia use. It’s a little slower when it comes to such things as image processing within Adobe Photoshop or even Apple iTunes encoding – we found a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5500 machine to be faster time wise with such tasks. But in general usage you won’t notice any lag with the tx1000.

The tx1000 ships with a base 1GB of RAM as this is required for Windows Vista to run. You should seriously consider going with the 2GB of RAM for better performance though. Windows Aero, the 3D windows display rotation feature, worked flawlessly given the tx1000 specs we had and the 2GB of RAM probably helps there.


The Windows Vista Aero feature runs just fine on the tx1000 (view large image)

As far as gaming, the Nvidia 6150 card that shares system memory isn’t going to cut it for much. Obviously this notebook convertible is not intended for playing Half Life 2 or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but rather for just say – doing work.

posted from : laptopcenter.blogspot.com

I see a lot of laptops, and many of them claim to be record-breakers in the speed department. Only one, of course, can genuinely hold the crown at any time. And for now, the machine that has earned the title of fastest gaming laptop on the planet comes from an unlikely creator: Gateway.

With its P-series FX (I reviewed the P-171XL FX if you're looking for specifics), being launched this week at CES, Gateway has radically revamped its traditionally conservative look and given itself a makeover. Clad in glossy black with rust-orange accents, this is a machine straight out of Half-Life.



As with most serious gamer notebooks, the P-series features a big, 17-inch screen, a numeric keypad, and a rock-solid keyboard. And of course, the under-the-hood specs are what will really thrill the FPS lovers: 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme CPU, 3GB of RAM, dual 200GB hard drives, and—a first among laptops, as far as I can tell—an Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card. Even the 8700 series has been rare in laptops up to now, and the 8800 is even faster than that model.

Specs are meaningless if the machine can't put up, and the P-series puts its money where its mouth is. I got my mitts on the first machine off the production line in order to put it through its paces, and on my Doom 3 benchmark test, the P-series pumped out frame rates of just over 200 frames per second, dramatically besting the previous all-time champ, as well as 80 other notebooks I've reviewed in the last two years. General application performance using PCMark was also top-notch. Though the P-series didn't break that record, it came within 0.32 percent of doing so (or statistically tying it). Using the P-series is a dream if you're used to the long delays that typically come with doing anything under Windows. HDMI and eSATA ports are available as outputs (as well as the usual USB and FireWire.) As a bonus, it's quiet as a mouse, even when the fans are running.

Naturally, you can't have everything, and the P-series isn't going to work for everyone. At $3,000, it's exceptionally expensive, even for a high-end machine, though I've seen $4,000 notebooks that were far less capable than this one. At 9.3 pounds, it's hefty, even for a 17-inch laptop (most come in around 8 pounds). And despite the monstrous battery, I eked out only 67 minutes of running time. One final concern: The screen is too dim even at maximum brightness, though that's a common problem with 17-inch laptops.

Still, next to its performance and nice design, those are minor quibbles. On the whole, I wouldn't hesitate recommending the P-series FX to anyone looking for a new gaming laptop... provided they aren't planning to do any traveling with it.

posted from : laptopcenter.blogspot.com