Fujitsu Lifebook S7010

Fujitsu Lifebook S7010

Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Fujitsu Laptop Battery

We've been big fans of Fujitsu Lifebooks in the past, and the S7010 looked to be the best yet. Packing a powerful 1.7GHz Pentium M processor, a small but practical 14.1in screen, yet weighing a svelte 1.9kg with battery like Fujitsu Lifebook S6200 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP80 Battery, Fujitsu Lifebook S6220 Battery, Fujitsu Lifebook S2020 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP64 Battery, Fujitsu Lifebook S6120 Battery, Fujitsu N5485 Battery, Fujitsu Lifebook T4000 Battery, Fujitsu Lifebook T4020 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP121 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook N3400 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook N3410 Battery, it all looks good on paper.

And we've no complaints over performance, with the 512MB of PC2700 memory propelling our 2D benchmarks to an application-friendly 1.34. As with other Pentium M systems, it doesn't score as highly in areas such as image editing or media encoding, but it's fast enough to cope with minor tasks. Bear in mind, though, that Intel's 855 integrated chipset won't even begin to cope with modern 3D gaming.

It's during use, however, that it starts to look more disappointing. The screen runs at a usable 1,024 x 768 - enough for word processing, if not ideal for spreadsheet work - and we've no complaints about its sharpness. The backlight isn't strong enough for our liking though, and the poor viewing angles in both planes cause contrast issues even when sat at a desk. This also affects DVD playback, and we found that darker scenes descended into murk all too quickly.

Apart from the screen's quality, the other issue for a notebook is the keyboard, and again the S7010 disappoints. The layout is passable, with a separated cursor group and Ctrl keys, but page navigation is a pain; besides which it's horribly flimsy, and will rattle and sink disconcertingly if you ever get up to speed. Then there's the touchpad. It's responsive for the most part, but we found it occasionally skipped around erratically - a potential disaster if moving files, for example. While there's also a trackpoint for those who are that way inclined, the rather uncomfortable mouse buttons are too far away to make it an ergonomic experience.

Elsewhere, Fujitsu supplies a reasonable sprinkling of ports. Three USB 2 sockets are sensibly located at the back-right of the machine, and mini-FireWire sits on the left. Infrared is the only legacy interface available, but two Type II PC Card slots provide an element of future proofing, and a VGA out is also included for hooking up to an external monitor.

Storage is well catered for too. A 60GB hard disk should be enough, although for data archival if nothing else we'd expect more than just a combo drive for the asking price.

The high point of the S7010 comes with its cutting-edge networking abilities. Not content with a 56K modem and gigabit Ethernet, there's also Intel's 2200 802.11b/g WLAN card, and integrated Bluetooth 1.2. And if you go wireless, the three-and-a-half hour battery life in our light-use test will be good news too.

Unfortunately it doesn't go nearly far enough to address the basic usability issues; we'd simply expect a great deal better for the money. The three-year international C&R warranty is a plus point, as is the option for Intel's Trusted Platform Module. Ultimately, though, it can't hold a candle to machines such as IBM's ThinkPad T41, which although slightly heavier and slower, easily remains our portable business notebook of choice.