Fujitsu s7010D review

Has there been a review of that model anywhere? I've googled reviews for the 7010 but only came up with specs.

 

None have appeared quite yet, the notebook was only released last week so you might have to wait a couple more weeks to see anything.

 

The only one I have seen is here:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/ZDM/fujitsu_lifebook_S7000_pcmag_040325.html

Not exactly a glowing review. I can live with a slightly subpar battery but not a terrible keyboard. I'm not sure exactly what they mean if the keyboard is just generally loud or if it is just not solid with a lot of flex in it.

Hoping someone will buy one and post a review here soon. Like to find out more about the keyboard from a "real world" user before concluding the S7010 is a dud.

 

Now I'm bummed out because I was really looking forward to this notebook. For me battery is fairly important as I may not always have a ready outlet. I guess I'll just have to wait as well until I can read a real review.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Gatch

 

That review link says at the bottow that you can buy direct from "F" for $2199. But I dont see it on their website. Please direct me to it.

Its nice that it has a 1.7GHz M chip, but we'll have to wait and see to what extent battery performance is affected by this.

Neil

 

Some thoughts about that ABC News/PC Mag Article:

* I don't think there were any deal killers in that article for me. It seemed liked the author was just *looking* for stuff to pick on.

* Since when is 3+ hours of battery life in a "thin and light" a glaring weakness? Sounds reasonable to me. 2 hours would be weak. 3 reasonable. 4+ kick butt. If you're worried, drop a little more cash for the bay battery as well and easily add another 2-3 hours to that number (that's my game plan.)

* Mouse touch pad/pointer design. If you just order it without that pointer in the keyboard and use the touch pad then his point is mute. Fujitsu shouldn't have bothered with this option, but it's there if you want it.

* "Weak graphics solution and slow hard drive" - hey, that's the price you pay for going "thin and light" - this isn't a desktop replacement. It's road warrior's notebook with a very slim profile. It's not designed for gaming. It's designed for email, web browsing, documents, presentations, light web development and graphic design. Plus that slow hard drive ultimately save battery life. BTW, I found on http://www.portableone.com you can upgrade the hard drive to several different speeds and capacities (5200, 7200). Not sure what that does to battery life or warranty though. I assume it's covered.

* The keyboard can't be that much different S6020 which I have tested extensively at Fry's Electronics in Phoenix. The keys on the S6020 are solid, yet light and quick - which is exactly what I love about japanese notebook keyboards versus regular desktop keyboards. BTW, what key doesn't make some sort of noise when it is pressed?

I just don't see Fujitsu dropping the ball on this one, especially after the home run with the S6020...I am banking on them simply improving on a great notebook with a little more power and larger screen. My old notebook died last week, so I am ordering this early next week. Can't wait to place my order (I'm going for the DVD-RW too!) and I'm getting a 5% discount because I work at a college.

One last thing - coupon code (FPC5067EP) was posted on Notebook Review through 4/30: $50 off/Free shipping/Free printer. Not bad.

 

I wouldn't put much stock in that ABCNews.com review...it offers no detail and the author says absolutely nothing about how he was using the notebook when he achieved 3hour 4 minute battery life. Was he watching a movie at full screen brightness with wi-fi on or just letting it idle with screen dimmed? That makes a huge difference. This just isn't a very detailed or technical review, typical of network news sites type technology coverage.

 

I have one on order.

http://www.laptopsinc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=7010DCOMBO1540&Category_Code=SS1&Product_Count=8

This configuration with a second 256meg chip and the three-year warranty. I'm already regretting not getting the second battery but I also haven't decided against an external, aftermarket battery. I'd like the extra life for watching DVD's on planes so the modular bay won't help me there.

I'll post about the machine when I have it.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by jstraw

 

After everything else this is still my top choice but like most here I'd love to hear a good review. Not that there's any pressure...or anything....

 

I just purchased a 7010D a week ago and have been using it quite a bit since, mainly for internet word processing and some graphic design.

I am generally quite satisifed with it. I had a similar Lifebook S-series beforehand - last year's 6020D (which was recently stolen, unfortunately. Thus, this is a replacement). I appreciate the larger screen (14.1 vs 13.5) especially when doing graphics work. The new model is still the same weight, and though it has a slightly larger footprint, is a bit thinner, and thus "feels" about the same when I am carrying it around.

Earlier concerns about a soft keyboard seem to have been addressed, but not entirely so, I would note. The lower right corner of the keyboard, which is modified from earlier models, is still soft and clacky. However, I do appreciate now having independent PageUp and PageDown keys (the Home and End keys are still Function keys, which is a bit annoying). The rest of the keyboard is quite solid - not as good as an IBM, but still much better than Dell and most other laptops I have tried.

The touchpad works well, as does the pointing stick (the pointing stick also has "tap" technology, which is quite amazing and works well). The scroll button below the touchpad is stiff to the point of being too annoying to use, but then, I tend to use a wheel mouse most of the time, so maybe this won't matter too much to me.

Fujitsu, of course, also emphasizes overall design of it's case. The shell is apparently some sort of magnesium alloy, which is supposed to make it more durable than a pure plastic case. It certainly looks good (and I've gotten comments on this). I guess style matters somewhat, even if fashion doesn't, you know?

I went for the 7200 rpm hard disk upgrade and am absolutely amazed how fast it is over the 4200 rpm (it also has a larger cache, I think). It seems not to produce much heat, nor does the CPU - the fan hardly ever comes on, except if I am doing heavy disk-writing or CPU processing (crunchin numbers in GIS, for example).

I have had one major issue, which I have only started to address - I get a blue screen of death, often, after resuming from Hibernate mode. Doesn't seem to ever happen if I have done a clean reboot, or if I am resuming from Standby. I think it is one of the hardware drivers, but I don't know which one yet. I am running all the latest drivers, and have all the Windows updates installed, so I'm a bit concerned about this. I'll post more info about this once I figure it out more (I've got to get on the phone with Fujitsu about it, probably). Has anyone else experienced this issue, I wonder? Mainly, I get a "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" error.

I also purchased my laptop from PortableOne, as a previous reviewer had, and am quite satisfied with their service.

Hope this information helps. Feel free to email me (but not spam me) if you have more questions. I was very very satisfied with my previous Fujitsu and this one seems like it will work well for me too (assuming I resolve the blue screen issue).

Todd
San Francisco, CA

 

Todd,
You say that you have used it for some graphic design, how does it handel graphics, I am concerned about the lack of a graphics card. I don't play a lot of games, but it would be nice if I wanted to that I could.

I'm also woundering how it would work with a digital camera, like editing the pictures, etc. Have not had much experence with intergrated v-cards before. I own a Dell Insperion 5000e and am ready for a new one. How do you think it compares to a Dell? i'm realy kinda through with Dell, had many Dells but find their support stinks and this puppy gets kinda heavy.

One more thing I don't think you described what you had under the hood, how much ram, cpu, etc., please elaborate.

Thanks

 

Well, I do 2d design at this point, which isn't really all that demanding on the video hardware. I suspect that you would want to consider a "gaming-oriented" laptop if that's what you want to do, but I don't know much about those. I just do Adobe Illustrator and some AutoCAD - it works well for that. What I have found, actually, is that the faster hard drive (7200 rpm) is quite simply *awesome* - that was the bottleneck before (well, it still is, but much less so) - loading large graphics files is much faster, and once you've loaded them, you'll probably be using your scratch disk (virtual memory) which also is much faster (since virtual memory is actually a read/write process from the hard drive).

Friends of mine who have Dell Latitudes are satisfied with their computers, but envy mine, which has similar hardware (though a faster hard drive) but is thinner, lighter, and has a much better case design. I have used Fujitsu tech support twice now which has gone well, though my experiences lately with Dell (office computers) have been pretty good too. My computer has also been very stable - not crashing at all, whereas my friends' Dells seem to be less stable.

Not sure what you mean by handliny a digital camera - most digital cameras are USB and all laptops now support USB. You might want to be sure you have USB 2.0 (rather than the older 1.0) which is faster.

And as far as "under the hood" I have a 1.5G CPU, 60GB HD (7200 rpm) and 512MB ram. 512 seems to be a good number. You might want to jump up to 1Gig if you can afford it, depending on how much graphics you'll be doing. 256 however is just too low, especially since Windows XP seems to suck memory compared to Windows 2000 (?)

Hope this info helps...

Todd


<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by j52c

 

woW thanks for the full detail review better than pc world review.







www.ComputerOfAmerica.com <---best computers in the world

 

I forgot to update my previous posting, to note that I have resolved the blue screen of death issue - it was the Novell network client. I updated to the most recent version (I don't know what previous version I was running) and it has been running smoothly since.

Todd

 

Todd,

Thanks very much for all the info, extremly helpful

Jamie