Thursday, March 1, 2007
Fujitsu Releases New P7230 Laptop
Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 02:20 PM
"In an all new sleek design, the LifeBook® P7230 notebook offers exceptional performance with its Crystal View display, extended battery life (up to 9.75 hours4), and the latest Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology. The LifeBook P7230 notebook is the ultimate travel companion weighing as little as 2.63 lbs."
I've been waiting with baited breath for this new P7000 series laptop from Fujitsu, and I have to admit I'm a bit underwhealmed. I've owned a P5000 series and a P7000 series, both 10.6" screened precursors to this new P7230 laptop. The CPU is still at 1.2 Ghz, because we're still waiting for new CPUs from Intel. But if Sony can put a 1.33 Ghz Core Solo in a tiny UX series device, why can't Fujitsu get more CPU power on the P7230? They're using 1.8" hard drives, capped at 80 GB in size, which is already the size of the 2.5" drive I have in the P7010D I'm typing this post up on. And apparently even with the secondary battery we're only looking at 9.5 hours of battery life - my current unit will do 11 hours. Oh, and the only two options are Vista Home Basic and Vista Business - why no Home Premium? And why on earth does their post replicator still only have a VGA port? Going from 1 GB of RAM up to 2 GB costs $527. Yuck. And, incredibly, buying a 2GB memory stick from Crucial costs even more: $594 USD!
On the plus side, this new machine has Bluetooth 2.0, gigabit ethernet, a built-in Web cam, and I think the unit is also fan-free and completely silent. I need to check into that further, because my current machine is noisy and it constantly ticks me off. But I'm not sure Fujitsu has done enough here to earn my repeat business. I'm even considering, <gasp>, a Sony TX series notebook.
I've been waiting with baited breath for this new P7000 series laptop from Fujitsu, and I have to admit I'm a bit underwhealmed. I've owned a P5000 series and a P7000 series, both 10.6" screened precursors to this new P7230 laptop. The CPU is still at 1.2 Ghz, because we're still waiting for new CPUs from Intel. But if Sony can put a 1.33 Ghz Core Solo in a tiny UX series device, why can't Fujitsu get more CPU power on the P7230? They're using 1.8" hard drives, capped at 80 GB in size, which is already the size of the 2.5" drive I have in the P7010D I'm typing this post up on. And apparently even with the secondary battery we're only looking at 9.5 hours of battery life - my current unit will do 11 hours. Oh, and the only two options are Vista Home Basic and Vista Business - why no Home Premium? And why on earth does their post replicator still only have a VGA port? Going from 1 GB of RAM up to 2 GB costs $527. Yuck. And, incredibly, buying a 2GB memory stick from Crucial costs even more: $594 USD!
On the plus side, this new machine has Bluetooth 2.0, gigabit ethernet, a built-in Web cam, and I think the unit is also fan-free and completely silent. I need to check into that further, because my current machine is noisy and it constantly ticks me off. But I'm not sure Fujitsu has done enough here to earn my repeat business. I'm even considering, <gasp>, a Sony TX series notebook.
