I Want Something Silver and Pretty
Written: Jun 25 '01
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Pros: Excellent price for the specs, attractive case, high feel-good factor
Cons: Lackluster technical support, not extremely small and light
The Bottom Line: The Fujitsu will make you feel good about owning it. Its luxurious, rich silver casing and design exudes a certain "class" that sets it apart from other laptops.
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| anata's Full Review: Fujitsu LIFEBOOK E6550 (FPC030344) PC Notebook |
Over the past four months I have probably read five hundred reviews for laptops on Epinions, ZDNet, CNet, PCWorld, and compared prices and configurations for about fifty laptop manufacturers ranging from the big names like Dell, Gateway, and HP to lesser known brands like WinBook, Acer, and Fujitsu. This review is about the Fujitsu brand that I have finally settled on and decided to buy, as well as touching base about some other brands, namely Dell.
My boyfriend used to work for Dell tech support. He knows all the dirty inside details, and basically, he said that Dell uses the cheapest, worst parts possible. The fact that they have a great tech support doesn't mean much when they only ship their customers defective products and are eager to replace them as long as they've covered under warranty. I can vouch for this from experience. I have previously purchased a Dell Inspiron 2100, a top-of-the-line ultraportable model with 256MB of RAM and 20GB HD. I was immediately dissatisfied with the laptop as it was hot, noisy, and not much faster than my 120mhz desktop computer with 48MB of RAM. Also, within two weeks of receiving my purchase, the Inspiron 2100's hard drive *failed*. I got a BIOS error on boot up telling me about bad sectors and how the system cannot write to disk. Luckily I was able to get a full refund to original method of purchase as I returned it under 30 days. Case in point here, get a warranty that is as good as you can get. No award-winning tech support team (like Dell's) can help you when the hardware components crap out and the only thing you can do is send back the laptop to the manufacturer for repair.
After the Inspiron fiasco, my heart has been set on buying a Fujitsu. (http://www.fujitsupc.com). Fujitsu has been making laptops for a long time now. Their laptops are inexpensive, beautiful looking, and have the latest features for the best price among brand-name companies. They are a Japanese company that competes with NEC as one of the top two computer manufacturer in Japan. Fujitsu actually designs, manufactures, and supports their products... past one's, too, unlike Sony, another Japanese company known for the quality of their televisions, CD players and other electronic products. Although Fujitsu is less well-known in the United States, it is a big name in Asia and definitely a big name in Japan's computer industry.
I have been looking at Fujitsu's latest laptop with 850mhz PIII, 30GB HD, 256MB RAM, 14.1 active-matrix LCD, CDRW, Ethernet, 56K that comes with a security device cable, with 3-year warranty, all for only about $2000 before taxes and shipping. This is probably the best deal I've seen to date, and it is even a price direct from the website. What's more, this Fujitsu laptop is one of the first Pentium III-based machines with the DVD/CD-RW combo drive at a sub-$2,000 price category. Of course, there are also DVD-only and CDRW-only options if you don't want to pay the extra $100. The laptop also features four USB ports, a Firewire or IEEE 1394 port, an S-video out port, and an Infared port you can use with a wireless mouse. This laptop is an all-in-one model, which means that it has a fixed hard drive, a fixed optical CD drive, and a fixed floppy disk drive so you don't have to swap out anything and damage intricate computer components. This also means that it is a bit larger and heavier than other systems (but it's still smaller and lighter than the Inspiron 8000, not to mention much sexier). Now's where my experience with the Inspiron 2100 makes me sound bitter... To all you guys who want a "1 inch thin, extremely light" laptop, just know that the screen will be TINY and the NOISE will drive you nuts and the HEAT dissipation problem is not going to go away. Also, a small laptop translates into a small battery, and good luck trying to squeeze even two hours of productivity out of an ultraportable -- I certainly lacked such luck. Besides, an ultraportable isn't that good looking. To be sure, the Inspiron 2100 is small. But it is not shiny or silver or very attractive like those pictures online lead you to believe. It's merely... gray.
Since I'm talking about superficial aspects like casing color, I think I should also touch-base about a laptop's aesthetics. One reason the Apple Titanium G4 laptop has been so popular -- perhaps the main reason -- is because it looks damned good and oozes sex appeal. Metallic silver is a color that simply screams "love me now." The latest 2001-20002 model cars are silver, the best-selling latest handhelds, mp3 players and cellphones are silver, and the latest laptops are no exception. All Fujitsu laptops have a silver magnesium alloy case and are just gorgeous. As the marketing people know, making someone feel good is a very effective way of convincing people to buy their products. If your job requires you to project a positive image, the Fujitsu laptop should do the trick better than most.
Rarely talked about aspects of laptops are their multimedia capabilities and "good feel for user," probably because most of them have none. The Fujitsu has the ATI Rage Mobility 128 video chip with 16MB of RAM, double that of most laptops with 8MB of video RAM. It is the best of its kind and even demanding 3D games such as Quake III is a breeze for this laptop. Another Fujitsu laptop has stereo Yamaha speakers with a subwoofer and a stunningly clear display that has a good range of viewing angle. The OEM companies trump up the talk about specs about numbers -- hard drive size, screen size, amount of RAM and Windows 2000 -- but when do you hear them talk about whether or not that laptop has nice speakers or that the keyboard feels great or that the edge of the laptop would not dig into your wrist when you type? The only real way you can find out about these things is by going to your local Circuit City, CompUSA, Best Buy or another computer store, and physically trying out the laptops. Here is exactly where the Fujitsu excels. The company has been making laptops for a long time, and the C-series and E-series have gone through at least 4 generations of change. As a result, small quirks like a shaky keyboard or bad position of touchpad have been eliminated, and the new products have a high feel good factor.
In two or three years, after new laptops with more impressive numbers and faster components come out, do you still really want to be stuck with your black and gray plastic case? If you have a laptop that is attractive and makes you feel proud for owning it, even after the years have gone by, then you have made a worthwhile investment. With the Fujitsu, you won't even have to invest that much to get a beautiful piece of machine. Why not?
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 801-900
RAM: 256
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
anata
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Location: Chicago, IL
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
My name is Rose. Anata = A Not Available Teasing Asian
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