Carla Thornton

Fujitsu LifeBook P2000

The size of a large pocketbook, the Fujitsu LifeBook P2000 can tag along just about anywhere. The clamshell-like device weighs just 3.3 pounds, including a built-in DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive. It has a crisp, colorful, 10.6-inch wide-format screen, and 802.11b (Wi-Fi) built in. A USB-connected floppy drive, increasingly an extra-cost item with many notebooks, also comes standard.
When we reviewed the 800-MHz Crusoe processor-equipped version of Fujitsu's P Series notebook last March, that little machine turned in great battery life for its size, 3.5 hours. Unfortunately, this 867-MHz Crusoe version of the P Series took a nosedive, lasting just 2.2 hours in our tests. (Fujitsu rates the notebook at 3 hours with the standard battery, and alleges that you can stretch that to 12 hours by replacing the standard three-cell battery with an extra-cost six-cell and carrying another six-cell battery in the modular bay.)The processor upgrade didn't help performance, either. The P2000 dropped from its predecessor's PC WorldBench 4 score of 57 down to 53, even with 128MB of additional memory. We didn't notice any lag in basic operations--moving around the screen, typing in a Word document--but the P2000 is noticeably slow at more-complicated operations, such as calculating a spreadsheet. Overall, it's about half as fast as the newest full-size laptops.The P2000 is conspicuously legacy light, which might be a problem for users still wedded to non-USB peripherals. The notebook lacks parallel, serial, and PS/2 connections, and Fujitsu offers no docking station to add those features. To hook up a monitor, you have to remember to pack a short adapter cable.
The P2000 suffers from the usual small-notebook drawbacks, most notably with the keyboard and multimedia. It makes the most of the space it has, however. A small status LCD, the power button, and two of the notebook's three reprogrammable application-shortcut buttons make themselves at home in the unusual location of the lower screen frame. The third shortcut button, for e-mail, sits in a snazzy translucent blue "notification panel" in the left of the screen frame, and lights up when new messages arrive. The combination drive, which you can swap for a modular battery or a weight-saving module, takes up the notebook's entire left side. Other connections--which include an S-Video-out port, two USB 1.1 ports, modem and network interface jacks, a FireWire port, and one PC Card slot--are either on the right or in the back. We could touch-type on the Chiclet-size keys and use the small mouse buttons and stiff eraserhead fairly easily. However, it took more practice time than we had available to press the right Shift key (buried to the right of the Page Up key) reliably, and we couldn't get comfortable using two-handed combination strokes to page up and down. The notebook's bar battery, which snaps onto the front of the notebook, also can serve as a palm rest. (The twice-as-deep high-capacity battery bar makes an even nicer place to park your palms while typing.) The P2000's small rectangular screen doesn't accommodate multiple, large windows very well, but it's bright and crisp and perfectly fine for mainstream work. DVD movies looked great and played smoothly, but the 16:9 aspect ratio gives them black letterbox bands, and the nasal-sounding stereo speakers make headphones a must. (As a consolation, Fujitsu throws in a Dolby Surround Sound utility. There's also a combination optical digital audio-/line-out port that accepts external speakers or a Sony MiniDisc recorder.) User-serviceable parts are fairly easy to get to, which is unusual for an ultraportable. The 30GB hard drive sits behind a panel secured by three small screws on the bottom. To reach the RAM, you have to remove a small screw on the bottom, flip the notebook over, pop off a spacer panel just below the last row of keys, and then fold the keyboard over to get to the slots underneath. A printed manual ably covers the all the bases. You can download an excellent Acrobat version from Fujitsu's Web site.
Fairly easy to use and fast enough for mainstream work, the P2000 is a good choice for consumers and undemanding business folk who don't rely on legacy peripherals and who need a lightweight notebook they can carry just about anywhere.

Buying Information

Fujitsu LifeBook P2000 PC WorldBench 4 score of 53, Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 CPU, 384MB of PC133 SDRAM, 512KB L2 cache, Windows XP Professional, 10.6-inch active-matrix screen, ATI Rage Mobility P/M PCI graphics with 8MB of SDRAM, 30GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM and 16X/10X/24X CD-RW combination drive, built-in V.90 modem and network interface, eraserhead pointing device, 4.8 pounds (including AC adapter and phone cord). One-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free technical support. $ 1799 PC WorldBench 4 score of 53, Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 CPU, 384MB of PC133 SDRAM, 512KB L2 cache, Windows XP Professional, 10.6-inch active-matrix screen, ATI Rage Mobility P/M PCI graphics with 8MB of SDRAM, 30GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM and 16X/10X/24X CD-RW combination drive, built-in V.90 modem and network interface, eraserhead pointing device, 4.8 pounds (including AC adapter and phone cord). One-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited 24-hour toll-free technical support. http://www.fujitsupc.com 877/372-3473