Other pages in the review
Fujitsu Lifebook E8210
The Lifebook’s pale inside surfaces and white keyboard are likely to show dust and grime rather easily, but the brightness may lift the spirits more than the traditional black. Externally, the Lifebook is black as is its panel above the keyboard which includes twin speakers, four shortcut keys and an LCD status display.
The large 15.4in widescreen display has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and larger “scrolling screen” formats are available, although we wonder about the value of this (better to overflow onto an external monitor). It also has a fingerprint scanner, 1.83GHz Centrino Duo processor, both Express and PCMCIA slots, smartcard reader and SD/MemoryStick slot, which makes it one of the most flexible machines in terms of card connectivity. Networking options include Gigabit Ethernet, wireless and Firewire.
The Lifebook is reasonably attractive though not quite as conservative as the Dell Latitude. It comes with a fairly simple port replicator that adds only DVI connectivity to the suite of ports native to the Lifebook.
Locating the notebook is very easy—there is no software switch when undocking, so the user merely pulls a lever at the back of the dock to release the computer. The indicator lights found on most notebooks is here replaced by a single line LCD display—a difference providing novelty value only, as replacing LEDs in the event of failure is no doubt cheaper. We also had no concerns when attempting to hot dock and undock the machine.
In contrast to Dell’s Latitude, the Lifebook displays the highest MobileMark performance, and the poorest battery life (173 minutes, or just short of three hours). With its 2GHZ processor it is fast, but not ideal for travelling where mains power is not readily available. Sandra Pro performance did not change when attached to the dock on mains power. Unfortunately, a technical difficulty prevented us from running the Business Winstone benchmark but it would appear that this would have been reasonably high given the apparent lack of energy saving features in operation.
The LifeBook is quite well set up for multimedia applications but the hard drive was quite small by modern standards at only 40GB. This machine is best for applications where mains power is readily available as battery life is quite poor (it has been sacrificed for application performance). Complete with port replicator the price is $3148. The three-year warranty is very good and it has quite a fast, one- to three-day turnaround time.
HP Compaq nc6400
Hewlett-Packard has long been known for quality, it is the second largest manufacturer of computers today.
The 6400 is an all black machine with a 14.1in widescreen LCD and a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. The design of the laptop is simple but not unattractive and both pointing stick and touch pad are present as well as fingerprint scanner.
The speakers are squeezed into the front panel along with the SD/MMC slot. The CPU is a 1.83GHz Centrino Duo—the same as that found in both the Fujitsu and the Lenovo. The 6400 also has a smartcard reader, PCMCIA slot and connectivity via, Gigabit Ethernet, ABG wireless and Bluetooth. It is a well endowed little notebook falling only a little behind the Latitude.
The port replicator adds DVI component video ports, two PS2 ports, serial and parallel ports and extra USB ports including one powered USB.
Attaching to the computer is relatively easy; the positioning guide controls one axis when locating the docking port. (The slight lateral movement that is required to properly locate the devices is not too inconvenient). Hot docking and undocking appears to cause no problems.
The HP Compaq nc6400 placed second highest in both MobileMark performance and battery life. Memory bandwidth and disk access speed did not vary significantly when docked or undocked as expected—nor did the presence of external power seem to be a factor.
The results for the Business Winstone test were surprisingly low given the other benchmark results; the score was the lowest by a small margin, confirming little in the way of power-saving utilities were operating while it was using battery power.
This was the second lightest machine physically, but it is not light on features. The nc6400 displays some very respectable performance scores—the battery life being particularly pleasing. The range of ports and general connectivity is good although it lacks Firewire and Express card slot. The machine comes with a three-year onsite warranty and is priced at $3094 complete with port replicator.