Fujitsu LifeBook T2010 Laptop

Fujitsu's LifeBook T2010 doesn't deliver the leading-edge style of the Dell XPS M1330 or the performance of the Lenovo ThinkPad X61 we tested recently. But this 3.5-pound ultraportable ($2,279 in our test configuration; models start at $1,599) does have a lot going for it—namely, a convertible 12.1-inch wide-screen display that turns the laptop into a tablet. Business and home users who need a lightweight machine will appreciate the T2010's dual personality, even if it does come with a handful of caveats.

Let's start with the looks. While the T2010's black exterior will never go out of style, it's rather bland compared with more fashion-conscious ultraportables such as the Toshiba Portégé R400 and the Asus S6F. Still, the T2010 feels solid in the hand, and at less than an inch thick, it's easy to carry.

Plus, it's loaded with features, such as a fingerprint reader, PC Card and memory-card slots, FireWire, two USB ports, LAN and modem jacks, and (showing its business bent) a SmartCard reader. There's also Draft-N Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and Fujitsu says it will make wireless broadband available early in 2008. The only thing missing is an integrated optical drive; you'll have to get one of Fujitsu's compatible docking solutions or an external USB-connected drive. While that's typical for an ultraportable, a few other makers (namely Toshiba and Sony) have managed to squeeze onboard optical drives into this weight class.

The T2010's controls are decent, with a comfortable full-size keyboard and a pointing stick for navigation instead of a touch pad. (The battery pack juts into the space where a pad would normally reside.) The stick isn't as comfortable as those on a ThinkPad, as it sits too flush with the key tops, but it gets the job done.

Flip the notebook's latchless lid, and you'll find a crisp, bright, 12.1-inch wide-screen display. The panel's 1,280x800 resolution offers a comfortable work environment, and even small text is easily legible. If you do connect a DVD drive, you'll be rewarded with vibrant video that looks terrific. The only disappointment here is the weak audio coming from the machine's single speaker. It's good enough for the sounds and jingles of Windows, but headphones are in order for anything more.

The T2010's real attraction is its tablet functionality. Open the screen 90 degrees, and you can swivel it on its bi-directional center hinge and lay it flat to turn the laptop into a tablet. A button on the screen's bezel rotates the screen image. As for workability, the panel's viewing-angle performance is excellent from all directions, and the T2010 is light enough to let you use the machine comfortably as a slate. But the big display makes it hard to hold the T2010 for long stretches. So if you're going to use the tablet for serious lengths of time, you'll want to rest it on your lap or another surface.

The pen-driven panel, meanwhile, has excellent accuracy, and the handwriting recognition is admirable, even without training—not perfect, mind you, but still surprisingly good. The handy Tablet PC Input Panel interface docks itself to the left side of the screen and opens with a click. It lets you quickly add notes to just about any open app, and the shortcuts for oft-used entries (such as "www" and ".com") speed things along. Business users with custom pen-aware apps are the obvious target for a tablet like this, but we can also see the benefits for home users looking to surf the Internet while lounging on the couch. You wouldn't want to do extensive text input with the pen, but it's ideal for tasks where you are mostly reading and clicking.

As for endurance, Fujitsu claims "all-day" battery life for the T2010. Using the optional nine-cell battery, we got 4 hours and 15 minutes of runtime on our DVD rundown test with all power-saving features disabled. (Note, though, that the external DVD drive uses its own power source, not the T2010's battery.) In real-world use, with power-management features enabled, you should see more than 6 hours of running time per charge.

We did find a glitch with our test unit's power management: Closing the lid did not put the machine into sleep mode, even if it was set to do so in the Control Panel. And be warned that the nine-cell battery protrudes from the front edge of the machine by about half an inch. (The standard six-cell pack sits flush.)

All of which leads to another big issue: performance. To get the good battery life it did, Fujitsu went with a miserly ultra-low-voltage (ULV) processor. The Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 is a decent choice as far as ULV CPUs go, but it can't match Intel's T-series chips in performance. The T2010 booted to Windows Vista in about 2 minutes (faster machines take 1.5 minutes or less), delivered a score of just 2,731 on Futuremark's PCMark05, and completed our iTunes conversion test in just over 9 minutes. By way of comparison, the ThinkPad X61, a fairly speedy ultraportable, scored 4,000 on PCMark05 and completed our iTunes task in 5 minutes and 15 seconds. Not surprisingly, the T2010 is no game machine: It scored a very low 436 on Futuremark's 3DMark06. We didn't even bother running our game tests when we saw that result.

Our test unit came with Windows Vista Business, which includes the tablet functionality from the previous generation of the OS. Fujitsu offers Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, as well, which we suspect will run a bit quicker on this hardware. You also get EverNote Plus, an excellent note-taking and organizational utility that's a must for tablet users (and handy for traditional PC users, too).

All told, the LifeBook T2010 delivers solid functionality for the price. If you're in the market for an ultraportable and think you might make use of the tablet feature, it's worth a look.