Fujitsu Lifebook P7230
$3,688 (black and white); $3,788 (crimson)
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The P7230 is the latest ultra-portable notebook offering from Fujitsu, whose strength is in the ultra-portables niche.

Coming in red, black, and white, the P7230 sports a fashionable, minimalistic design in a compact 10.6-inch screen form factor.

For work muscle, it sports an energy-efficient Intel Core Solo U1400 processor, similar to other ultra-portables in the market. It also comes with 1GB of RAM and a 60GB hard disk. Graphics is driven by the Intel integrated GMA950 chipset.

While the P7230 is pretty petite, it did feel thicker than the Fujitsu Q2010 reviewed previously.

While the Q2010 is 1.99cm slim, the P7230 is 1cm thicker. But what the P7230 gains with that extra girth is a built-in dual-layer burner. Even then, this 1.33kg machine's footprint is no larger than that an A4 sheet of paper.

While it does not have the HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) function of the Q2010, you can still get the P7230 to connect wirelessly at hotspots as well as zap contacts via Bluetooth. Other ports on it include two USB 2.0 ports, modem, VGA and LAN, as well as a PC Card slot. It has a built-in webcam, and a fingerprint security sensor too.

The neat thing here is an Eco button. Press it and the machine goes into an energy-conservation mode during which the optical drive, PC and media card slots, Ethernet, modem and firewire ports are switched off.

The machine's LCD brightness is also reduced, though you can still manually turn it up. A nice, uncommon touch.

I was unable to benchmark the notebook with Bapco's MobileMark2005 software, given its lack of support for Windows Vista. In practical usage, I found the notebook's performance a wee bit sluggish in Vista. Office apps ran fine, but for multimedia authoring and other processor-intensive tasks, you are better off with dual-core notebooks.

The P7230 scored only 135 points in the 3DMark2006 gaming benchmarks.

Battery life is up to six hours for general office use and wireless surfing.

FINAL SAY

Worth a look if you are looking for a petite notebook which doesn't sacrifice a built-in optical drive and battery stamina.