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Fujitsu Lifebook P1510

Will Fujitsu's tiny tablet impress you? Find out...

Jayesh Mansukhani|Nov 13, 2006, 11:24:21 IST

There has been a remarkable growth in portable mobile computing in the last few years—with powerful processors trickling down to ultra-portables and offering an interesting combination of excellent battery life and good processing power. Capitalized on this, Fujitsu introduced its P series range of laptops and tablets. Under the review scanner, we have placed the Fujitsu P1510 tablet and find out how it delivers.

The P1510 is a convertible tablet that is aimed at digital enthusiasts and people who are on the move. It is tiny, measuring 232mm wide, 34.5mm deep and 167mm thick. This makes for a very small body, which weighs in at just 1 kg, which makes it arguably the smallest tablet out there. The P1510 like all tablets, has a rotatable screen and supports handwriting reorganization for you to jot down your notes on.

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Specs& Usability

Specification Table

Manufacturer	Fujitsu
Model Name	Lifebook P1510
Price	Rs. 1,10000
CPU	Intel Pentium M 753 ULV 1.2GHz
System memory (quantity)	512MB
Max memory	1GB
HDD	60GB 4,200rpm 1.8in
Optical drive (speed & supported media)	N/A
Graphics & Graphics Memory	Intel 915GM chipset with 8 MB shared
Audio controller (manufacturer & model)	Realtek ALC203
Max resolution & refresh rate	1,024x600
Modem	56k V.92
Network card	10/100/1000 Ethernet, Intel 802.11a/b/g wireless
Card Reader	SD/MMC & Compact Flash card readers
USB 2.0 ports	2
Operating system	Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Warranty (years & type)	1yr
Width x Depth x Height	37 x 232 x 167 mm
Weight	1kg

In terms of specifications, the P1510 comes equipped with Pentium M ULV ( Ultra low voltage processor) clocked at 1.2 GHz which is a great step up from the rather slow Transmeta processor which was the mainstay of the earlier generation of tablets and laptops. The new processor is fast enough to easily handle daily tasks like surfing, listening to music and editing documents without bogging down the processor. The tablet is also equipped with a 60 GB 4200 RPM HDD and 512 MB of DDR1 400 MHz system RAM. However there is one glaring exception. There is no internal optical media drive present which is a major drawback. I found this strange as other manufacturers have managed to accommodate internal drives in only slightly larger frames. Fujitsu does offer an external graphics port which is handled by the Intel 915GM chipset with a default of 8MB for video memory. Though the graphics chip can take up to 128 MB easily, it does so from the system RAM. I do not recommend using more than 8 MB as anything more will eat into valuable system memory which should be used for memory intensive tasks.

The screen as in keeping in with the size of the tablet is an 8.9 inch diagonal display with an odd resolution of 1024x600,which makes working with more than a couple of windows impossible. Don’t expect to run more than your word document and a couple of browser windows before you run out of screen space. The P1510 does feature a keyboard but it is so cramped that it rules out any kind of serious work on it. There is a standard pointing stick present with two buttons which is fairly decent sized and as compared to the keyboard quite usable over a period of time for surfing.

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The hinge of the LCD screen can be rotated, to convert the screen view from portrait to landscape. Surfing in landscape mode is a better experience overall as compared to portrait mode. The elongated display gives you a better surfing experience as it gives you more screen space to work with. Fujitsu provides a stylus for the touch screen which can be used for writing notes, editing documents and surfing. The stylus is fairly thick and easy to grip which allows for easy handwriting and presents no problems for long hours of work. Handwriting recognition was fairly good, though it did have a short learning curve. It took quite a few re-tries, to be able to write accurately. Luckily the OS does come with a virtual keyboard much like touchscreen mobile phones. This allows for quick entry of data and I found it easier to work with in the longer run.

Connectivity

Connectivity for the P1510 is fairly decent. Both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are present, which allows you to surf easily at a hotspot or use a Smartphone as a modem for wire connectivity. For peripheral expansion , there are 2 USB slots present which is quite good considering the size of the tablet. Curiously enough there is a VGA-out present which will allow you to dock the tablet and connect it to an external display. This also increases the usefulness of the USB slots as one can easily attach a USB keyboard and mouse along with an external display and use it like a regular machine. There are SD-Card/Compact Flash readers also present which makes a good addition as it allows you to read flash memory cards without the need of an external device. LAN connectivity is present in the form of an onboard 10/100 MB adapter.

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For tests we chose to forego our routine battery of tests and instead went for a more practical approach. We used PCmark 2006 to gauge average performance of the laptop to get a realistic score. We also tested battery life under real life conditions over 4 cycles with various work loads to arrive at an average battery life.

PCMARK 2006

We were unable to obtain a PCmark score due to the lack of 3d processing power. We did obtain individual scores for CPU, Memory and HDD which stood at 1901, 1847 and 2189 respectively. These scores are accurate and reflects the slower components used in this tablet.

Battery Tests

We ran the tests with various workloads ranging from just plain document editing to surfing with Wi-Fi and listening to music. Here the tablet failed to impress as its battery posted an average time of around 165 mins which is not very great, to say the least.

Conclusion

For a price of Rs. 1,10,000 the Fujitsu is priced at least 30 percent higher than it should be. Despite its small size, the lack of an optical drive and a cramped keyboard makes the tablet suffer. If you are in the market for a performance tablet, look elsewhere.