anyone have opinions on this laptop?
http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com...roducts/notebooks/tech_specs/p5000d_p5020d_ts
http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com...roducts/notebooks/tech_specs/p5000d_p5020d_ts
Fujitsu P5020
- Thread starter LoudTIGER
- Start date
I like it a lot. Don't own one, but I've played with it in the shop and have been following them since the first version was released in Japan. It has all the features you could want in a machine that size (except for maybe a dedicated GPU). They're solid machines and Fujitsu has a good reputation for quality.
Try the Fujitsu P5000 series forum for a lot of good info.
Try the Fujitsu P5000 series forum for a lot of good info.
I have one and I love mine. Mine is the original 900Mhz one that came out when the Centrino notebooks were first coming out. The only difference now is that the Ultra low voltage Pentium-M is now at 1Ghz. The laptop is small, lightweight, has a removeable optical drive that can be replaced with a media bay battery, is fast, has all the card reader slots you could ask for, firewire, 802.11g, etc etc. 
It's *much* faster than the old P20xx series which used Transmeta's Crusoe chip. The build quality is good though I do not like how some of the ports have pointless plastic latch covers on them. The keyboard is very usable however the one caveat is that to keep the inverted T for the arrow keys they had to shrink the , . / keys a little more than the others. You get used to it after a little while but at first I was missing the period key a lot.
It even runs some decent games in a playable fashion though it uses Intel's 855GM onboard graphics. I use mine for recording audio, playing games on the TV (like MAME and ePSXe emulator stuff), web surfing, email, etc.
The P-series forum linked in the previous post is great. It's the only site out there with dedicated forums for Fujitsu P-series notebooks and you can get a ton of useful information and user experiences there (including other places like laptopsinc.com that may have better deals than Fujitsu).
Bottom line: I love mine and if you are in the market for a subnotebook with an onboard optical drive I think this is the best one for the price.
Gaidin
It's *much* faster than the old P20xx series which used Transmeta's Crusoe chip. The build quality is good though I do not like how some of the ports have pointless plastic latch covers on them. The keyboard is very usable however the one caveat is that to keep the inverted T for the arrow keys they had to shrink the , . / keys a little more than the others. You get used to it after a little while but at first I was missing the period key a lot.
It even runs some decent games in a playable fashion though it uses Intel's 855GM onboard graphics. I use mine for recording audio, playing games on the TV (like MAME and ePSXe emulator stuff), web surfing, email, etc.
The P-series forum linked in the previous post is great. It's the only site out there with dedicated forums for Fujitsu P-series notebooks and you can get a ton of useful information and user experiences there (including other places like laptopsinc.com that may have better deals than Fujitsu).
Bottom line: I love mine and if you are in the market for a subnotebook with an onboard optical drive I think this is the best one for the price.
Gaidin
ack, sorry about the double post.
that sounds good.. i saw one at Fry's a few months ago next to the Sony TR1, and i couldn't help but feel impressed at the Fujitsu. The Sony had a few things i didn't like, such as the memory stick only slot as opposed to the 3-in-1 reader on the Fujitsu, and the built-in 802.11g card is nicer on the Fujitsu also. I have no need for a camera. Hopefully all goes well; i went ahead and placed my order for a new P5020D today.
gaiden, how much ram do you have with yours? my traditional experience with windows xp is that with 256mb, things can get sluggish pretty quickly even with the unnecessary services disabled and the visual effects turned off (i prefer the traditional look, anyway). do you feel that the one stick limitation is a pretty big disadvantage? i went ahead and got a stick of 512mb, but i'm afraid that if and when i have to upgrade, the 1GB sticks will still be ridiculously expensive. that, and i'd have to discard and possibly sell off the 512mb stick.
do you have issues with the sound quality? i'm more concerned with the headphone out, since i probably won't be using speakers in the library or on the bus.
that sounds good.. i saw one at Fry's a few months ago next to the Sony TR1, and i couldn't help but feel impressed at the Fujitsu. The Sony had a few things i didn't like, such as the memory stick only slot as opposed to the 3-in-1 reader on the Fujitsu, and the built-in 802.11g card is nicer on the Fujitsu also. I have no need for a camera. Hopefully all goes well; i went ahead and placed my order for a new P5020D today.
gaiden, how much ram do you have with yours? my traditional experience with windows xp is that with 256mb, things can get sluggish pretty quickly even with the unnecessary services disabled and the visual effects turned off (i prefer the traditional look, anyway). do you feel that the one stick limitation is a pretty big disadvantage? i went ahead and got a stick of 512mb, but i'm afraid that if and when i have to upgrade, the 1GB sticks will still be ridiculously expensive. that, and i'd have to discard and possibly sell off the 512mb stick.
do you have issues with the sound quality? i'm more concerned with the headphone out, since i probably won't be using speakers in the library or on the bus.
I only have 256MB in mine right now. When I bought mine it seemed like a good compromise between cost and performance. With what I use it for, 256MB works fine except for some of the gaming/emulation. Things get a little swap-happy sometimes but it's not a problem for me. I did replace the stock drive with a 5400RPM one so that may be offsetting the performance hit some.
I do turn off some of XP's eye candy but leave some of the other stuff turned on like cleartype/font anti-aliasing. I only started trying that feature recently and have been pretty happy with it so far. I don't think the one expansion slot is really a big limitation. When you buy a laptop the most important "performance" components of the CPU and graphics card are going to be static for the life of the notebook. I bought mine for a pretty specific set of tasks and figured out a ballpark amount of RAM that I needed and could afford. That was how I ended up with 256...Of course 512+ could help sometimes.
As for the audio out, I don't use headphones with it very often but I do hook it up to a decent TV all the time and I've never had cause to complain about the quality of the audio. When I have used headphones (decent but falling apart Sony V600s)) the audio sounded fine.
I agree with you about the differences between the Sony and Fujitsu. The camera is a "gee whiz" feature and Sony just loves their memory stick and no other formats.
Please post back once you get your laptop!
Gaidin
I do turn off some of XP's eye candy but leave some of the other stuff turned on like cleartype/font anti-aliasing. I only started trying that feature recently and have been pretty happy with it so far. I don't think the one expansion slot is really a big limitation. When you buy a laptop the most important "performance" components of the CPU and graphics card are going to be static for the life of the notebook. I bought mine for a pretty specific set of tasks and figured out a ballpark amount of RAM that I needed and could afford. That was how I ended up with 256...Of course 512+ could help sometimes.
As for the audio out, I don't use headphones with it very often but I do hook it up to a decent TV all the time and I've never had cause to complain about the quality of the audio. When I have used headphones (decent but falling apart Sony V600s
)) the audio sounded fine.I agree with you about the differences between the Sony and Fujitsu. The camera is a "gee whiz" feature and Sony just loves their memory stick and no other formats.
Please post back once you get your laptop!
Gaidin
Cool. I'm glad you like it. I don't know how well these things sell (or Fujitsu notebooks in general for that matter) and I've never ever seen them advertised, but they are great little machines.
I assume you got the new 1Ghz model? Any complaints?
Gaidin
I assume you got the new 1Ghz model? Any complaints?
Gaidin
only one complaint, and i'm sure it's a driver issue but i can't get it resolved. the "number of lines" to scroll is always reset to 1 when i reboot. this is really annoying, because i'm used to 4 lines per "notch" on my mouse wheel. fortunately, i leave the computer on suspend most of the time, so it doesn't bother me too much. i've gotten used to the keyboard pretty quickly.. it's not bad at all. at first, i thought i couldn't hit the period, but instead i was missing the question mark like crazy. after a day or two though, i've gotten pretty accustomed to its layout. build quality isn't bad. definitely better than the Dell Inspirons i've seen, and on par if not better than the Dell X300 i tested earlier this year. the status lcd is very useful and the battery gauge display works accurately. screen is also very clean, no dead pixels. it seems to have a semi-gloss screen... not like Sony's super clearcoated glossed up bling bling screen on the TR1/2 (which ironically i find hard to read due to the reflections) but it's not a traditional laptop screen coating either. the memory card readers are nice, but my camera happens to use smart media. i have a pc card adapter for that, so its okay. onboard atheros wireless is good. my signal is almost as good as my orinoco PC card. battery life is also good. i can get about 4.5 hours with some light surfing and typing. i'm sure i could get 5 to 5.5 hours with the wireless card disabled.
no real complaints, excellent machine. anyone looking for a small laptop should definitely take a look at the P5020, although i know most people will go for the Sony TR2 due to name recognition. i've already had people ask me if it's a Sony, and when i reply that it's a Fujitsu, they get a confused look on their faces:.
no real complaints, excellent machine. anyone looking for a small laptop should definitely take a look at the P5020, although i know most people will go for the Sony TR2 due to name recognition. i've already had people ask me if it's a Sony, and when i reply that it's a Fujitsu, they get a confused look on their faces:.
Fujitsu is a large electronics, office equipment and long-time desktop and notebook pc manufacturer. Its notebooks are more widespread in Japan and they have a reputation for high quality. Their core business is corporate/office equipment rather than consumer electronics. I guess they put more money into product design and manufacturing than into marketing.
An earlier generation of P-series was the one of first ultra-portables with an internal optical drive, back when all the other more well-known makers made machines that needed a dock or an external drive.
A side note, most of the Japanese manufacturers have been offering glossy screens on many of their notebooks for the past year or two. I've seen a number of Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu and NECs with similar glossy coatings. Some of the store displays have screens split down the middle, one side with the coating and one without, to show the difference it makes. I think the Japanese version of your P5000 series does have a glossy coating, but they used a less reflective screen for the US model.
Personally, I haven't decided whether I like them or not. They look great in store displays, but I have the feeling I wouldn't like the glare during everyday use. I think the coating you see on your P5020 is a compromise which keeps the positive image enhancing qualities of the screen coating without the reflective glare issues.
An earlier generation of P-series was the one of first ultra-portables with an internal optical drive, back when all the other more well-known makers made machines that needed a dock or an external drive.
A side note, most of the Japanese manufacturers have been offering glossy screens on many of their notebooks for the past year or two. I've seen a number of Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu and NECs with similar glossy coatings. Some of the store displays have screens split down the middle, one side with the coating and one without, to show the difference it makes. I think the Japanese version of your P5000 series does have a glossy coating, but they used a less reflective screen for the US model.
Personally, I haven't decided whether I like them or not. They look great in store displays, but I have the feeling I wouldn't like the glare during everyday use. I think the coating you see on your P5020 is a compromise which keeps the positive image enhancing qualities of the screen coating without the reflective glare issues.
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