Slashdot Mirror

I thought I'd comment -- I'd been eying one of those ultra-lightweight, tiny Vaio laptops for a while now, but I have the same reservations about Sony hardware that you do. That said, Fujitsu often offers comparable systems, and I've had good luck installing "vanilla" XP Pro and divers flavors of Linux on my Lifebook P5010. Fujitsu has long since stopped supporting it now, but I've never had any trouble installing more recent chipset drivers, etc., that I downloaded direct from the manufacturers. This is not a knock on Lenovo or Toshiba; I just find that Fujitsu is often overlooked, when they offer some sweet little ultralights.

By comparison, I've recently been dismayed to discover that I cannot install Mac OS X on my Sony Vaio desktop, apparently because my SATA chipset is not in AHCI mode. Unfortunately, Sony seems to have crippled the BIOS so there is no way to switch to that mode.

I think one of the more interesting gadgets to come out recently are laptops with (passive) touch screen technology. Sure the battery powered pens have been around for a little while, but I haven't found too many that can use a stylus. For me this works great, I hate laptop mice in all forms, and I can use it to take notes/draw/image editing etc. Fujitsu has a nice little version of this.

Alot of Ultra-portables, particularly the japanese imports, have the nipple exclusively.
http://webshop.fujitsupc.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildse riesbean.do?series=P1
http://www.dynamism.com/xp741/gallery.shtml
http://reviews.cnet.com/JVC_MP_XV841/4505-3121_7-3 0981361.html?tag=pdtl-list

And as an added bonus, they're so cute! *drools*

and i've got one.
http://webshop.fujitsupc.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildse riesbean.do?series=P7D

The Sony Clie ones...run Windows or Linux...

I think you're thinking of the Sony VAIO TR series notebooks. They're really tiny laptops, with the low-voltage, 1 GHz Pentium-M. Combined with the small screen size (less backlight area), this gives it a 7-hour battery life. Another similar model is the Toshiba LifeBook P1000 (800 MHz TransMeta Crusoe, 8.9-inch touch screen, nine hour battery life). People tend to either love or hate these notebooks: you either hate the input system and thus don't care about the small size, long battery life, and other features, or you can tolerate a smaller keyboard and tiny (or no) touchpad and you value the other features enough to buy it.

P1000>

Uh. Better screen, with less screen real-estate.

If you dont want one of these, get a Fujitsu P7000 series. I've got a P2046 and the form factor rocks *and* the screen beats out a powerbook's anemic 1024x768 any day.

Plus, you get compact flash/sd slots that the powerbook doesn't have.

my fujitsu lifebook p2120 gets some 12 hours on the batteries (I have the second battery), with the screen at full brightness, and the speed cranked down to about 30%. Goes for a "very long time" with the screen off and the cpu cranked down as slow as possible. Great little laptop.

You can do a lot of tricks with linux to conserve battery life, mount with noatime, turn off swap, don't log to disk, play with hard drive spindown, and use the laptop mode kernel patch.

At our medical clinic, we have an Electronic Medical Records system, which the clinical staff access mainly through handheld computers. Every time there's a new story about tablets, we look into them, and every time we've reached the same conclusion: not yet.

For our usage, we really like wireless, pen-enabled notebook PCs. While our EMR system allows a tremendous amount of data to be entered easily with a point-and-click interface, nurses and docs still need to do some free-text entry. That pretty much ties us to a device with a keyboard. (I have heard that the handwriting recognition in XP is really good, but we're skeptical about it being good enough. I guess I should actually test it, huh?)

If the tablets come down well below touchscreen notebooks in price, maybe we'll try one and see if we can live without the keyboard.

For those that are interested, we've been using the Fujitsu Lifebook P-series (P1120) which is a great little machine. It's about 2.2 lb, and its Transmeta processor squeezes 4-5 hours out of the standard battery, while running Win2k or XP and a Windows terminal session over the built-in 802.11b. We went 18 months of daily use before we had a single significant hardware failure. (But then two of our first four went out nearly simultaneously... $225 to repair each. Considering they each see about 60 hours of use every week, I think that's not too shabby.)

We first bought them with the extended-life batteries and some spares with chargers, and those spares never left the shelf. The next ones we got with the standard battery and no spares, and we've never had a problem with battery life during our staff's 12-hour shifts. Our staff is pretty good about plugging them in when they can, though.

The big complaint with the P-series is that the screen is really dinky, which is hard on staff with older eyes.

So we tried an iBook. While it's possible to get a touchscreen retrofit for an iBook, we decided to try it without the touchscreen. It works okay, but the lack of touchscreen is a problem for staff. Some staff are willing to trade the touchscreen for the Mac's bigger and sharper monitor, though. On the down side, it's had two main logic boards go out and it's pretty heavy by comparison. There are a few staff who love it, but most prefer the Fujitsus.

About a week ago, we purchased a Fujitsu B-series Lifebook (B3020D) and (so far) it looks spectacular for our usage. It has a 10.4" touchscreen, Atheros A+B+G wireless built-in, it's only 3 pounds, and it claims a battery life of several hours with its Pentium-M processor. (I'm guessing three hours under our conditions, but I haven't really tested it for that.) Staff loves it so far, and I suspect we'll be getting more of 'em.

http://webshop.fujitsupc.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildse riesbean.do?series=P5

Sony's stuff is never particularly cheap, but what direct competitors do they have for this thing? What's the low-price whitebox alternative?

Something like this?

Or this?

Or this,
this,
this,
this,
this
or
this?

(Add (bluetooth) keyboard where appropriate.. Or something like this.)

take a look at the fujitsu p100 here it's a full fledged pc, the actually the size of a paperback...

I've never understood the interest in purchasing a stand alone DVD or video player. Instead of purchasing an all in one pda, divx, and mp3 player, wouldn't something like a Fujistu P-series make more sense?

Fujitsu has a series called the Lifebook ($1.5K)and a bunch of others all the way down to the ST1000 ($0.32k)

I've got a Fujitsu P5010 and I love it. Tiny screen, but less than 4 lbs. (even with the modular optical drive installed) and with a real-world battery life of about 5 hours if you don't crank the screen backlight and leave the wireless off. It's won all kinds of awards. A real winner, I think. I installed Mandrake 9.1 on mine fresh out of the box, no problems, except XFree86 doesn't like the widescreen aspect ratio of the LCD so you have to settle for 1024x768 with black stripes on the sides.

I recently purchased a Fujitsu P Series Lifebook that uses a TM processor (see their site for details). It's pretty slick. Don't have a CD/DVD drive, but I'm using my unit for remote admin work so I love being able to go wireless, grab a wired connection, or even use GPRS via a PC Card. The touch screen is great as well.

The only downside is the screen is very small so if you're at all far sighted, it's hard to read. Not a problem for her so she's happy.

although the parent makes a joke, a laptop is your best bet.

i personally have a powerbook, but if you're looking for the absolute best battery life for features/performance laptop on the market, i recommend a fujitsu P series. It has a transmeta processor which is especially low power, and not only that but a removable dvd-rom bay which be replaced with another battery. so you do the math. ultra low power, two batteries. this sucker can go for probably 12 hours with low hard drive usage and low lcd light. put it to sleep when it's not used and i wouldn't be surprised if it would go for 24 hours pretty easily.

then I'm for it. Seriously, why shouldn't textbooks be replaced with PDFs, HTML, or something similar? Publishers could charge a small semester/annual fee (make it a course fee for colleges), students would always have the current edition, it'd be a LOT cheaper... other advantages are just gravy.

I say this having just spent over $600 on books for college classes this semester. When the fsck did these things get so expensive? You could post the books on the class website for registered students to download and/or read online. The cost saved would balance out the expense of a good thin-and-light laptop (like this one) over 2-3 years and you'd have the laptop for word processing, Internet browsing and what not too.

Fujitsu LifeBook also.

Check here and look at the ultraportable section. The specs on the P5000 seem to match your requirements.

Also, on the seriously portable side, they have the P1000 (2.2 lbs, no cd) and the P2000 (3.4 lbs, DVD ).

Check here and look at the ultraportable section. The specs on the P5000 seem to match your requirements.

Also, on the seriously portable side, they have the P1000 (2.2 lbs, no cd) and the P2000 (3.4 lbs, DVD ).

Check here and look at the ultraportable section. The specs on the P5000 seem to match your requirements.

Also, on the seriously portable side, they have the P1000 (2.2 lbs, no cd) and the P2000 (3.4 lbs, DVD ).

Check here and look at the ultraportable section. The specs on the P5000 seem to match your requirements.

Also, on the seriously portable side, they have the P1000 (2.2 lbs, no cd) and the P2000 (3.4 lbs, DVD ).

Check here and look at the ultraportable section. The specs on the P5000 seem to match your requirements.

Also, on the seriously portable side, they have the P1000 (2.2 lbs, no cd) and the P2000 (3.4 lbs, DVD ).

Hmm... you obviously haven't looked very hard.

Look at the Fujitsu P1000 (webshop.fugitsupc.com). It is a mini laptop (8.9 inch screen) with key-board and touch-screen. It also incudes an 56k modem. Hope this helps on your quest.

Their smallest is the P1000, which weighs a mere 2.5 pounds, including a heavy duty battery that will last you 5 hours of real use.
Their medium model is the P2000, which also has an optical drive, is a tad larger, and weighs a mere 3.4 pounds with a battery that lasts you 2,5 hours of normal use (not counting optical drive use), or add 0.3 pounds for the diferrence in weight for the similar 5-hour battery.
Lastly, they have a faster model with an intel cpu, the P5000. This model has a somewhat lower battery life, more speed, and weighs 3.85 pounds with a high-capacity battery (default on that model).

Prices are low as well. The P1000 starts at $1200, the P2000 starts at $1400, and the intel-based P5000 starts at $1500.

To look at some user experiences, go to this forum.

I personally own a P1000 and am very comfortable with carrying it around with me all the time, with the low weight.

Their smallest is the P1000, which weighs a mere 2.5 pounds, including a heavy duty battery that will last you 5 hours of real use.
Their medium model is the P2000, which also has an optical drive, is a tad larger, and weighs a mere 3.4 pounds with a battery that lasts you 2,5 hours of normal use (not counting optical drive use), or add 0.3 pounds for the diferrence in weight for the similar 5-hour battery.
Lastly, they have a faster model with an intel cpu, the P5000. This model has a somewhat lower battery life, more speed, and weighs 3.85 pounds with a high-capacity battery (default on that model).

Prices are low as well. The P1000 starts at $1200, the P2000 starts at $1400, and the intel-based P5000 starts at $1500.

To look at some user experiences, go to this forum.

I personally own a P1000 and am very comfortable with carrying it around with me all the time, with the low weight.

Their smallest is the P1000, which weighs a mere 2.5 pounds, including a heavy duty battery that will last you 5 hours of real use.
Their medium model is the P2000, which also has an optical drive, is a tad larger, and weighs a mere 3.4 pounds with a battery that lasts you 2,5 hours of normal use (not counting optical drive use), or add 0.3 pounds for the diferrence in weight for the similar 5-hour battery.
Lastly, they have a faster model with an intel cpu, the P5000. This model has a somewhat lower battery life, more speed, and weighs 3.85 pounds with a high-capacity battery (default on that model).

Prices are low as well. The P1000 starts at $1200, the P2000 starts at $1400, and the intel-based P5000 starts at $1500.

To look at some user experiences, go to this forum.

I personally own a P1000 and am very comfortable with carrying it around with me all the time, with the low weight.

I stopped playing that game a long time ago, and recently purchased my first laptop-- the very tiny Fujitsu Lifebook P1120, certainly at the opposite end of the scale as the 17" Toshiba. Cool machine, for what I got it for-- i.e., surfing/reading web articles on my sofa, and storing/reading documents for the occasional business trip. I recently flew from Orlando to L.A. (~5 hours), using the P1120 for most of the flight. Battery was still at ~50% by the end. The touchscreen makes this machine very usable.

Oops... this being slashdot, I should mention the obligatory: No, it's not running Linux, at least not yet. This is my first experience owning and using a WinXP machine. It's not bad, once you get it to cease the endless reminders to upgrade this or register that-- and, of course, once you load Mozilla. I'd probably convert it to Linux if a good touchscreen driver and calibration utility became available.

My Fujitsu P1120 has more or less similar specs, weighs the same, and comes with a beautiful touch screen display.

My personal view on notebooks: weight matters. I've seen time and time again that people buy notebooks, planning to take them places, but end up leaving them at home/dorm because they're just too heavy and bulky.

When my wife needed a notebook for school, we eventually chose the Fujitsu Lifebook P2120 - 2.8 lbs without the optical drive, 3.4 lbs with it, and very small dimensions. We've found that its size has been very convenient, and encourages my wife to take it with her even if she might not even need it.

I have a Fujitsu P2000 series.....

10 inches screen, 1280x768 res. Low latency and high contrast ratio too. Looks great.

It could be too small....But then just crank up the DPI rating, and it will work perfectly.

Product site

The only laptop I was considering over this one was the powerbook. The fujitsu won based on the price.....

Some of the Sharp laptops (though not the ultra-small MM10) and the Sony PictureBook seem to be alternatives and have also been reported to run Linux.

Some of the Sharp laptops (though not the ultra-small MM10) and the Sony PictureBook seem to be alternatives and have also been reported to run Linux.

But I still only paid $999 back then for the thing. I can plug in up to 128 USB devices if I want to, and a 4 way hub is only $20 or something. I've worked with a scanner, webcam, and mouse all plugged in at the same time.

The lack of ethernet is irritating, but the newer version of the SR had built in ethernet, wifi and a 1024x768 screen. (discontinued, sadly :(

And keep in mind it's smaller then an iBook, which is important to me.

For a 'modern day' comparison, check out the fujitsu lifebook. Probably my next laptop, built in wifi and, impressively, a CD-ROM drive. And 12 hours of battery life. They have an even smaller one with a touch screen.

But I still only paid $999 back then for the thing. I can plug in up to 128 USB devices if I want to, and a 4 way hub is only $20 or something. I've worked with a scanner, webcam, and mouse all plugged in at the same time.

The lack of ethernet is irritating, but the newer version of the SR had built in ethernet, wifi and a 1024x768 screen. (discontinued, sadly :(

And keep in mind it's smaller then an iBook, which is important to me.

For a 'modern day' comparison, check out the fujitsu lifebook. Probably my next laptop, built in wifi and, impressively, a CD-ROM drive. And 12 hours of battery life. They have an even smaller one with a touch screen.

Or clickable:

click here

Sure you can. and they even do the hard work of converting it to English for you. And they have a warranty.

However, I'd like to put in a plug for Fujitsu's US models, especially the S and P2000 series. Very small (4 and 3.4 pounds, respectively), with the S series having the edge in raw horsepower. Both have builtin DVD/CD-RW drives, and the P2K gets over 12 hours on battery with it's Transmeta CPU.

I have an older S series, and it's brilliant. With RH Linux 7.1 on it, the performance is more than adequate. It's been as durable as I've needed it to be (fell off the desk once, crashed to the floor and wasn't damaged). The only real problem I've had is that the pain on the left side of the palmrest is wearing off, and it picked up some scratches on the top lid when I had it loose in my backpack. I still get comments on how sexy it is on a regular basis.

OTOH, if she's an OS X fan, that's probably the way to go. Despite some comments to the contrary, the screen on the 15" iBook is wonderful. It's viewable from all angles, which is very unusual for an LCD.

It's really small, runs Linux with the has a 1024x600 screen and I get 5+ hours on the extended battery.

Other pluses is that you can watch movies, listen to music and other stuff (it has a 30G disk). It uses a Crusoe processor so you're helping pay Linus's paycheck (if he's still working there, I haven't really cared much).

It's bigger than my Zaurus but smaller than just about anything else on the market. It's really a sleeper of a product.

I get 7 hours out of my widescreen Fujitsu P2120 sporting a Crusoe 933MHz, and it's 3.4lbs and half the price. If you're interested in more, here's the specs.

I'm not affiliated with Fujitsu, I just can't praise this laptop enough ;)

You should have 20/20 vision though, at 1280x768 in 10.4" widescreen, the pixels are small. But with sub-pixel rendering, the fonts are a visual orgasm for typography nerds like myself ;)

I bought a p-2000 from fujitsu last year and one odd thing is they charge sales taxes for all 50 states(I doubt they are giving that money back to the states). So expect to pay 100+ more for anything you buy from fujitsu direct.

The centrino based X31 from IBM is new release too. Thinkpads cost more but they are built like tanks and come with a 3 year warranty compared to the usual one year from many other manufactures. The X31 would be a much more attractive package with 802.11G and legacy free. Who the hell needs a parallel port on a subnotebook?

My fujitsu lifebook p-2000 gets 5 hours of real battery life with the extended battery and up to 12 with two batteries. Let me know when your iBook can do that!

If you benchmark a 933 MHz Crusoe chip laptop (such as a Fujitsu Lifebook P2120) versus a 933 MHz C3 chip, which would win?

Both are low-power. The Crusoe is even-lower-power than the C3. I know raw CPU power isn't the reason why a person buys a laptop, but I'm still curious.

You will pay more for the Lifebook, but it also has better 3D hardware (Mobility Radeon vs. Savage). That might make a big difference if you want to play Counter-strike or something, if the CPUs are at all similar in computing power.

I used a K6-III/450 for years, and I suspect that either the C3 or the Crusoe will be just fine for web surfing and such.

steveha

I have a Fujitsu P-2110, purchased new directly from Fujitsu 6 months ago, and actually it does have a Firewire port. The tech specs for the newer model, the P-2120, confirm this.

My wife and I are very happy with our P, the lightness combined with the Wi-fi add so much freedom to our computing, and it's got an amazing LCD, a great optical drive. Our model isn't especially fast, but the P-2120 is supposedly quite a bit faster, with a higher clock speed Crusoe and a Radeon versus our Rage video chipset.

If you do want to look into the P series, there is a linux forum at leog.net that should be helpful. They also have a for sale forum where you might be able to find a P-2120 cheap. I've also seen them on Ebay.

However, I do think that if you buy a used Windows system, you're still paying the "Windows Tax", albeit a bit further removed. Honestly, I think if you buy a Mac you're also paying a "software tax", but at least it's not to Microsoft.

I have a Fujitsu P-2110, purchased new directly from Fujitsu 6 months ago, and actually it does have a Firewire port. The tech specs for the newer model, the P-2120, confirm this.

My wife and I are very happy with our P, the lightness combined with the Wi-fi add so much freedom to our computing, and it's got an amazing LCD, a great optical drive. Our model isn't especially fast, but the P-2120 is supposedly quite a bit faster, with a higher clock speed Crusoe and a Radeon versus our Rage video chipset.

If you do want to look into the P series, there is a linux forum at leog.net that should be helpful. They also have a for sale forum where you might be able to find a P-2120 cheap. I've also seen them on Ebay.

However, I do think that if you buy a used Windows system, you're still paying the "Windows Tax", albeit a bit further removed. Honestly, I think if you buy a Mac you're also paying a "software tax", but at least it's not to Microsoft.

While there are Wintel laptops lighter than the iBook, none has longer battery life and full features.

I think I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I've got a Fujitsu Lifebook P-2120, with the double size main battery, and the second bay battery. Their website has a bunch of claims about battery life, but I'm not going to quote any of them. Under my average use at work, I power up my laptop in the morning, use it throughout the day(checking email, writing code, doing sysadmin type stuff), and then I take it home, and it still has a few hours worth of juice before I put it on the charger at night.

That's probably over 10 hours of on time. I've never run the batteries down hitting it as hard as I can, but I've watched the ACPI numbers witht he hard drive going and cpu maxed, and it should easily clear 6-7 hours running like that. But I don't tend to use it like that, so it really doesn't matter.

Anywho, this laptop should meet all the needs of the guy who asked the question(usb, firewire, 802.11b, ethernet)... If he doesn't want to send any money to microsoft, that'll have to be his problem though. And if it's not small enough, fujitsu has the P1000 series that sounds alot smaller, but can't pack as much battery, or memory.

I am running Debian on this thing, and all the integrated hardware works, except for the modem. I haven't even tried getting the modem to work, since I've got no plans on ever using it. All I know is that this laptop is by far the most useful laptop I've ever had. It has a 933 Crusoe chip, and I haven't benchmarked it, but this definately feels snappier than my old P3 700 laptop, and doesn't get NEARLY as hot to the touch. It was well worth every penny to me.

Wonko

Here's a direct link.

Also, here is a very good user discussion forum concerning the P2000 laptop, which actually has a seperate forum for the linux users, so you can check up on what you can expect:
http://www.leog.net/fujp_forum/

On a sidenote, I can say that Fijutsu will *not* ship any laptop without the windows license. In fact, when you send in the system for repair and they need to replace the hard drive (which contains the repair image), you have to pay for a new license.

I've been looking at a Fujitsu Lifebook

Alas they come with Windows. :(