Digital Journal — Lighter and longer. That may well be the mantra of many notebook designers. Certainly, weight loss and long battery life were on the minds of the designers of Fujitsu’s LifeBook B6110D.
Weighing just 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg) and taking up as much space as a letter-sized sheet of paper, this machine is just the kind of notebook you won’t mind carrying in long lineups at the airport or during treks between your hotel room and the convention centre. Fujitsu rates the lithium-ion battery for an optimistic six hours of use, but most users will see the battery last between three and five hours.
These days, manufacturers are really pushing light-weight notebooks with long-lasting batteries which deliver a long list of benefits to the user. However, many notebook PCs sacrifice functionality in the name of weight loss. The Fujitsu LifeBook B6110D is no exception, with the most obvious drawback being the lack of an internal DVD/CD-ROM. Get ready to shell out the extra bucks and use an optional external drive if you want access to your removable discs.
If the absence of a built-in drive isn’t critical, then this LifeBook does offer much of the computing power a typical road warrior is likely to need. The ultra low-power 1.2GHz Pentium M processor may have been chosen for its energy efficiency, but it also supplies enough computing muscle for typical productivity software suites. The fast 40GB hard disk provides plenty of storage space, and PC Card and Compact Flash slots are built-in as well. The notebook features a built-in microphone and a set of internal speakers that sounded better than those on the pricier LifeBook S-series. Connectivity is built-in as well, with 802.11 WiFi, an Ethernet port, a dial-up modem and two USB 2.0 ports.
The 12.1-inch active-matrix XGA display provides an adequately clear picture, although it falls far behind the sharp and bright Crystal View screens on other Fujitsu LifeBooks. One addition to the B6110D screen, however, is its touch-sensitive screen that allows users to click and drag items using a plastic stylus that pops out from the bottom right edge of the unit. The touch-screen feature can be handy (making your notebook a large PDA), but doesn’t make the B6110D a tablet PC; there’s no handwriting recognition and your stylus-written notes won’t look much better than those attempted with a mouse.
The tantalizing yet limited touch-screen functionality is a tad disappointing, but what many users will really gripe about is the paltry 256MB of memory that comes standard with this model. Technically speaking, this amount of memory is sufficient for running Windows XP Professional which comes bundled with the computer. However, running a notebook with only 256MB of RAM is almost the equivalent of believing that it’s possible to survive on a diet of bread and water. Applications run visibly slower than the 512MB that’s standard on many other notebooks. Fortunately, the limited memory is a price issue (keeping the tag price down by providing less memory) rather than a design concern, so this inadequacy can be addressed by simply plunking down a little more money for an extra 256MB of RAM.
With a price tag of $1,699 (U.S.), the B6100D is a decent investment for average business users whose primary concern is weight. If Fujitsu made a few adjustments, such as getting rid of the touch-screen and putting in an SD slot or additional memory, this product could actually aspire to greatness rather than just lightness.
