It’s small, light, perfectly formed and could be a perfect laptop apart from its price tag, writes Merlin John
If its pound;1,316 (ex VAT) price tag is within your budget, and you want a fully functioning and lightweight PC (1.5kg), then the P Series Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7010 could well be your ideal laptop.
However, if you’re after value for money then you’d have to think twice... you could buy two RM UltraLight laptops at this price. Having said that, one female tester described the Lifebook as “small and beautifully formed” - something echoed by other women in shameless attempts to take it for a test drive.
Like them, the Lifebook is extremely communicative. It has high-speed wi-fi (switchable) wireless networking as well as a modem and network (Ethernet) connector. It takes a wide range of memory cards for transferring information from all sorts of other digital devices. Although small, the wide 10.6-inch screen compensates with remarkable clarity (1280 x 768 pixels). It packs all this, plus FireWire, two USB connections and a DVDCD-RW drive into a sleek, metal-and-plastic designer case not much bigger than a larger-format paperback novel.
The review model came with a Pentium M chip (1.1 GHz), 512Mb of memory and 80Gb hard disc, more than enough to cope with any reasonable demand, which it certainly did, although there were some initial hiccups getting used to the positive touchpad and click-buttons. The battery life was excellent - up to five hours, which can be doubled with an extra battery.
For anyone with the budget, who is not prepared to compromise on weight for portability, and who appreciates quality and design, the Lifebook P7010 is a tempting proposition indeed.
RM nBook Pro 6000
Laptop computer with 15.4” WXGA TFT screen, Intel Pentium-M processor 1.5Ghz (upgradeable to 1.7Ghz), 512Mb memory (upgradeable to 1Gb), 40Gb hard drive (upgradeable to 80Gb), internal CD-RWDVD drive (upgradeable to a DVD-RW), integrated 56k modem and wireless LAN, infrared port, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card with 64MB, three USB ports, firewire port, parallel port, flash memeory slot, PCMCIA 2.1 card slot, SMART 8 Cell Lithium Ion battery, Windows XP Professional.
Price: From pound;999 (or pound;974.22 if purchased online).
RM plc
Tel : 08709 200 200
www.rm.com
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