Fujitsu's LifeBook, Heavy With Promise

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There's a breed of company that makes notebook computers but typically doesn't compete in the personal computer arena. Its agenda is wooing the consumer away from traditional desktops. These guys are starting to get the job done.



The products are called "desktop replacements." For a notebook computer, they're pretty big, but they still take up less space than traditional desktops because they can be folded up and put away. What's more, they're far more portable than desktopsthough not nearly as portable as your typical "thin and light" notebook [see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "Desktop Replacementsin Hefty Size"].



The good news is that these larger notebooks are beginning to pack some of the high-end entertainment features you'd expect from a midrange desktop system, making them suitable for demanding applications like gaming and simple video editing. I've spent the last few days with a high-end notebook offering from Fujitsu, a Japanese outfit that generally doesn't play in the traditional desktop PC market, but has a healthy business selling notebooks. Fujitsu's main market is businesses, but it has a small retail presence as well.



TOUGH TO LUG.

The notebook is the 17-in. LifeBook N6410, and I like it. It comes equipped with some powerful internal components, an impressive display, a good-sized keyboard, and many other features that make it a worthy contender in an increasingly crowded market. It also merits inclusion in our series of reviews of high-end laptops [see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "Sony's Pretty, Pricey Picture"].



First, it's big and heavy, weighing in at 10 lbs. At that heft, you can lug it from one room to another, but you'll hate schlepping it through the airport as carry-on cargo. There's a lot packed inside the machine to weigh it down. First is the 17-in. screen, which is nice and bright and shows a great amount of detail for looking at pictures or watching movies on the DVD player. The screen's resolution is 1,440 pixels wide by 900 pixels high, which is the same as machines with similar sized screens from Dell (DELL) and Gateway (GTW).



The machine is powered by an Intel (INTC) Core Duo T2400 processor, which is one of those dual-core chips you may have heard about, meaning it has two central brains instead of one. At 1.83 Ghz, it's not the very fastest in the Intel stable, but it's among the speediest Intel offers for notebooks.



EASY VIEWING.

The screen also has a smooth sheen that gives it a more a cinematic look. This type of screen is suddenly very fashionable in notebooks, and also shows up in models from Apple (AAPL), Sony (SNE), and Toshiba (TOSBF), among others. [A Fujitsu rep claims his company was the first to try it.]



What sets this kind of display apart from standard LCD displays is that during manufacturing, a layer of coating that would otherwise be applied is left off, giving it the smooth texture. The effect is pleasant and well suited to gaming and watching movies. I generally like it less for more pedestrian computing tasks.



Fujitsu's LifeBook also has a lot of storage capacity: 320 gigabytes, to be exact. This requires two not-so-light 160-gig hard drives. Adding to the machine's heft is the six-cell battery. The beautiful screen drinks up a lot of power. The company says you can expect about an hour and a half. That's the amount I got, except when playing a DVD movie with the screen turned up to full brightness. Then I got a little less. Not enough for getting through most full-length films, but then again, you'll generally want to use this machine within reach of an AC power outlet.



iPOD-LIKE BUTTON.

You might even be watching TV. This is another one of those notebooks that has a TV tuner, and runs Microsoft's (MSFT) Media Center Edition of Windows. It comes with a remote control and an integrated TV tuner. That means you can run a cord from your cable or satellite TV box, watch programs directly on the laptop screen, and record them to the hard drive for watching later.



Another interesting feature is a curious multimedia controllera big round metallic button placed at the top of the keyboard, something like the dial pad on an iPod. Pressing one side of the button launches your chosen e-mail application, the other a Web browser. The top and bottom are programmable to launch applications you use regularly. To its left is a button labeled "mode." When pressed, it lights up that bigger button, revealing control symbols for watching DVDs or playing music.



This computer has plenty of ports five USB for any number of attachments such as printers, mice, and music players. It has one IEEE 1394 for video cameras. There's also a slot for flash cards [it supports Sony's Memory Stick, SD Memory cards, and xD Pictures cards]. The machine is also wireless-ready, supporting both the B and G variants of Wi-Fi wireless networking technology, but also Wi-Fi's sibling technology, known best by the arcane name IEEE 802.11a, which you don't see very often.



GOOD AT GAMES.

Gamers will be pleased to learn the LifeBook N6410 is also pretty good at gaming. I installed Activision's (ATVI) Doom 3, and I had an excellent gaming experience so long as I didn't crank up all the graphics settings to maximum. When I did that, the machine slowed down. That illustrates at least one drawback of using a notebook in place of a full-fledged desktop machinedesktops tend to come with more powerful graphics cards. Then again, you're not likely to max out all your graphics settings at the same time either.



The machine I tried was priced at $2,399, which is about the starting price for Dell's gaming notebook, the XPS M1710. We'll be taking a look at that machine soon. Dell may be the biggest PC vendor in the world, but lesser-known competitors like Fujitsu are clearly showing their competitive muscle.