Fujitsu squeezes more screen into ultraportable

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By Barry Collins in Las Vegas

Posted on 8 Jan 2008 at 22:03

Fujitsu is squeezing bigger screens into its business ultraportable range, as it attempts to add a splash of style to its executive line-up.

Click here for our full coverage from CES 2008

The new Lifebook P8010 prises a 12.1in screen into the same laptop chassis as its older P7230 model, which only boasted a 10.6in display. This is achieved by reducing the bezel size, in what Fujitsu calls its "slim edge design".

The laptop will sport a yet-to-be-announced Intel platform, with a low-voltage 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, with 800Mhz Front Side Bus. The energy saving processor helps give the six-cell laptop a claimed battery life of up to 6.5 hours, according to Troy Okumura, a senior product marketing manager at Fujitsu, who was speaking to PC Pro at CES 2008.

The P8010 has a stylish, glossy casing that was horribly susceptible to fingerprints after passing through hundreds of hands on Fujitsu's CES stand. It also boasts a dual layer, mutli-format DVD-RW, and business-friendly features such as integrated fingerprint reader and a security lock.

The laptop will go on sale from February, costing from $1,699. It will arrive in the UK under the Fujitsu Siemens brand, although the European model name has yet to be confirmed.

Tablet UMPC

The star attraction on Fujtisu's CES stand, however, was the company's Tablet UMPC. The screen pivots round and folds down upon the keyboard for viewing movies, photos or web browsing, whilst the fiddly but usable keyboard comes in handy for email or writing documents.

Sadly that glazed fuzziness that afflicts tablet touchscreens was all the more apparent on the 5.6in screen, but it was one of the most practical UMPCs we've seen to date, and will be even more so when wireless LAN features are added this March. Sadly, there's no word of a UK launch yet.

Fabric laptop

Finally, Fujitsu was displaying an early prototype of a "fabric PC", with the screen and keyboard made completely from an e-paper display. While such ideas sound pie in the sky, a number of stands at CES 2008 are showing working flexible, plastic displays, although even Fujitsu's Troy Okumura remains sceptical. "Whether it will ever come to fruition, I'm not sure," he confessed.

Click here for our full coverage from CES 2008