The word ultralight takes on new meaning with the Fujitsu LifeBook P Series. This new laptop stuffs a remarkable amount into a chassis that's small enough to slip into most briefcases.

Plus, the system keeps on giving, with long battery life, plenty of expansion ports, and even a couple of application quick-launch buttons. We only wish Fujitsu hadn't saddled it with a one-year warranty.

The LifeBook P Series' design copies that of Fujitsu's sleek, ultralight, Japanese laptop, the Loox. The 270 x 178 x 40.4mm, 1.5Kg (with drive) system is about as small as it gets before falling into the subnotebook category. Yet Fujitsu somehow stuffed a small but bright 10.6-inch TFT screen, a 30GB hard drive, and a DVD/CD-RW drive inside this slim profile. Even better, you can swap out the drive for an extra battery.

As you might imagine from a notebook this size, the floppy drive is an external affair only, attaching to one of the system's two USB ports. Additional ports, slots, and jacks include modem, Ethernet, IEEE 1394, headphone, microphone, and one Type II PC Card slot. The system also features a proprietary VGA port that requires an included adapter to connect your external CRT monitor--another piece to risk losing on your travels.

You'll also find some pleasing design highlights on the P Series. The most unusual is an e-mail notification panel located to the left of the display. The panel lights up when you get a new message. You can program the three quick-launch buttons that live under the screen to launch your e-mail or other favorite apps with one touch. The keyboard is understandably tiny, making this system best suited for short typing stints. But the optional, six-celled battery that extends in front of the keyboard makes for a nice wrist rest. The only input device is a pointing stick.

Power-saving CPU extends battery life
The high-capacity battery also makes for incredibly long life: 365 minutes in our Labs' drain tests compared to a middling 166 minutes on the primary battery alone. The Fujitsu's battery life got a big boost from its 800MHz Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 processor; the chip automatically adjusts its voltage and megahertz according to the tasks you throw at it.

While this CPU does great things for battery life, it does little on our performance tests; the P Series was unable to complete the SysMark 2001 benchmarks. However, with 128MB of memory and an 8MB ATI Rage Mobility graphics chip, the system should easily handle the basic e-mailing, Web-surfing, and word-processing jobs you'll most likely use it for.

Fujitsu may provide some great hardware in the P Series, but the company leaves you hanging with a short, one-year warranty. Despite its brief warranty, the Fujitsu LifeBook P Series offers a lot of excellent features for the money. Spend the extra on one of Fujitsu's extended warranties, and you'll be good to go with this laptop.

Fujitsu LifeBook P-2110
Company: Fujitsu Australia
Price: AU$4299 with Windows XP Home
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 288 283

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