Design and features
The mid-point between a netbook and a full-sized laptop, the 11.6-inch P3110 might appeal to those who wish to spend a little more money to get a bit more grunt, but still want to keep things portable.
Coming in red, black or silver, the P3110 weighs 1.6kg and features an Intel Pentium SU4100 — a dual-core, 1.3GHz chip. Unlike the Atom or AMD's Neo, the Pentium will happily handle high-definition Flash content from YouTube, making it a more sensible buy for those who want a richer web experience.
It's equipped with 2GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive, although unlike other consumer laptop vendors Fujitsu has bundled its laptop with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, rather than the 64-bit edition. It's likely you won't notice that much of a difference in day-to-day performance (unless you upgrade to 4GB RAM); however, this 32/64-bit kerfuffle has gone on long enough, and we just wish the 32-bit version would die already.
Vexingly, Fujitsu has chosen to vent hot air to the left rather than the rear, meaning those left handers who use an external mouse will get a light roasting. Also on the left is a single USB port and VGA out, while the right is home to the 10/100Mb Ethernet jack, two more USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks and an MS/SD card reader. Wireless communications are covered by Bluetooth and 802.11n radios. The front is bare, save for a hardware switch to turn the wireless on or off.
While the P3110 is missing an optical drive, it does have software bundled with it to share the optical drive of another PC — just note that you'll need to install Fujitsu's sharing software on that PC first to use its easy "one click" sharing program.
The screen is glossy, but offers an attractive 1366x768 resolution, as well as the requisite webcam up the top. Extra screen size usually means extra room for the keyboard as well, and the P3110's keyboard is much more comfortable to type on than the standard netbook keyboard. It doesn't have the most pleasant action we've used, but the extra size almost makes up for it. Much like Lenovo has been doing for years, Fujitsu has incorporated spill protection into the keyboard — a tray collects liquid under the keys, so a simple tilt and wipe should solve most of your woes.
Unfortunately, the battery and keyboard size has forced a compromise in the touch pad size, which although nice to use, is quite small, and the buttons are somewhat mushy. The touch pad also features basic multi-touch functions like pinching to zoom images, and rotating by starting to scroll down on the left side of the pad, then entering a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. It also supports two-finger flicking left and right for moving between images or slides, but doesn't support the two-finger swipe for scroll pioneered by Apple — you're still stuck with the old scroll zones and circular scrolling.
Performance
As expected for a basic laptop, 3D performance was nigh on horrible — resulting in 606 in 3DMark06. This is not a gaming machine. PCMark05 returned a much more respectable 2715 though, making the laptop fine for web browsing and office tasks, and perhaps light level content creation as well, something the lower end netbooks are simply not capable of.
Turning up screen brightness and volume to maximum, the power profile to performance, turning off all power-saving features and playing back an XviD file punishes the battery, but the Fujitsu stood up well, lasting for three hours, 43 minutes and 49 seconds.
Fujitsu has perfectly positioned the LifeBook P3110, from the AU$1099 price, to its size and specs. If you have modest needs but have been hesitant about picking up a netbook, you'll be pleasantly surprised by what this laptop can offer.
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