Fujitsu U810 Mini-Notebook

There's no traditional key backlighting. Instead, press a button just below the display to turn on two white LED keyboard lamps, which is definitely cool but helps just a little in dim to dark light. The lamps stay on until you press the button again, so no need to beat out the backlight as with a PDA or smartphone.

The machine weighs just 1.56 lbs. and measures 6.73” x 6” x 1.04 to 1.26" at the thickest point. While not as small as the OQO, it's one of the smallest notebooks on the planet with a traditional clamshell design. It fits easily into a purse, could fit into a jacket with large pockets and would simply get lost in a laptop bag. The charger is quite small and light too, about the same as the OQO model 02's charger. It's a convertible tablet whose display swivels to lay flat in tablet mode and the screen orientation automatically switches. There's a button below the display to rotate the screen in 90 degree increments so you can use it in landscape or portrait orientations. Switching is decently fast, even with IE and Photoshop CS2 running.

Touch Screen for Finger and Stylus

The Fujitsu has a passive touch screen which means you can use your finger or a regular stylus as opposed to the EMR pens used with active digitizer tablets. Passive screens don't look quite as good as standard notebook displays or active digitizers, especially glossy ones-- they're a bit grainy and less bright. That said, the U810's display is sharp at 200 pixels/inch resolution and should pose no problems for those under 40. For those 40 and up with poor vision or presbyopia, the screen is still workable but you may suffer eye fatigue after an hour's use. There's an 800 x 600 resolution option which is easier on they eyes, though the aspect ratio makes for some horizontal stretching. The machine's relatively high 1024 x 600 resolution on a 5.6 inch screen mean that some targets are too small to accurately press with a finger. The "x" close box and tiny hyperlinks are best attacked with a fingernail or the included stylus for this reason. The touch screen requires a hard touch with stylus and finger, and we had to adjust to "jabbing" at it with the stylus. Screen brightness is acceptable and we had no trouble reading the display at 50% brightness (the default power management setting), though it's easier on the eyes with brightness set to somewhere between 75% and max (battery life will suffer). It's definitely not as bright as today's non-touchscreen standard notebooks and the screen has some glare (though it's not a gloss display) which reduces outdoor visibility.

More on Design

On the outside, the Fujitsu U810 looks like the average boring black mostly polycarbonate notebook, just smaller... much smaller. It looks neither cheap nor classy. A device this small calls for creative design, and so we have an eraser stick pointer on the machine's right side above the keyboard and just below the display. Two buttons that act as mouse left and right click buttons sit symmetrically opposed to the mouse pointer. These do get the job done and the location insures that they're also available in tablet mode. We prefer the OQO model 02's more responsive, faster tracking pointer, but this is somewhat a matter of personal preference.

Size comparisons:

The PDA-sized plastic stylus sits in a silo above the display on the right side, and the sole USB port is on the machine's right side along with the CF type I/II card slot. The power slider is here as well while the combined dock connector/dongle adapter connection is on the subnotebook's front edge. Fujitsu includes the short dongle which has and Ethernet and VGA port. The power jack, SD card slot, volume jog wheel, wireless on/off slider, 3.5mm stereo headphone and mic jacks are on the left side. The bottom of the U810 has Fujitsu's felt covering (also found on the Fujitsu P1510), a large vent, a trap door with phillips head screws (hard drive and WiFi module underneath) and the battery release latch. The battery is the larger 4 cell variety rather than the 2 cell used in the Japan version, the U1010. This means the battery sticks out the back unlike the U1010's which is flush.

Battery Life, Thumb's Up

Obviously, the larger battery increases bulk and makes for an odd appendage hanging off the rear. The good part is that the battery makes an excellent grab handle when in tablet mode. And I'll take the hump any day when it means long runtimes. Unlike most UMPCs and micro-PCs that last 2 hours on a charge, the Fujitsu U810 managed 5 hours with WiFi and Bluetooth on (WiFi was actually in use but Bluetooth wasn't) and display brightness set to the middle under Vista. That's very impressive and is certainly in the ballpark we'd hoped for when UMPCs first came out. We charged the notebook at noon of day 1, and used it on and off during the day and allowing it to sleep when not in use. We did not shut it down overnight but instead let power management take care of things. When we put it to sleep it had 70% charge. When we woke it up the following morning it had 60% charge. We continued to use it throughout the day lightly and didn't need to charge it until 8pm. Under Windows XP, the machine lost only 2% charge while sleeping overnight. Obviously if you're going to watch a 2 hour movie or install beefy applications over the Net of from a CD, the battery won't hold out for 2 days. But if you're going to use it to check email throughout the day, view or edit a few MS Office documents and surf the web for an hour a 2 per day, it should last more than a day.

Performance, we Test Vista Business and XP Tablet Edition 2005

So exactly how good or bad is performance? We call it just acceptable under Vista and good under XP. It takes 1 minute 18 seconds to boot up to the Vista log on screen. Wake from sleep takes only a few seconds, though if enabled, the OmniPass fingerprint scanner software will add 3 seconds more. Resuming from hibernation to the Vista log on screen takes 36 seconds, and it takes 48 seconds for the OmniPass fingerprint log on window to appear.

Windows Vista Experience Score:
Processor: 2.1
Memory: 4.5
Graphics: 3.6
Gaming Graphics: 2.6
Hard Disk: 3.7

Aero is disabled in the Vista Business machine we tested and windows draw and drag at a decent speed, but stylus response is sometimes slow. The Windows start menu opens and closes with a delay and the control panels pane using Classic view takes 2-3 seconds to draw for the first time after boot. MS Office 2007 applications launch and run quickly enough, Adobe Photoshop CS2 is fine when working with images under 5 megs in size. Photoshop's lists 1024 x 768 as the min. required resolution though the app had no problems with the U810's 1024 x 600 panel. The only problem we had was with the camera RAW plugin interface which is too tall to show the entire window (the OK button is below screen, so you have to hit the enter key on the keyboard). Skype struggled with video calls and couldn't keep up, resulting in nearly unusable outgoing audio.

We received the Vista Business version which includes a restore CD for both Vista Business and Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005. Installing Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 using the included recovery DVD with our Sony external optical drive took less than 10 minutes-- nice! XP is much more responsive than Vista for most every task. Stylus response is markedly better, making the machine more enjoyable to use as a tablet. MS Office 2007 applications ran very quickly and Skype worked perfectly, even with video calls. Our take? Unless you're wed to Vista, seriously consider installing the included Windows XP, the machine simply rocks. Note that only the $1,099 Vista Business version comes with the XP CD, the $999 Vista Home Premium version does not.

The U810's underside.

Since the U810 is barely bigger than a CD, there's no internal optical drive. It works with USB external optical drives, and we had no problem booting from or burning DVDs or booting from our Sony 510UL DVD burner which has both USB and FireWire ports. The machine has a traditional BIOS and you'll need to go into it (hit the Fn plus F2 key at boot) to set the CD/DVD drive at #1 boot priority. The 40 gig hard drive is sufficient for a super-mobile computer, even though it pales in comparison to the latest iPods with their very large capacity disks. The 1.8" drive spins at 4200 rpm, and can't compete with the SSD (solid state) drives used in high end machines, but then that would make this a much more expensive computer (SSD drives cost ~ $600). There is no recovery partition, so the full capacity of the drive is available, which works out to be 34.4 gigs for the C: drive (with 22 gigs free) and 1 gig for the D: drive.

The machine has 1 gig of DD2 400MHz RAM that's not upgradable (there's no accessible SODIMM slot). It runs on the Intel 945U chipset and uses the Intel 945GM integrated graphics processor with 128 megs of shared memory and some 3D acceleration. This graphics processor is essentially the same one used on pre-Santa Rosa Intel integrated graphics notebooks. It does the job fine for business and productivity tasks and could handle light gaming with older titles, though most require 1024 x 768 resolution so you'd have to use an external monitor. Fujitsu doesn't state maximum external monitor resolution, but we tested the U810 with a 19" NEC monitor at 1600 x 1200 resolution and it worked well. You can set the machine to use the external display only or to mirror by pressing Fn plus the A key.

Wireless

Micro PCs and UMPCs generally have poor WiFi range compared to their full-sized brethren. Why? Less room for an antenna and more aggressive power management settings. We were pleasantly surprised at the U810's excellent WiFi range and throughput when tested over 802.11g networks. It did as well as our better full-sized notebooks and better than the Sony Vaio UX380N, OQO model 02, Samsung Q1 Ultra and a few of our full-sized machines. The Fujitsu has the Atheros Super AG WiFi 802.11a/b/g wireless module and you can use the Atheros client or Windows to manage connections.

In both Vista and XP, the Toshiba Bluetooth Stack for Windows pops up at first boot, offering to find Bluetooth keyboards and mice (you can disable this). Otherwise it's the usual Toshiba stuff with support for FTP, headsets, DUN, Bluetooth GPS (serial port) and more. We used it with the Motorola Q9 Global for high speed WAN access and had no trouble pairing, discovering the service and using it under Vista. Thus our wish for integrated 3G or EVDO was quickly forgotten. You can of course use a USB wireless modem from any carrier such as the Sierra Wireless AirCard 595U EVDO rev. A USB modem from Sprint or others.