William Maher03 March 2008, 4:32 PM
With mobile broadband speeds improving and data costs slowly coming down, the time has come to consider 3G wireless when buying a notebook.
The question is how much are you prepared to pay? Especially when you consider that you can add a 3G card to most notebooks for a few hundred dollars. This Fujitsu has tri-band HSDPA 3.5G wireless broadband built-in, and while it isn’t cheap, you’re getting a quality system for the money.
The S6510 has a couple of tricks up its sleeve including a backlit LED screen with a very slim edge. The result is a 14.1in screen (with 16:1 ratio) in what would normally be a 13.3in frame — Fujitsu claims it’s handy for opening two business apps at once.
Battery life isn’t fantastic, lasting for two hours, 15 minutes of web browsing and some music playback with both Wi-Fi and power-saver mode on. But it has grunt, and that’s where this system stands out from $1,500 machines. A good PCMark05 score of 4,035 hammers the cheap $1,099 LG FS-3 we reviewed as well as Acer’s 4920G.
Our review unit included Intel’s Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel’s current 965 Express chipset platform and it weighs a portable 1.7kg.
It’s possible to get cheaper built-in 3G, including Fujitsu’s own P1610u tablet — which we’ve seen advertised for under $3,000. Our advice? If you’re addicted to mobile email and web, don’t let built-in 3G rule your buying decision. More important is the notebook itself, you can always add 3G later. In this respect, this is an impressive package from Fujitsu, if on the pricey side.