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Fujitsu Criticized for Lack of CD Drive

Posted on: Monday, 21 April 2003, 06:00 CDT

By LARRY BLASKO

Associated Press -- Marketing began with the snake in the Garden of Eden, who may have neglected to mention a couple of things.

Fujitsu began shipping its LifeBook S2000 notebook in March and it looked interesting. Less than four pounds in weight and 1.36 inches high, it was powered by an AMD XP-M Athlon 1700+ processor, that, Fujitso said, coupled with sophisticated power management, meant longer battery life.

The price point was interesting at $1,199, and the accompanying publicity cooed "Finally, a powerful thin and light notebook priced for the masses."

And it may be, as long as the masses don't want to buy any more software. The $1,199 gets you a system without either a floppy drive or CD drive. Those, it develops, are "options." But that isn't exactly highlighted either on the company Web site or on the product descriptions sent along with a review unit.

Well, you can probably give Fujitsu a break on the floppy drive. Pretty much antique. But no CD-ROM? That's like offering men's suits for $200, with pants an "option." Depending upon whether you add a plain-vanilla 24x drive or go with the DVD CD-RW combo, add between $40 and $120 to the price.

The system comes with 256 megabytes of memory, a 30-gigabyte hard drive, and has a 56K modem and built-in Ethernet. The base operating system is Windows XP Home, but XP Professional and 2000 are available as - wow, you guessed! - options, for an additional $100 each.

The display is a 13.3-inch XGA TFT color and is driven by an ATI RADEON IGP 320M which ships with 16 megabytes of video memory (more is available.)

All the grumbling aside, the system is sleek and light. The keys have a nice, positive feel and are large and clearly labeled. That's a big plus if you don't touch-type and have discovered that all keyboards exist at the break point in your bifocals.

The display itself was easy to read.

The primary interface is a touch pad, which is fine if you like touch pads (I don't), but it's easy enough to pop in a mouse.

The fan is very audible, and this comes from someone who has been wife-certified as "deaf as a stone."

Notebook computers are invariably compromised in favor of portability, but if that's your game, this one might be worth a look. If you're comparing it with other offerings, make certain you're doing it with similar "options," so the prices reflect comparable setups.

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On the Net:

Fujitsu PC

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