Fujitsu LifeBook E8410
Filed Under (Fujitsu, Laptops) by admin on 14-01-2009 >> 126 views
Tagged Under : Fujitsu, Fujitsu LifeBook E8410, Laptops
Today the wraps come off Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro, formally codenamed Santa Rosa. This is Intel’s third major revamp of the Centrino brand and comes hot on the heals of Merom’s launch last year. This update is a little more than a socket change, and also represents the amalgamation of two of Intel’s key platforms, vPro for business and the new Centrino Duo branding for consumer notebooks.
Upside
The Fujitsu LifeBook E8410 is a part of the Centrino Pro family, and is aimed squarely at business users looking to get work done and stay on the move. Generally speaking business notebooks aren’t the most powerful machines, simply because they don’t need to be. CAD, engineering, HD video editing and multimedia content creation are all typically performed on expensive desk-bound workstations. Road warriors doing sales, execs jet-setting around the globe and people attending office meetings really just want something with enough grunt and battery life to get the job done.
The CPUs found in the new Santa Rosa products will boast a huge 4MB L2 cache, as well as a faster 800MHz Frontside Bus (FSB) to allow for faster information exchange with the system memory. This translates into better real-world performance, particularly when multitasking.
Keen to see how much extra grunt we could expect, we ran the LifeBook E8410 through our usual rigorous set of tests and were pleasantly surprised with the numbers it spat out. Please note our machine was a pre-production engineering sample, and as a result performance may vary slightly on retail units.
Our machine came packing a Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, clocking in at 2.0GHz, Intel’s new PRO/Wireless 4965AGN wireless module, their first to support the 802.11 draft N standard and offering throughputs of up to 300mbps (though actual performance is closer to 100mbps). Inside we also find the new Intel 82566MM Gigabit adaptor, including Active Management Technology (AMT) which hooks into the system to allow better remote management and patching of equipment by the IT department. Our sample included 1GB of DDR2 667MHz memory, although the final spec of the retail unit may include 2GB. Windows Vista Business was pre-installed and ran quite well on 1GB of memory, and while the experience and system responsiveness will only be further improved with more memory, there may be a battery performance hit involved in powering another DIMM.
The LifeBook managed a solid 4565 PCMark score, not the highest we’ve ever seen, but certainly above average for a business notebook. As a point of reference, Dell’s XPS M1710 gaming machine scored 5118 PCMarks. Although Santa Rosa has support for Intel’s new DirectX 10 compatible X3100 graphics part, Fujitsu has opted for NVIDIA’s 8400M G chipset. It’s not a stellar performer, but a four digit 3D score from a business notebook is encouraging — topping out at 1266 marks. Hardcore gamers certainly won’t be clambering all over each other to get at this, but it’s enough for a reasonable performance in current games during those boring interdepartmental meetings, but is best matched to running Vista’s Aero interface features.
The 15.4-inch display is bright and sharp, while the wide-screen aspect ratio makes it ideal for presentations and side-by-side spreadsheets.
Downside
Unfortunately this unit doesn’t have one of the features we’re most looking forward to trying out on Santa Rosa — the inclusion of Turbo Memory. This is a mini PCI connected piece of NAND flash memory (usually 512MB or 1GB) designed to reduce boot times, improve performance in commonly used apps and allows for a deeper hibernation when the machine is not in use.
Since battery life is one of the biggest factors for a business user looking to purchase a laptop, we had high hopes for the E8410. Intel claims this generation of Centrino will improve battery run time by around an hour. Our unit only managed to keep up the pace for two and a quarter hours on battery miser settings and doing an easy reader workload. Hopefully the final product will improve this, as currently it’s out performed by many consumer notebooks, even some with an entertainment focus.
It’s not our biggest criticism, but given its size we would have preferred a slightly larger keyboard since you’ll be using it all day long. The speakers (which on our model were mostly distortion and static) took up a considerable chunk of the surface of the notebook, forcing the keyboard to be scaled slightly. It’s reasonably comfortable to use, but seemed to be a little flimsy, and didn’t look like it would survive long under pressure from a keyboard masher typist.
Overall
While we’ll hold off on passing judgement on this model until we can have a play with a final production unit, we do have some concerns about its build quality and battery life. Square these away, list a price and this could be a compelling business notebook. The lack of Turbo Memory is a disappointment; especially in the business space where you may be powering down and resuming often — helping squeeze just a little more out of your work day between trips to the wall outlet.
Putting these issues aside, the new Centrino looks like much more than a point release, bringing the latest wireless speeds (even if they’re not ratified yet), more performance across the board and more flexible operation for mobile users.
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