| Article Index |
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| Fujitsu LifeBook E8410 Notebook Review |
| Page 2 - Style and Design |
| Page 4 - Connectivity, Battery Life, Extras |
| Page 5 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Fujitsu’s latest notebook offering that we have the chance to review is the LifeBook E8410, a full sized and fully featured
notebook packing some serious power.
The E8410 sells online for around AU$2600 and when you see what you get for this price, it is excellent value. Firstly, we’ll have a look at the main specs of the E8410 we have here in our possession:
- Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 (2.2Ghz, 4MB Cache)
- 2GB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM (2 x 1GB modules)
- 120GB 5400rpm SATA-150 Hard Drive (split 50/50 partition) (Fujitsu MHW2120BH)
- 8-cell 5200mAh Lithium-Ion Battery (up to 4 hours battery life)
- nVidia GeForce 8400M with 128MB dedicated video RAM
- 15.4” WSXGA+ TFT Screen, 1680 x 1050pixel resolution
- Dual Layer Super Multi DVD/CD Writer
- Intel Gigabit Ethernet Port
- Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N 54MB/s Wireless Adapter (up to 300Mbps for Draft-N)
- Bluetooth V2.0
- 1.3MegaPixel Camera Built-In, with built-in Stereo Microphones
- 84-Key Keyboard, Fingerprint Sensor, Intelligent Touch Pad
- Ports – 4 x USB2.0, Firewire, HD Audio In/Out, SD/Memory Stick Card Reader, Smart Card, PC Card Type II, ExpressCard, RJ45 (LAN), RJ11 (Modem), VGA, S-Video, 9-Pin Serial, Parallel
- 2-Year Pickup and Return Warranty, 1st Year International (1 Year on Battery and AC Adapter)
- Windows Vista Business
As you can see from the specs above the E8410 has everything you could want in a notebook, and unlike some other Fujitsu notebooks we’ve reviewed in the past, this one has all its ports and connectors built-in, no need for any dongles or docking bays. The only sacrifice you make is it’s a bit bigger than the ones we’ve looked at previously, with the E8410 weighing in at around 2.8kg with its standard battery and optical drive, so not exactly a lightweight but considering it’s screen size and features, it’s not too bad.
Style and Design:
On the outside the LifeBook E8410 employs Fujitsu’s standard Dark grey with gloss black colour scheme which is very common across their range, but when you open it up you’re greeted with a mix of silver, black and white surfaces, which serve to give the E8410 a very professional look without looking too dull or boring, and as it’s clearly aimed at the more business orientated customers, this should work quite well in that market.
There are no other colour options available for this series unlike many others in the Fujitsu range, so if you want this notebook, this is the only colour scheme you have available.
They layout of the keyboard and cursor touchpad is very conventional but is comfortable to use and works quite well, and while there is no scroll bar on the touchpad, the fingerprint sensor acts as a scroll wheel within Windows. Personally I’d prefer a scroll bar on the touchpad as the fingerprint sensor is never very precise and will often either move too fast or not move at all. An extra set of mouse buttons reside above the touchpad, these are there for when you use the little pointing stick (look it up, that’s what it’s called) in the middle of the keyboard, I really hate those things, but I know some (weird) people like them, and as this notebook seems to include everything under the sun, might as well have one of these as well.
Above the keyboard we have 4 configurable hotkey shortcuts and an LCD status panel which shows the activity and status of everything from the battery(s), AC Power, Hard Drive, WiFi and Flash Cards as well as the normal keyboard status lights for Num/Scroll/Caps Lock. This panel is unfortunately not backlit which makes it very hard to read at night, as a matter of fact there are no LEDs on this notebook at all, not even for the LAN port or the optical drive. Well actually the optical drive does have one, but it’s been hidden away, and is only slightly (probably unintentionally) visible between two edges of plastic, but there is no power LED, hard drive activity LED etc... Not one, which is really odd. All the activity is reported through the small LCD mentioned earlier, and with the lid closed, you wouldn’t even know if this notebook was turned on unless you felt warm air coming out the side. A very strange design concept and I must say one that I’m not a fan of.
Around the top of the LCD screen there is the in-built webcam and microphones, which are nicely blended in to their surroundings, a kind of ‘stealth’ inclusion if you will. The camera performs well for basic video conferencing and capture, but the software included is nothing special, and can capture simple photos and videos only, no special effects like you’d find on something like a MAC iSight camera, although not essential it’s nice to have and play around with when you’re bored, or for your kids.
Standing out a little bit more than the camera is the stereo speakers on each side of the keyboard, which although being no bigger than any other notebook speaker system I’ve encountered, can produce very loud sound at excellent quality, some of the best I’ve ever heard from standard notebook speakers. Of course HD Audio processing is included as with just about all current notebooks, but it’s good to know they matched it with good quality speakers to give a good overall sound package.
{mospagebreak title=Page 3 - CPU, Memory, Screen}
CPU, Memory, Screen:
Powering the LifeBook E8410 we have here is an Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU which runs at 2.2Ghz, and even though we’re running Vista which rips the guts out of even the most promising performance machines, it actually performs very impressively. Working along with the 2GB of DDR2 667Mhz RAM, the E8410 obtains a PCMark05 score of 4531, and compared to the T7200 CPU based LifeBook S6311 we tested a couple of months ago which only scored 3355, the E8410 performs brilliantly.
One of the great points about this notebook is the inclusion of a proper graphics card, the GeForce 8400M from nVidia. The GeForce 8400M comes with 128MB of dedicated video memory and can make use of another 256MB of system RAM, giving it a total of 384MB of usable video memory. We checked its performance under 3DMark06 and it returned a result of 916 3DMarks, which although not great compared to desktop cards, is brilliant for notebook graphics, and being a GeForce 8x series chipset, will even be able to run DirectX10 games and applications.
With the amount of video ram available the E8410 is able to play full screen and windowed video on both the notebook screen and an external monitor or projector, something that lesser graphics systems in many notebooks are unable to do and is a very useful feature, especially for business customers, or home users wanting to play content on a home theatre setup.
Speaking of the notebook screen, it’s a 15.4” widescreen WSXGA screen that displays a standard resolution of 1680 x 1050, and thankfully does NOT have one of those shiny and very reflective covers over the top of it like so many others on the market, instead it has the usual matt type of plastic finish over the top of the screen yet still remains very bright with a very sharp picture. A strange thing I noticed, that may only be an issue with this demo model, I can’t tell, is that when I tried to adjust the brightness, both within windows and through the function keys on the laptop, the brightness never changed at all, it told me it was changing it through the on-screen display, but nothing happened. Hopefully this is just an issue with my demo model, a strange problem to have though.
Connectivity, Battery Life, Extras:
The connectivity options included on the E8410 are excellent, having all the current connection types you could need (USB, Firewire, LAN, Flash Reader etc...) it also includes older connections, such as a 9-pin serial port, and a 25-pin parallel/printer port, which I haven’t seen on a notebook in ages. These older ports would only have limited usefulness in today’s world, but there’s no harm in including them and I’m sure they will come in handy for some users.
Networking in the E8410 is as fast as current standards will allow with Gigabit LAN, and with regards to the wireless connection, even faster with the wireless adapter taking up the Draft-802.11N standard, which allows for transfer rates of up to 300MB/s, and still supports the older/slower 802.11a/b/g standards so all your wireless equipment will still work without a problem. Bluetooth connectivity is also included, using the Bluetooth 2.0 standard with EDR (enhanced data rate) and is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 1.1, so any Bluetooth device you have should connect without a problem.
There are 2 expansion slots on the E8410, one for standard PC-Cards and one for the newer ExpressCards which allow for a much faster transfer rate than the older PC Cards, but whichever expansion cards you have, it will be sure to work in one of these slots.
The main battery in the notebook is an 8-Cell Lithium Ion item that holds 5200mAh worth of juice, which under ideal power conditions will be able to power the notebook for around 4 hours. This time figure however will be lower under real-world conditions, such as using the wireless connection, optical drive etc., but you should still get an easy 3+ hours out of it with general use. A second battery can be installed in place of the optical drive to give an additional 2 hours battery life. The optical drive is easily removed to swap between it and the second battery on the fly.
As for bonus extras included with the E8410, there’s not a huge list, you get a nice looking and good quality carry bag along with the AC adapter, but not a whole lot else which is about normal for most notebooks these days in an effort to keep prices down. Depending on the retailer you might get an optical mouse but that’s about it.
Plenty of software is included as standard such as DVD playback and authoring software (Cyberlink), heaps of Fujitsu utility programs and a year’s free updates for Norman Anti-Virus and Firewall, as well as Acronis True Image to help you backup your data. A 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2007 also comes pre-installed, which can be easily changed to a full version by purchasing a key online.
Conclusion:
Selling online for around AU$2600, the LifeBook E8410 from Fujitsu is an extremely powerful and well featured notebook that incorporates a very professional appearance and is ideal for people in the business world after a good value, mid/high range notebook.
Although it is not the lightest or smallest notebook on the market, it represents great value for money, and you can’t really expect a notebook with these features to be much smaller. While a reduction in weight would help it along a bit, its weight certainly isn’t over the top and is easy enough to cart around and quite comfortable to work with on your lap. The strange lack of LEDs or any lights whatsoever still bugs me, and I would prefer a few of the more important status indicators to be marked with LEDs, or at least backlight the LCD status panel.
The inclusion of the nVidia GeForce 8400M graphics adapter is a very welcome inclusion as ‘Notebook 3D Performance’ has always been a bit of an oxymoron, and while the E8410 still won’t be able to run the latest 3D games at huge resolutions, it will be able to easily run a lot of your old favourites, and be more than useable for people wanting to do some CAD or 3D animation work.
Overall a very capable notebook that I will happily recommend to customers in the business field looking for something fast and reliable, as well as being good value for money.
OzHardware Rating – 8.5/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
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|137.132.250.xxx |2008-01-30 11:02:15 LIM YAN CHONG - Solved the screen problemI has faced the problem since I recovered my lifebook by using the recovery dvd. To solve the problem, go to the fujitsu website and download the latest video driver (instead of clearly states it as nvdia driver, fujitsu states it as video driver) under download & support.
