Has difficulty opening up: Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7010

By on 03 October 2005, 11:03am

Imagine you're a kid trying to sneak out of your room in the dead of night to play Grand Theft Auto until daybreak. Imagine how slowly you'd open your creaky bedroom door, millimetre-by-millimetre, sweat glistening on your youthful brow. That is exactly how slowly we had to open the lid on our Lifebook. If we opened it up any faster than the speed of a moving glacier, the LifeBook would instantly shut down. Mysterious behaviour indeed, and most would have sent the Lifebook straight back to Fujitsu Siemens -- it wasn't going to beat Crave, though.

Finally, we convinced the Lifebook to stay powered-up, but then we had to sit through the most painful Windows booting experience we've ever witnessed (and that really is saying something, given Windows' ability to fail to start up in an almost infinite range of exciting ways). Once it had finally booted, it worked like a dream.

Like an unpleasant birth quickly eclipsed by the beauty of the child, we've forgiven the Lifebook its initial pique. It's petite and glossy and looks like a slightly messier version of a PowerBook. The base of the laptop is particularly strange, with a felt padded section, and enough stickers to fill a Panini album. Still, there's a fair amount of power jammed into its compact body, including a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, slots for three types of flash memory cards and 802.11b/g wireless networking. Expect a full review soon. -CS

Update: this review is now live here.