Fujitsu Lifebook S6510

Fujitsu boasts that its sleek, black Lifebook S6510 offers three predominant features; it's thin, it's light and it's wide. We agree it's a very slim notebook; at 34mm thickness it's almost as slim as Fujitsu's own LifeBook Q2010 (3G). We also agree that it's quite light, weighing just 1.7kg, and can see that this notebook's display extends a little wider than normal, thanks to a thinner chassis around the screen. However, Fujitsu has forgotten to highlight its coolest feature, an embedded 3.5G (HSDPA) module for Internet on the go.

Fujitsu notebooks have always been a prime choice for business users but the inclusion of a 3.5G module is a real bonus. 3.5G or HSDPA allow speeds up to 14.4Mbps, although current Australian networks only allow a maximum of 7.2Mbps. This is an improvement over standard 3G which can handle speeds of only 2Mbps at best. Fujitsu has also managed to hide the antennae for the 3.5G module inside the unit, so there are no protruding aerials ruining the aesthetic.

The Fujitsu Lifebook S6510 is an Intel Centrino notebook through and through. It uses an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 2.4GHz CPU with an 800MHz front side bus and a 4MB L2 cache. It also includes Intel's Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/draft-n and uses the on-board Intel X3100 graphics processor. A total of 2GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM has been included, but up to 4GB can be installed. There is 160GB worth of hard drive space and there is a 1.3-megapixel camera built into the top of the screen.

The 14.1in screen offers a resolution of 1280x800 and has a bright image. Contrast levels aren't anything special and the viewing angle is fairly average, but that's not uncommon with notebooks. Overall it's quite comfortable to look at for extended periods, as long as you keep the screen tilted at the perfect angle for you.

Security features are abundant. There are BIOS and hard disk locks, Smartcard support and a biometric fingerprint scanner. Fujitsu also has installed its own start up and recovery application, which you can access during boot-up to recover your system after any problems that may occur. Business users and those frequently on the go may also enjoy the modular drive bay, which can be used to save weight (by removing the optical drive altogether) or can be used with a second battery for extra life.

Above the keyboard are four shortcuts, which double as media controls for play/pause, stop/eject and skip track forward and back. The shortcuts are programmable, but the first three are labelled for Internet, e-mail and support (linking to Fujitsu's support and diagnostics application). The support application provides access to the user manual but also includes an automated diagnostics tool, which reboots your computer and runs diagnostics on your hardware.

In our benchmarks we saw some very nice results. In WorldBench 6 it scored a total of 82, which gives it plenty of power for your average set of tasks, including e-mail, Internet, word processing, photo editing and so on. In our MP3 encoding test it took the Fujitsu Lifebook 81sec to encode 53 minutes worth of WAV files to 192Kbps MP3 files using iTunes. It then took it 117sec using Cdex, which only uses one core of the dual-core CPU. In the battery test it also did very well, lasting 131 minutes while playing a DVD. This test is considered a worst-case scenario and the system should last longer under normal circumstances.