Lifebook E8210S

The Fujitsu Lifebook E8210S is a sturdy all-purpose notebook with an attractive design, a high quality display and it produces reasonable performance. It sits at the high end of Fujitsu's performance oriented E-series and is light enough (3.2kg, including its power cables) to be carried around without any hassle.

The E8210S has an Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz CPU, a 100GB hard drive, a double-layer DVD burner and 1GB of DDR2 memory (expandable up to 4GB). It also features built-in 802.11b/g wireless networking, and Bluetooth 2.0. A wide range of connectivity options are present: four USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire port, VGA, S-Video, high definition audio (in and out), gigabit Ethernet and modem ports, and an ExpressCard slot. There is also a media card reader, which supports Secure Digital, Memory Stick and Memory Stick PRO formats.

The notebook can be purchased with either Windows Vista Business or Windows XP for the same price. Our test model came with Windows XP installed and we tested its application performance by running WorldBench 5, where it recorded an overall scored a 96. This is quite a good score for an all-purpose notebook and it is what we expected from the unit's configuration. We also converted 53min worth of WAV files to MP3 format (192Kbps) in order to test the CPU's encoding performance. Its time of 2min 13sec is quite good for a notebook based on the Core 2 Duo T5600 CPU and indicates that it will handle most media encoding tasks well, making it great for all-purpose use.

The E8210S uses an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 GPU (graphics processing unit). In 3DMark06, the notebook scored 863, which is what we expected. Based on this result, the E8210S will play some older games, but more recent, graphics intensive games will struggle.

To test the notebook's battery life, we performed a DVD-rundown test. In this test we loop a 90min DVD and time how long it takes before the battery is completely exhausted. The Fujistu lasted 138mins, which is an above-average result and more than enough to watch most movies. While DVD playback is not the primary function of this unit, it is the most battery intensive function it can perform and, as such, this battery life test is designed to be a worst-case scenario. Under regular use, the battery life will most likely be much higher.

The design of the E8210S is quite attractive. The palm-rest, the surrounding keyboard area and the bezel around the screen are silver, while the keyboard is white and the outer-casing is black. The keyboard is easy to use; there are left and right mouse buttons above and below the touchpad and an eraser-head pointing device in the middle of the keyboard. Above the keyboard, there are four programmable hotkeys, which can be set to open any program or function that you require. These buttons are numbered and can also be used to secure your system using a pin-code. A biometric fingerprint scanner is also provided for security, and this is located in between the left and right mouse buttons.

The unit has a 15.4in SuperFine screen with a native resolution of 1280x800. The screen has a reflective surface and looks great when watching DVDs. In an office environment with fluorescent lighting, the reflections may get annoying, but this is its only shortcoming.

If you are in the market for a good all-round notebook, the Fujistu E8210S will suit your needs. While it's not the most powerful notebook on the market, it certainly has enough grunt for everyday tasks and some media encoding. However, if you are looking for a notebook on which to play the most recent games, this one will disappoint.