LifeBook N3510

I loved the movie Moulin Rouge, with its bright colours and bold musical sequences. But the movie has one glaring weakness: it doesn't look good on my notebook.

OK, that's not the film's fault, but have you ever noticed just how muted and dull movies can look on a notebook screen? The engineers at Fujitsu noticed, too. So they created the LifeBook N3510--the company's first notebook with a 15.4" widescreen--to offer more vibrant colours. According to Fujitsu, the colour is comparable to that of a CRT monitor. It sounds like hype, but I tested a preproduction version of the N3510 and found the colours on its screen looked quite beautiful and lifelike.

The LifeBook N3510 uses a special colour filter that lets its LCD screen render a wider range of colour than your average LCD. Engineers also left off the anti-glare coating you'll find on most notebook screens. The end result: DVD movies and still photos offer more vibrant, accurate colours than any notebook display I've tested.

During my tests I saw accurately ruddy flesh tones and dark and subtle hues, all rendered with appropriate brightness and richness. Some darker flesh tones had a very slight pink undertone, but it didn't look odd or inaccurate.

It's hard to say if the colour filter is solely responsible for the N3510's accurate colour rendering, as the lack of anti-glare coating also clearly improves a screen's colour. Of course, with no anti-glare coating, the screen is highly reflective, which can be somewhat distracting in high-light environments.

Like many other recent notebooks, the N3510 gives you the ability to enjoy movies or music CDs without having to launch Windows. You simply have to press the DVD/CD button atop the keyboard to activate a disc in the optical drive.

Oh, and should you decide to use the N3510 for some work, you'll find it well equipped. The unit I tested had a 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M 740 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive and a multiformat DVD burner. Four user-programmable quick-launch buttons sit on the right of the keyboard, and four USB ports, a FireWire port and a flash memory slot ring the sides of the notebook.

If you're willing to spend a bit extra, you can configure the N3510 with a TV tuner. Fujitsu includes its Instant MyMedia software, which allows you to pause live television or record it onto the hard drive or a DVD. (But strangely, the notebook cannot be configured with Windows XP Media Center.)

With its great screen, notable multimedia features and robust configuration, this LifeBook can help you achieve a nice balance between work and fun. In the meantime, I plan on watching Moulin Rouge once more, this time on the LifeBook, in full, bright colour.