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At Last, an Ultralight Laptop Features the Right Trade-Offs

PARIS Life's a trade-off. You give up something to get something, and there are few places where this is more apparent than in laptop computers: If you want one that's small and light, its capabilities will be limited, and if you want one that's powerful and can do a lot, it will probably be relatively heavy to lug around.
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In 1968, Alan Kay, a computer researcher at Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center in California, envisioned a computer that he called a Dynabook, which would be no larger than a book, have a flat-panel screen and a keyboard and weigh no more than 2 pounds (less than a kilo). Although no Dynabook has ever been built, the idea achieved a certain fame in computer lore. But we are getting close to having one.
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For the past few weeks, I have been using Fujitsu Ltd.'s LifeBook P, and it's the first ultralight portable that I've tried that I could live with and actually use. It weighs just 3.4 pounds (1.5 kilos) and measures 7 inches (17.8 centimeters) by 10.5 inches by 1.5 inches and includes a DVD player that can also record compact disks.
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One of the limiting factors in how small these little laptops can be made is the size of the keyboard. I, for one, want to be able to put my fingers on the keys and type, so I need a more-or-less normal-size keyboard to be able to do that. On my full-size desktop keyboard at home, the top row of letters from Q to P spans just under 7.5 inches. On the LifeBook P keyboard, the corresponding letters span 6.75 inches. The keyboard is usable, but you wouldn't want it any smaller.
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The people at Fujitsu who put it together got the trade-offs right.
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The LifeBook P is a powerful and impressive little machine, and at $1,499, it is well-priced for what it includes. It comes with a 20-gigabyte hard disk, an 800-megahertz Crusoe processor from Transmeta Corp. and 128 megabytes of RAM. It's supposed to come with Windows XP, but the one that was sent to me for testing had Windows ME installed. If you want 256 megabytes of memory, which is probably a good idea for running Windows XP, the Lifebook P costs $1,699.
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By comparison, Dell Computer Corp.'s Latitude C400, which weighs 3.6 pounds (without a CD drive), costs $1,799. It has a 10-gigabyte hard drive, 128 megabytes of RAM and an 866-megahertz Pentium III processor.
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Toshiba Corp.'s Portege 4000 weighs 4.3 pounds (with a CD drive) and costs more than $2,000. It comes with a 10-gigabyte hard disk, 128 megabytes of RAM and a 750-megahertz Pentium III processor.
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Sharp Electronics Corp.'s PC-UM10 has a 20-gigabyte hard drive, 128 megabytes of memory, a 600-megahertz Pentium III processor and costs $1,699.
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The Lifebook P is the cheapest and, by comparison with other ultralights that I looked at but did not test, I liked it the best. Its keyboard was the easiest to work on, and it offers the most connection ports of the group. Though it doesn't have built-in wireless capabilities, it does have two USB ports, an Ethernet connector, an S-jack to connect to a television set and a FireWire port. In general, the LifeBook P requires the fewest compromises in exchange for the small size and weight.
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But it's hardly perfect. Though the advertisements for the LifeBook P show a conventionally shaped screen, in fact, the screen is unusually long and thin, sort of letter-box shaped. I suppose that's good for watching some movies on the DVD player, but it makes the letters on the screen a little small. Changing the screen resolution can make the letters larger, but it limits how much you can see at one time.
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I found the LifeBook P easy to integrate with other computers. Using one of its USB ports, I was able to connect to my Iomega Peerless backup drive, which I used to transfer files to and from other computers.
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The computer and its USB port also worked well with my digital camera, which is no small matter.
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One of the side issues in digital photography is the need to carry a computer if you're going on a long trip, so you can download pictures from your camera when its memory is full. If I have to carry a computer, I'd rather have a small, light one than a large, heavy one - as long as the small one can do what I want to do.
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The built-in DVD player also worked without a hitch - I watched two movies - and the small speakers provided surprisingly good sound.
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The computer's battery was adequate. I got about three hours before I needed a recharge.
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You can buy an extra battery for $105. It replaces the DVD drive, adds a half pound to the weight and is said to double the battery time. The model that was delivered to me to try out did not have the extra battery, so I can't tell you how useful it is.
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What I'd really like is to be able to travel without carrying any computer - along with its jacks, power supplies and assorted paraphernalia - but that limits what you can do on the road.
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So we're stuck with laptops, and if weight is an important factor to you, you could live with the compromises that the Fujitsu Lifebook P computer imposes in order to have a machine that's not a burden to carry. At Last, an Ultralight Laptop Features the Right Trade-Offs


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