One of the main reasons that people purchase a notebook over a desktop is because of its portability.  When we took a look at the Fujitsu S7010, we noticed its very slim and portable design.  Fujitsu has taken the term 'portability' and has taken it to another level with the Fujitsu P7010.  Unlike your typical ultra portable notebook, this notebook is extremely small.  In fact, I'd say it's about the size of a textbook.

With an ultra portable notebook, usually sacrifices have to be made in certain features or performance in order to maintain its small footprint.  The P7010 makes little sacrifices in either of these categories.  It contains nearly all the features that a user could want while still maintaining a high level of performance all packed into an inspiring Fujitsu stylish design.
 

The P7010 has an interesting look.  While the top of the lid is a solid black, the edge of the lid as well as the hinge give the notebook a stylish look.  Even though the notebook is slightly thicker than the Fujitsu S7010 with a larger height of 1.42 inches, the notebook still manages to look compact and portable.  The front lid of the notebook does tend to pick up fingerprints quite often.  The fingerprints can't be seen straight-on, but you can see them easily at an angle under lighting.
 

The hinge area of the notebook looks solid with its thick look.  The hinge area is covered with a metallic mesh that looks similar to an electric shaver.  The power button is easily accessible near the middle corner of the notebook.  Right next to the power button is a solid silver strip.  That strip is actually used for status indicator lights.  When the laptop is powered on or if there is hard drive activity, an LED will shine through that silver strip.
 

With a plethora of card reading ports, this notebook can easily take in flash memory cards such as CompactFlash, Secure Digital (SD), and Memory Sticks.  I'm a bit surprised that Fujitsu was able to fit that many card readers into this notebook. 
 

On the left side of the notebook, you will be able to find a single PCMCIA slot, a modem jack, and the power plug.  It is questionable why Fujitsu bothered to include a modem jack with this computer with less and less people using dial-up Internet, but I suppose it is always a welcome feature.  The right side of the notebook has a headphone port, microphone port, two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, an S-Video port, and the ability to hook up an external monitor.
 

The back of the notebook allows you to have access to the battery, the removal of the optical drive and memory.  I do not like how you don't have access to the hard drive.  If it ever fails, you will need to send it back to Fujitsu and have them replace it.  Otherwise, you will be stuck with a dead unit.  Typical of Fujitsu's notebooks is a small cloth area that does make putting the notebook on your lap a little more comfortable and to protect your lap from unnecessary heat.
 

The beauty of this notebook is revealed when you open up the notebook.  When opening up the lid of the notebook, I immediately noticed that this notebook does not have a clasp to keep the lid shut.  So far, I haven't had any problems with the lid of the notebook accidentally opening up, but I imagine that it puts more strain on the hinge of the notebook. 

When looking at the keyboard, you will immediately notice that the keyboard does not contain your standard-sized keyboard keys.  I thought that I was going to have trouble using the keyboard, but that was not the case.  I was able to get used to the keyboard easily.  When reaching for keys, nearly all of them were where I expected them to be.  The only keys that I had to pay a little more attention to were the period, comma, and forward slash keys since those keys are nearly half-the size compared with the other keys.
 

The mouse on this notebook is your typical touchpad, with two mouse buttons.  Since this notebook includes a finger print reader, Fujitsu chose to use the fingerprint reader as a scroll wheel also by placing it in between the left and right mouse buttons.  When pressing one of the mouse buttons, the 'click' noise is a bit louder than I desired.
 

Noise is always a factor when choosing a notebook.  When working in a quiet environment, you want your notebook to be as quiet as possible.  This holds true especially if you are in a classroom or if you are in a meeting where everyone's attention is on the speaker.  The noise from the notebook is a mixed bag.  If you are in a quiet environment, you will hear the fan in the notebook gradually increase in noise for a while than become silent.  This process repeats over and over again every 5-10 minutes.
 

With an ultra portable notebook, many people are concerned with the screen size being too small.  The screen on the P7010 is a widescreen 10.6 inch screen with a glossy surface.  The glossy surface does seem to make the screen bright and vivid, but the glossiness may make the screen's visibility differ in various lighting conditions.  Overall, the default background really does show how bright and sharp the screen can look. 

The screen has a native resolution of 1280 x 768 which is actually not too large or small for its size.  Having been used to a 14 inch laptop screen, the 10.6 inch widescreen wasn't too hard to work with.  There may be times where you might find yourself having to lean a little closer just to be able to see certain things because of its small size.
 

This notebook is built with an Ultra Low Voltage 1.2Ghz Pentium M processor which carries the Centrino name.  Because of the Ultra Low Voltage processor, the battery life on this notebook is amazing.  The advertised 10 hours of the notebook was overestimated, but I was able to easily obtain a real usage of 5 hours.  This involved tasks such as browsing the Internet, doing word prcoessing, with some light music listening and video watching.

Don't underestimate a 1.2GHz Pentium M processor.  When doing light work such as browsing the Internet or word processing, you will be hard-pressed to notice any difference between 1.2Ghz and something like a 2GHz Pentium M.  With this notebook packed with 512MB of memory, this notebook is more than capable of tackling heavier tasks such as working with Photoshop.
 

The software included with the notebook is minimal, but is just enough to allow you to get work done while keeping your protected.  The main applications included are Microsoft Works and Norton Antivirus.  This notebook comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, therefore, lacking the advanced network capabilities of the XP Professional Edition.  In the case that you need to reformat your computer, just use the provided recovery disks included with the notebook and it will restore the notebook back to its original state.  The Omnisoft FingerPrint software is what allows you to use the fingerprint reader.  You scan your fingerprint by sliding your finger over the gold strip. 
 

The Fujitsu P7010 is a very nice ultra-portable notebook that will certain catch many people's attention simply because of its size.  I had many people come up to me to be able to look at the notebook.  They were simply stunned at how small the computer was and how good it looked.  This notebook works well for those who are either on the move a lot or don't want the bulk of a larger notebook.  Although the model that I reviewed today is approximately $1999, this notebook can be bought as low as $1599 at Fujitsu's website.  If you live without the lid clasp as well as the occasional noise of the fan, then this notebook will offer a lot of a benefit to the user.

Reviewed by ronald@digitalreviews.net