My C350 has issues
Written: Sep 30 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stable, low maintenance
Cons: Heavy! Short battery life. Screen is hard to read
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| Koafc's Full Review: Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C6557 (FPC040393) PC Notebook |
[Note: This review is of an older Fujitsu C350 model circa November 1998, not to be confused with their current C model line.]
* Overview *
A number of important issues detract from this laptop: short battery life, screen quality, and weight. This is a budget laptop but if you can afford to do better, I would find another laptop to buy.
* Why I bought it *
I bought this laptop for $1400 at a local retail store. I was amazed that I could get a PII 266 laptop for this price and one that even had a 13" screen! At this point in time, Pentium MMX was selling at this price and PII laptops were selling around $2000. I suspect that Fujitsu was able to offer this laptop at this price by not using one of the mobile processors.
* Issues with the C350 *
It wasn't long before I discovered it's shortcomings. The Pentium II processor it uses was never advertised as one of the newer "mobile" processors, and for good reason: the battery life was horrible. I was happy to get 45 minutes on it. The performance was fine (once I brought the memory up to 96 mb) but beware if you stray too far from the electrical outlet.
The screen happens to be one of the worst laptop screens I've come across. It is HPA screen (high performance addressing) which, at the time, was billed as a happy medium between dual-scan and Active Matrix (TFT). Unfortunately, it is much closer to dual-scan than Active Matrix. It seems to have a funny white tinge to everything and I've had numerous people make comments to the effect of: "What's with that screen?" Other people have commented on the sometimes visible line that splits the screen and mine had that as well.
As with most budget laptops, weight is a major issue. The C350 was no exception. It's so heavy that I ask myself whether I really want to take it anywhere.
* A few things I like about it *
Its been very dependable. After two years, nothing has broken on it. I've never had to send it to the shop for anything. Rock-solid stable.
It runs Windows 2000 Professional fine. The laptop was designed for Windows 98 but I ran Windows 2000 on it successfully. I also installed Linux on it and everything worked except the modem (which is a WinModem so what do you expect?) :)
Its all-in-one design is reasonably well done. With this type of laptop, you never need to fumble around for the floppy drive or cd-rom because its all included. (And of course the weight is the trade-off here.) Some people have complained about the built-in pointing device but I actually got somewhat proficient at it. (It's a flat rocking button.)
* Conclusion *
If you are looking for a dependable, reasonably powerful laptop that you won't be carrying around, this would be a fine choice. I would hook up an external monitor to it because the screen is pretty bad. If you can get it at a highly discounted price, it would be worth acquiring.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Koafc
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Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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