The E8410 contains an impressive array of ports that provide both forwards and backwards compatibility with old and new hardware … an excellent feature for IT departments within huge companies that have a ton of old hardware. I was happiest to see the E8410 includes both a PCMCIA and ExpressCard slot!Battery life was pretty impressive. During the review period we ran the battery down to zero several times. For my timed tests, the WiFi was on, the screen was at 50% brightness, and Vista was on the “Balanced” power profile. The laptop stayed on for 4 hours and 12 minutes before forced hibernation at 5% battery remaining. If you configure this notebook with the available 8-cell battery and or second battery in the modular bay I believe a mobile employee could work online for most of the workday on battery power.

One of the nicer things about the E8410 in terms of its place in a work environment is noise, or lack thereof. This notebook is whisper quiet. During general usage, the cooling fan is barely audible over background noise. The loudest sound came from the hard drive as the computer needed to access data, but even then the hard drive wasn’t particularly loud.The fan did speed up during benchmarking but that is to be expected. The laptop was noticeably warmer on the surface, but both heat and noise were kept at or below tolerable levels.

As for the build quality itself, the notebook is quite solid. There is no noticeable flex on most of the chassis. Nevertheless, the chassis has “weak” spots around where the LCD meets the body. But even the flex there is no where near the flex I have felt on Gateways and Compaqs I have played around with at Office Depot. With normal pressure, there are no ripples on the LCD, though with slightly above average pressure, you can produce ripples on the upper-right hand corner. Regarding the hinges, they are quite stiff, though if I shake the notebook a little, there is a small amount of wobbling of the LCD. The only real problem that I have with the build quality is that, although nothing seems to be moving, the chassis and hinges creak.

If you look at the bottom of the notebook, you find the RAM compartment where the Windows product code is found. The area covered by the felt is where the HD is. The battery does not attach to the back of the notebook like some batteries do. Instead, it is found on bottom of the notebook on the upper right corner. That small piece of plastic at the upper edge of the bottom held in place by two silver screws is where the built-in tv tuner would be if you purchased that option.Admittedly, I am not a screen buff. I don’t know what makes a screen “incredible”. However, in my humble opinion, I find the screen to be quite nice. The WXGA resolution may be a bit big for some, but for me it was just right. When you go to battery power, the notebook automatically reduces down to two notches of brightness, and even at lowest brightness, the screen is still readable. Below is an image of the screen on the lowest brightness setting.

When I compared the screen with my matte 19” acer lcd with the same brightness and a higher contrast ratio, I could see the difference in quality. The white looked whiter to me, and even text seemed slightly crisper on the N3530. Also, the Fujitsu screen seemed to be able to detect the light blue background for the most popular laptop poll and the laptop search box, while my desktop monitor doesn’t.This notebook also has good horizontal and vertical viewing angles. Though there is darkening and lightening, the screen is viewable even at extreme angles. The images make the darkening and lightening more extreme than they actually are.It is worth mentioning that there is negligible light leakage on the bottom of the notebook. I had trouble capturing it with my camera, so I apologize for not posting a picture.

• packard bell lm81 Battery
• packard bell lm82 Battery
• packard bell lm83 Battery
• packard bell lm85 Battery
• packard bell lm86 Battery
• packard bell lm87 Battery
• packard bell lm94 Battery
• packard bell lm98 Battery
• packard bell ls11-hr Battery
• packard bell ls11sb Battery

Again, I am no audio aficionado, so I don’t know how valid my opinion is. The audio is definitely a step up from my old Clevo, from which I could barely hear anything at the highest volume setting. I like the fact that it has a lot of notches for the volume, so that you can have more variety in your volume settings. However, the highest volume setting is lower than I would expect it to be. Also, as the other N3530 reviewer, mach_zero, aptly noted, the placing of the speakers is both good and bad. If you are not typing and listening to something, the speakers will be slightly louder because they are close to you. Unfortunately, while typing, the sound is often muffled. Anyway, I would recommend headphones/earphones for any notebook owner.

This system is noticeably snappier than my old notebook (2.0 ghz Pentium 4, 40 GB 4200rpm HD, 512 MB ram). The time it takes to get from pressing power to the password screen in Windows is about 37 seconds. When I opened pdf files on my old computer, it would take forever to open, and sometimes it would crash Adobe. Now, with the N3530, pdfs load faster, and Adobe has yet to stall on me.

I was curious about how different drivers would affect the 3DMark05 scores. The stock drivers were the ATI Catalyst 6.5 drivers. When I updated to the 6.10 drivers, there was a slight increase in marks. The newest Omega drivers yield a tad more marks than the 6.10 Catalyst drivers. I wanted to check out something less main stream, so I also tried out the DHzeropoint drivers. Astonishingly, even though they are based on the 6.9 Catalyst drivers like the Omegas, they yielded almost 250 marks less than the stock driver! Suffice to say, that’s probably why they are not as well-known as Omega drivers.

The lid is made of silver-colored magnesium alloy, not the plastic of so many notebooks. The hinges feel very sturdy, but there is some lid flex. If you press down on the lid, it goes in a little because there’s a small gap between the lid and keyboard when closed. Despite the lid flex, there are absolutely no ripples on the screen when you open the lid again.The keyboard is a very light gray color. The touchpad is slightly left of center. There is no palm rest flex at all. Above the keyboard are the speakers, power button, four programmable shortcut buttons, and the battery indicator. [S7020D: Rather than the four programmable buttons by the power button, the S7020D features buttons similar to those on the S6231.] On the right side is a slot where you can put the CD/DVD drive, a second hard drive, a second battery, or nothing except a weight saver. For detailed pictures of the sides, see the “Input and Output Ports” section below.The bottom has some felt patches to prevent the notebook from slipping. I also think these felt pads provide a better feel for when the notebook is on your lap.

The noise produced by this notebook may be a problem for some. I use my notebook while watching television, and sometimes I can hear the fans over the volume of the television when they go into high gear. Also, when I use the optical drive, the spinning gives off a noisy whir and causes the notebook to vibrate. I wouldn’t recommend using this notebook in quiet areas like libraries or in classes.Despite these two problems, I still unconditionally recommend Portable One and wouldn’t hesitate to buy from them again. The people there are so accessible and willing to help. But most of all, I was impressed by their integrity. I called up and asked how big a performance difference I would see by upgrading from 1.6 to 1.8GHz. Rather than seeing an opportunity to make more money, they told me that it would amount to only about a 10% difference, and with the usage I described, it probably wouldn’t be worth the extra $150. They never tried to push anything else on me, like an extended warranty, accessories, or upgrades, unlike the big retailers (Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc.).

• packard bell ls13-hr Battery
• packard bell nm85 Battery
• packard bell nm86 Battery
• packard bell nm87 Battery
• packard bell nm88 Battery
• packard bell nm89 Battery
• packard bell nm98 Battery
• packard bell ns11-hr Battery
• packard bell ns44-hr Battery
• packard bell ns85 Battery
• packard bell tk11bz Battery

My total came to $1529, with free shipping. NewEgg seems to have lower prices, but you don’t have the option of customizing; cannot return the computer, only exchange it for the same model if it’s defective; and must have at least 7 dead pixels to get a replacement. In addition, all the configurations available from NewEgg are on the low end. An identically configured model on the Fujitsu website cost more than $100 more, and you cannot return custom-configured notebooks. Given these factors, and the excellent customer service, I’d say $1529 was a more than fair price.

The most disappointing aspect of this notebook would be the keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard is not the most comfortable to type on. The key stroke seems deeper to me compared to the Latitude D600 keyboard I have been using. Moreover, the keys seem to give a bit of positive feedback when you type, so every once in awhile, you think you typed in something but the keystroke doesn’t register. Another flaw is that the keys are very “clicky-clacky”, so again, can be noisy for quiet areas. Nevertheless, the keyboard has one plus. There is negligible flex on the keyboard that in no way affects your typing. Even with its shortcomings, you eventually get used to typing on it.

Port placement is one of the positives of this notebook. It has 4 USB ports, but one of the ports is on the left side. This makes it convenient for plugging in USB drives or other USB devices that you insert and remove often. Also, there are no ports on the right side, making things less crowded for using an external mouse (if you’re right-handed anyway). I also like how the headphone ports are on the left side instead of the front, because it would stick into my stomach when using the notebook on my lap. One thing that makes the n3530 rather unique is that it has both a pcmcia slot and an express slot. Most notebooks have one or the other. This computer has pretty much every port I need (e.g. firewire, memory card, s-video). Some may be unhappy that it lacks a DVI port, though it is of no consequence to me.The first time I booted this notebook, I had a problem connecting to my wireless network. Ever since that first reboot, I have not had a problem. I get excellent signal strength throughout my apartment that has lead paint on the walls.The biggest drainage on battery life comes from the screen and WiFi. Once again I really appreciate the “silent” feature which further underclocks the processor, while still remaining quick enough to do most tasks.