Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Fujitsu Laptop Battery
If you made buying decisions by specs alone, the Amilo would be at the top of your shortlist. With a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 processor, 256MB of DDR memory and ATi Radeon 9000 graphics, this is a notebook with battery such as Fujitsu ESPRIMO Mobile U9200 Battery, Fujitsu ESPRIMO Mobile D9500 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP222 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook P3110 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP42 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook C2010 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook C7661 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP260 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook MH330 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP232 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP231 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook MH380 Battery that can almost outmuscle desktop systems. It certainly outdid all its notebook rivals here in our benchmarks, with a chart-topping tally of 1.24 in our 2D benchmarks and a stunning 7,752 in 3DMark2001 SE (at 16-bit settings).
As such, it's the best choice here for gamers, even though we don't generally recommend notebooks for games, as you can't upgrade the graphics. Still, we were happy with the screen's performance when coping with fast-moving images; there's little sign of the lag that earned TFT screens such a bad gaming reputation in their early years.
When it comes to working in everyday apps like Excel, though, the TFT screen doesn't quite match our expectations. Whites don't look white, with an off-colour hue spoiling the general effect.
We've no complaints about the keyboard, which is quite nice to type on thanks to minimal rattle and tactile feedback, so there's a bit of resistance when you press the buttons. We also appreciate the five shortcut keys above the keyboard, which are reprogrammable to launch your favourite apps - perhaps Word XP, Money 2003 and AutoRoute 2002, all of which are included in the bundled Works Suite 2003.
There are plenty of features on offer in the Amilo too, with a combo DVD/CD-RW drive being the pick of the bunch. The sole feature we'd like to upgrade is the 20GB hard disk, which - like the Green 732 - seems out of sync with the rest of the machine's spec. The only way to buy a larger disk (apart from upgrading later) is to opt for the Amilo D 8820, which costs an extra £107.
Both machines share the same chassis, which isn't built for portability. It weighs 3.6kg and measures 44-48mm from top to bottom - we wouldn't want to carry it around all day. It's got battery life to match too, giving up after 97 minutes in our intensive tests and 169 minutes under minimal use. This is partially due to the desktop processor, which consumes more energy and consequently requires more cooling, and we found the fan kicked in quite loudly on occasion.
With an integrated floppy drive and all the expected ports, including USB 2, to complement its various features and great performance, the Amilo D 7820 is undoubtedly one of the best buys here. Only the lacklustre screen and its sheer bulk count against it, but it remains a sound alternative to our award winners.