It looks like a control panel attachment from a spaceship, straddles the murky boundary between ‘desktop’ and ‘mobile’ and is fun and comfortable to operate. Could it be the future of mobile computer design?

While it looks outlandish, you’ll soon fall in love with the combination of notebook mobility (albeit heavier at nearly 5kg) and desktop comfort.

Doing away with the traditional fold-in-half design, the funky L2010 comprises a screen lodged into a clunky-looking base that houses the battery and speaker unit. The keyboard folds up against the screen leaving just enough of the monitor to see a digital clock or playlist if you’ve got a CD on.

And while it looks great in its rest position, it’ll grab you even more when you unfold it. The cordless mouse and detachable infared keyboard feel very futuristic, and sliding CDs or DVDs into the drive (mounted vertically in the screen unit) will make you feel like a spy downloading secret data.

The only downside is that the grunt doesn’t do the sexy package justice. With only a 1.8Ghz chip and 256Mb of RAM (maximum 768), it’s too low on specs for all but the simplest business application user. During testing, it didn’t multitask well or perform even simple commands like opening a window very quickly.

But the huge battery (in every sense of the word) was hammered with high end graphics work, DVD play and CD burning for four hours before it complained and to be fair the L2010 is ridiculously cheap for its gorgeous looks — you’re getting what you pay for under the bonnet.

If Fujitsu release a vastly more powerful cousin in the same slick casing, it would almost be the perfect computer.

The L2010 is just one step away.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2004 at 12:00 am and is filed under Mobile Computing, Sydney Morning Herald, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.