I've seen the U1010 briefly a couple of times, but tonight I've got one in my hot little hands for the whole night. And that is long enough to do a quick review with lots of photos. Click on any of the photos for a larger version of it.
The U1010 is a very exciting device. Personally I think it is the most compelling UMPC sized device I have yet seen. Fujitsu have packed an incredible amount into a really tiny package. The photo below - that's a Zune next to it!
In laptop mode the Fujitsu U1010 offers a usable keyboard. Fujitsu have maximised what they have squeezed into the device by giving a lot of the keys a secondary function (which is accessed by pressing the Fn key followed by the key with the function you want). This has allowed them to do away with the traditional F1-F12 keys, thereby doing away with an entire row of the keyboard.
The external styling of the U1010 is nice - you can see why some people have dubbed it "The Stormtrooper". Overall the unit is white with black trim. The "Fujitsu" and "Lifebook" logos on the back of the lid are in silver.
The U1010 is well designed to be used in slate mode, too. The screen is offset away from the hinge, giving you a space to hold onto without obscuring the screen. This is an important usability consideration for an ultra-portable device, but one that some vendors seem to forget. In addition all of the hardware buttons are accessible when you are in slate mode, which is of course when you need them most.
The screen is crystal clear. The native resolution is 1024x600 so you get a fair bit on that little screen. Naturally on a small screen there is not much room to write, but if you do try it you will find that the U1010 offers a surprisingly good ink experience for a touchscreen.
Now a quick visual tour...
On the front right corner (when in laptop mode) there are the usual indicator lights. From left to right power in indicator, battery level indicator (goes from green, to orange to red), disk activity and wireless network activity.
On the right side there is a compact flash slot, the power switch and a USB port that is hidden under a little white rubber flap. The latter two are white on white, so are a little hard to see in the photo below.
Ah.. there's that USB...
There is nothing across the back, just the battery.
On the other side there is a wireless hardware switch by the power connector (again, white on white so hard to see), an SD Card reader (which unfortunately I could not get to work with ReadyBoost), volume up and down controls, headphone jack and microphone jack.
On the front edge there is a connector for a dongle that gives you both an ethernet port and a VGA out.
There is also a mouse of sorts. To the right of the hinge (in laptop mode) there is a little joystick pointer. Also just above that on the screen bevel you can see the Ctrl-Alt-Del button and the bottom edge of the fingerprint reader.
On the other side of the hinge there are the left and right mouse buttons. Yes it really does run Vista!
There are a number of other handy hardware controls. Next to the mouse thumbstick there is a function button and a scroll up and scroll down button. The function button alters the action of the other hardware buttons. For instance function scroll up or scroll down = page up or page down.
Directly above the hinge there are two programmable hardware buttons and a screen rotate button.
By default one of the programmable buttons turns on the head lights. This is a handy little feature that illuminates the keyboard so you can type in the dark.
Another handy feature is the integrated web camera on the top edge of the screen.
Another good design feature is the stylus. It has been designed to telescope out so that it fits into the device but is still big enough to be usable when extended.
Before...
After...
Over all the U1010 is a very usable device. There is a lot packed into this tiny package and every aspect of the design shows that it has been carefully thought out. The price is very reasonable and performance is surprisingly snappy. All told a solid offering.