Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7300

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7300 for over 6 years and still works very well. No failures, its functionality is beginning to become outdated, but I was very pleased with its performance.

Good Working PC

Slow, bad graphics card, very loud.

It's not a PC to play movies or heavy programs, therefore I dont recommend this Fujitsu Siemens Amilo laptop.

Good - Value for money, Reliability.

Bad - Low performance.

If you want a low budget, reliable laptop then I suggest to buy it...

I bought a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7300 laptop from PC World in the January sales for £500. I bought it for word processing, light multimedia work and DVD playback.

Firstly I was very impressed by the hard disk size (60GB). This is amazing for the price, and also the cache rate of 1MB compared with 256kb on similar machines. The RAM was good to start off with (512MB) with a relatively easy to find upgrade available. When I got it out of the box it looked good. The silver casing looks professional and well made, and everything is set out well.

When switched on, I was quite dissatisfied with the speed of the processor (1.5ghz Celeron) which was to be expected, as Celeron's are not meant to be better than Pentiums! The XGA screen is very nice with a slightly wider than usual aspect, so it's nice to work with. The only problem I had with the screen is the gloss finish, which I am told is the standard with all modern laptops and notebooks. It's nice and bright, and offers a good contrast.

It was only when I tried to connect the computer to my wireless network that I saw its main downfall! The wireless adapter has the worst signal I have ever seen. It seems like you have to be within 5 metres of the router to get an excellent signal, and it keeps cutting out. People who rely on wireless networking would be advised to buy a PCMCIA card as soon as possible because the internal one is not reliable.

The graphics on the machine are very good (256MB), and the DVD drive is fast enough for seamless playback and recording. The throttling capabilities on the processor offer a simulated speed of around 2Ghz, which helps when doing graphical work, but there again, it does drain your battery.

The battery is awful! The longest you get on there is about 1hour 15 minutes - or so it says. The reality is that the battery lasts about 40 minutes. It has to be one of the most expensive batteries to replace on the market, at about £100! It's best to remove the battery and use mains where possible to sustain the life of the thing!

Overall, this laptop is very good value, and it has some very useful features. It's practical for student and business use, but not really for multimedia. If you were to use it for multimedia, you would need a memory upgrade to 1012MB which would cost about £30 nowadays. The computer runs seamlessly with Windows XP and crashes very very occasionally! I would recommend it to any student or business man wanting to take their affairs outside of the office or student digs!