What the P1120 gives me, to compensate for those shortcomings, is portability and long battery life. I purchased an additional High-Capacity battery, in addition to the pre-installed standard battery, for about $100 extra. On a recent flight from Orlando to Los Angeles, I used it for practically all of the five-hour flight, and the power indicator still showed a 48% charge remaining afterward. Granted, this was mostly at the dimmest or second-dimmest display setting (the window shades were drawn for much of the time, for the benefit of the in-flight movie viewers), and I was mostly reading electronic documents-- not exactly a high power-demanding activity. Still, Fujitsu's claim of a nine-hour batter life appears to be valid. Of course, using the internal wireless networking adapter (802.11b) cuts down on battery life significantly, but not unbearably-- by about 30 percent, in my experience.

As for portability, the P1120 is about as extreme as you can get without further descending into the handheld territory occupied by PalmOS, PocketPC, Psion, etc. About the size of a bestseller hardback novel, the most immediate problem I had on receiving it was finding a suitable carrying case. I considered creating a stealth case, of sorts, out of a hollowed-out textbook with mouse pads for shock absorption and velcro closures-- an option that I may yet revisit in the future. For now, however, I've settled on an Eddie Bauer backpack with a Camelback-style pocket for a hydration bladder, into which the P1120 fits nicely, leaving room for a book or two and some travel necessities. (As a bonus, this pack doesn't scream "STEAL ME!" the way some ad-hoc laptop bags do.) I use the High-Capacity battery almost exclusively. It protrudes a little with the screen folded up, but that's not too noticeable. With the standard battery, it's actually the screen that protrudes slightly, giving the P1120 a minor overbite.

Performance is not the P1120's strong suit, but buyers of ultraportables must be willing to sacrifice a bit in that department. The heart of the machine is an 800 MHz Transmeta Crusoe CPU, whose specialty is low power consumption, not speed. Because I use it primarily for recreational web surfing while sitting on my sofa, and for massive electronic document storage and browsing for the occasional business trip, its performance is adequate for me. The OpenOffice.org suite, a renowned performance hog, runs acceptably-- once it's loaded, at least. And the on-board ATI Mobility Radeon graphics implementation does a decent job with the 3D Pinball game included with Windows XP, but not being much of a gamer, I haven't tried much beyond that. On the plus side, this is one of the few laptops that you can actually stand to use directly on your lap for long stints, as the low power components generate relatively little heat.

Much of the time that I lose due to the P1120's sluggish performance, I more than make up with the P1120's delightful touchscreen. Compared to using a touchpad on other notebooks, it makes navigating a breeze. (Why Fujitsu doesn't also offer a touchscreen on the slightly larger P2000 series is beyond me.) This isn't a tablet PC-- no handwriting recognition-- but just the convenience of directly clicking on the screen has me dreading the chore of using my regular desktop PC at the office. A standard pencil-eraser-sized cursor pointer between the G, H and B keys, along with three mouse-style buttons below the space bar, are also included for tasks that require more than the simple click or click-and-drag operations supported by the touchscreen.

The display itself, though small at 8.9", is crisp at its native 1024x600 resolution. It's bright enough in normal room light, though I found it too dim to use in a car during the daytime. The keyboard, as you might expect in such a small package, is a bit cramped. It's adequate, though; I'm using it to touch-type this review. The alphanumeric keys are spaced on roughly 16 mm centers horizontally, as opposed to 18.5 mm for a standard 101-key keyboard. With my average-sized hands, I've adapted to it, but fatter fingers might encounter difficulty.

There is a single, recessed buton to the left of the display that supposedly launches whatever email application you configure, but I've never used that feature. Similarly, there's an "email waiting" icon in the monochromatic LCD display below the main screen. Incidentally, that little display also includes indicators for power, approximate battery charge, hard drive access, PC Card access, and the usual num/caps/scroll lock.

I've never heard laptop speakers that were useful, beyond generating the usual system beeps and bonks. Those in the P1120 seem particularly bad, though, and including two of them for stereo is just plain silly. Aside from that, however, the on-board audio system is good enough for listening to mp3 music files with walkman quality, using headphones. (For all I know, it might be even better; I haven't tried it with anything else.)

[Update: I must add, here, that the P1120's audio output level is a bit low, even with the volume set to max, when using some headphones-- particularly an inexpensive pair of Koss walkman-style phones. I got better results with Aiwa's noise canceling HP-CN5 headphones, whether or not their noise canceling circuitry was switched on. Experimentation will probably yield the best results here, but you might look for headphones with relatively low impedance and/or high sensitivity; the Aiwas are rated at 36 ohms and 106dB, respectively, for what it's worth. --saustin6m, 8/5/03]

I ordered the P1120 with the optional, external USB floppy drive, just in case, but I haven't had to use it yet. I didn't order the optional, external CD-ROM drive, as the price wasn't sufficiently below that of a decent third-party combo drive. For now, I just install applications by sharing the CD drive of my desktop PC, mapped to a network drive on the P1120; or, more frequently, by downloading them directly to the P1120 via broadband.

Although I'm a frequent unix/linux user and developer, I have yet to try installing Linux on the P1120. Those seeking to try might start by consulting the following pages:
* http://hamsterrepublic.com/james/linux/lifebook-p1000.php
* http://www.livne.co.il/linux/Laptop/
The latter contains some neat ideas on cramming travel information into laptops, regardless of the OS used. Maybe someone could start selling "Don't Panic!" decals for the P1120. :-)

Just for completeness, the P1120's external interfaces include:
* 10/100 ethernet (RJ-45)
* modem (RJ-11)
* 2 USB ports
* headphone out (1/8")
* microphone in (1/8")
* PC Card slot (Type I & II support)

For complete specs, go to: http://www.fujitsupc.com/www/products_notebooks.shtml?products/notebooks/tech_specs/p1000_fall02_ts#10

Other items included in the box were:
* AC adapter and power cord
* Mini VGA cable for connecting to an external monitor
* Stylus, with extra caps
* Modem cable (but no ethernet cable)
* Drivers & Applications CD

P.S.: The hyperlinks I would've liked to add in the above review wouldn't work, as Epinions doesn't allow off-site linking. You'll have to manually copy-and-paste the URLs into your browser's address bar; sorry for the inconvenience.

Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 1199.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: 701-800
RAM: 256
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30