Fujitsu Q550 in the house! (initial review and impressions)

[PaulB]

Hello,

Just received a Fujistu Q550 62GB. The 62GB also comes with an extended battery. Charging it up now. Review to follow later.

I also have a 256GB 2.5" SATA SSD -- Samsung 470.

Update:

The Q550 has been updated with the Fujitsu suggested video driver printed on a piece of paper when the box is opened.

The present experience is, overall, disappointing. It all seems to be related to the Intel OakTrail System On Chip (SOC).
Windows Experience Index - 2.0 (the processor)

The Bad: The Q550 is slow, it's laggy, video performance is not good at all. The response isn't "snappy" and usually appears to be struggling all the time. The Auto Rotation program is barely usable. The Windows 7 Aero features and animations are painful. YouTube is almost unwatchable. Considering the inclusion of SSD the boot time is slow. The SSD is SATA but installing a regular 2.5" SATA notebook drive is impossible: No Samsung 470 for this tablet's future. The included Toshiba drive is 2.5 wide but only half length and no casing. No room at all. No built-in place to store the pen. No SDXC. Rotating the screen while watching video results in a garbled screen that doesn't recover - just close the window. The internet seems very slow (even with Firefox) despite a rather good SpeedTest schore (see The Good).

The OK: The touchscreen works but using it with the standard Windows 7 interface is frustrating. Thankfully Fujitsu includes its own "touch friendly" interface that helps somewhat. The handwriting recognition is good, if a bit slow. The matte surface of the display seems to "grip" the N-Trig pen slightly. The sound through the headphone jack is decent for light audio use.

The Good: The LED screen is quite nice: Great sharpness, color and viewing angles. It is widescreen (1280x800). The screen surface is matte with some sort of antireflective coating -- reflections are not a problem. The extended battery seems to have good life, the WiFi connection is fast (21mbps down, 1.5mbps up) over 802.11n. The N-Trig pen was surprisingly good (my first experience with N-Trig). Not as nice as WACOM but perhaps better than previous N-trig experiences reported in the past. The SD card reader seems reasonably fast. The device is light in weight (plastic) with a nice rubberized coating for the the back, but in my experience, that coating seems to show wear fairly quickly and easily.

Will update with other, newer drivers and see how it goes. If this is the best we can expect from OakTrail, it does not bode well for this SOC.

Overall verdict for now: disappointing
Comparison to the LE1700 -- except for screen resolution (mine is 1024x768) and weight, the LE1700 is a clear winner.