Hardware

With this post I'd like to share with everyone how easy it was to upgrade Fujitsu P5010D laptop to have a built-in DVD burner. Panasonic UJ811B DVD burner drive is a perfect fit for the laptop. You can get one on eBay for around $170 with shipping. Search for UJ811B. Make sure you bid on the one that says Fujitsu, not Dell. The one for the Dell has a different face plate that will not fit the Fujitsu. Starting bids at the time of this writing is $159. I got mine from somebody with a user name electroengineer. He charged $10 for shipping. The transaction was smooth and my drive arrived in about 4 days by certified mail.

Installing a drive is a snap and takes couple of minutes. Here is the photo of the UJ811B DVD burner and the original CD-RW/DVD drive that came with the laptop.

As you can see they are identical in size. Note that the CD-RW/DVD drive has the plastic housing on it. This housing needs to be transferred to the DVD Burner. To do that, unscrew the four screws on both sides of the original drive:


and pull the housing up and to the side to slide it from the drive.

Put it on the DVD burner in the reverse fashion and secure it with the screws. You are all set. Just stick the drive back into your Fujitsu and Windows should recognize it. Here is what it looks like in my laptop:

As soon as I inserted the drive, I was able to burn DVD-R disks at 2X with Roxio Easy CD Creator 6.

OK, it's finally here! Just like with my couch, getting it was not a smooth process, but I will not go into boring details of postponing the delivery date multiple times and shipping to a wrong address. To compensate me for all these troubles, laptopsinc.com (the place where I ordered it from), made sure that the laptop I was getting had no dead pixels.

This is the third laptop that I have owned.

Here are the laptop's specs:

• Intel M-900MHz ULV (Same as the Centrino Processor, but features the latest 802.11g wireless instead of 802.11b)
• 1MB L2 cache, 400MHz system bus speed, 32bit
• 512MB DDR (1GB Max 1-Slot)
• Vivid 10.6" WXGA TFT Display (1280x768)
• Intel 855GM with up to 64MB UMA
• 60GB Hard Drive
• Modular DVD & CDRW Drive
• 56K V.90 Global Modem
• 10/100mbps LAN
• 802.11g Broadcom (Wireless LAN)
• 2 USB 2.0 Ports
• Firewire Port
• Memory Stick/SD & Compact Flash Slots
• Line Out, Mic In, S-Video Out jacks
• 10.27” x 7.80” x 1.55”, 3.85lbs

Detailed Information (PDF)

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Videos

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Why did I buy it
The reason why I picked this laptop is because it has pretty much every feature under the sun and yet it's very compact and light. This laptop is going to be a perfect replacement of my old Sony VAIO which I used as a mobile karaoke machine. The new laptop has dual display support where I can have the window with the song lyrics be displayed on the TV via the built-in S-Video connector, and at the same time have the karaoke program control windows be displayed on the laptop screen.

This laptop is my first Wireless LAN compatible device and I was pleasantly surprized that in my apartment I was able to get the very strong and fast Wireless LAN signal. I have no idea where it is coming from, but I could surf the web at blazing speeds without any wires! This is so awesome! When I checked the IP address that I was getting, it turned out to be some Road Runner IP address. So probably my neighbors have Road Runner cable with a wireless router. Nice people! Too bad I already have Cable Modem at home, otherwise I would get totally free broadband internet connection, provided they keep it up all the time.

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Useful Links

• LeoG.net P-5000 Forum - This is a great resource for any future buyer or the owner of this or any other Fujitsu laptop.
• Fujitsu LifeBook P Series Notebooks - Fujutsu's own website.

More to come...

The following is the survival of the fittest among the computers that I have owned:

Desktops

8 Mhz, Intel 8088, 640 KB RAM, 720K Floppy Drive
33 Mhz, Intel 386, 8 MB RAM, 120 MB & 250 MB Hard drives
150 Mhz, Intel Pentium, 96 MB RAM, 1.6 GB & 8.4 GB Hard drives, CD-ROM
450 Mhz, Intel Pentium II, 128 MB RAM, 16 GB Hard drive, CD-ROM
2.2 Ghz, Intel Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 2 X 120 GB Hard drives, DVD-RW/ROM
3.2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4, 1GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Disk, 160 GB Removable Hard Disk, 8X DVD+-RW Dual Layer drive, DVD-ROM Drive

Laptops

Compaq - 20 Mhz, Intel 386SX, 8MB RAM, 60MB Hard Disk, 10" B/W LCD
Sony VAIO PCG-F590 - 750 Mhz, Intel Pentium 3, 128MB RAM, 30 GB Hard Disk, 15" 1024x768 Color LCD
Fujitsu Lifebook P51010 - 900 Mhz, Intel Centrino, 512MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Disk, 10.6" 1280x1024 Color LCD