Low cost, sexy laptop. (Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L1310G)

Member Name: chris667

Product:	Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L1310G
Date:	10/06/08 (393 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, pretty, good screen

Disadvantages: Needs extra memory to work properly, poor battery life

I had one of these for a while, and was fairly happy with it.
The pros:
Cheap! You can buy this from Staples with 1yrs interest free credit if you spend £500.
Beautiful to look at, with a big, clear display.
Cons:
Slow out of the box. It uses 256MB shared memory for its video, so with the 512MB ram it was supplied with it never worked very well. Why do manufacturers underspecify on ram like this? I bought 2GB for about £40-odd from Crucial memory, and after I did this, it was fast, but I'd rather have paid more and not had to do this. How many non-technical people put up with computers that don't work properly?
It can run Fedora core, but needs a lot of fiddling about to work. You need to hunt around and install a special video driver, which is not easy for a beginner. If you want a Linux machine, I wouldn't start from here!
One more thing - battery life is rubbish.
The verdict:
I donated this to my friend who was emigrating and needed a laptop to keep in touch, and for casual use he is happy with it. So if you want a cheap, new laptop, OK, this is a good choice. But be aware of the memory issue.

Summary: I wouldn't bother

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