A great budget laptop! (Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7320)

Member Name: wildrose9104

Product:	Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7320
Date:	26/05/07 (1270 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Large memory, compact, neat, easy to use, has great software, easy to get replacement parts

Disadvantages: Sometimes a bit slow, keyboard sometimes plays up when typing, speaker a bit small.

Looking for a laptop can be a nightmare and especially of you don't really have a clue what youre looking for!
As a student I needed to purchase one that would be reliable, have a long battery life (or satisfactory at least), plenty of RAM memory, at least 60GB of Hardrive memory, and was fuss-free and simple to use.

I had a budget and was not going to break it! Eventually after much to-do, I came across this laptop - the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo L7320. A smart, compact and attractive laptop.

It comes with many features including a CD/DVD player/burner, 3 USB connection sockets, headphone and mic sockets, Windows XP package, Microsoft Works, Nero 7 Essentials, Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer 2003 and much more.

The design of the top of the laptop lid is smart in silver, with a Fujitsu Siemens computer logo set in a black panel. To open, there is a silver colouered switch which you slide to the right as you lift up the lid, and here you are presented with the laptop itself in all it's glory!

The screen surround is black and has protective little rubber pads at the top around the edges to protect it when you close the lid. The keyboard is a reasonable size, although sometimes I find it to be rather small. The keys are black and have bold white (and blue) type on them. One downfall i find with this keypad is that for some unknown reason when typing, it will suddenly skip backwards somewhere in the text you have written which can be rather annoying. I would say this is the only major problem I have actually found with this laptop!

The mousepad is rectangular in shape and is a pale gray colour. It is easy to use and there are two silver rectangular buttons for what would normally be on your typical desktop PC mouse, left and right buttons. People often find it hard to convert from a PC mouse to a mousepad, and I did find it difficult at first, however, this mousepad is a good size and once you start using it, it becomes second nature!

Onto battery power - you can either use the battery supplied or the adaptor to power your laptop. I generally keep the adaptor plugged in, as the battery life is about an hour and I usually need longer! When the battery is low, it gives you a warning 5 minutes before your battery will run out and if you forget to re-charge or switch off, it will turn off automatically, so when you switch on again, you will have your programmes where you left off, which has been a lifesaver when I have been writing assignments! (Not wise I know!)

There is also a small speaker on the top left corner which provides good sound, however the top volume level isn't actually that loud to be honest, which is a shame. Some people might also find the sound a bit 'tinny', but I'm sure if you change your preferences in your Media player, this can be adjusted to some sort of reasonable level.

Along the bottom of the laptop are 8 small LED lights to indicate power on and off, caps lock, scr lock and internet on/off. One point to note about internet connection is that in order to activate a connection you need to press Fn and F2 simultaneously, otherwise as far as I am aware you cannot get an internet connection.

As far as damage goes, I did have a little accident with a glass of milk right over the keyboard. If this ever happens to you, turn off/remove battery/adaptor straight away as this can prevent further damage. Also do not try and use a heat source like I did to try and dry any liquids, as I tried using a hairdryer on it's lowest setting and this melted the keys.

So... after getting my dad to check out my laptop all I needed was a replacement keyboard. Fujitsu Siemens themselves do not provide replacement parts for their products but they do provide contact details for the warehouse that can sell them to you, which can be found on the UK website for Fujitsu Siemens.

After ringing them up about a replacement keyboard all was sorted and for a mere £20 (£10 p+p) I had a new keyboard! They also do many other replacement parts.

Overall I would say this is a pretty reliable laptop. Starting up can be a bit slow, but other than that it's great if you are on a budget and need something that has a good amount of memory and plenty of media packages to get you started!

Summary: A great laptop for those on a budget who need reliability and plenty of memory

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