When many people think of ‘netbooks’ they often picture devices like the ASUS . Cheap and simple to use, ultraportable notebooks have proven to be a hit thanks to their convenient size, despite their frequent lack of high-end features.

Although Fujitsu’s LifeBook U2010 is just as portable as the EeePC, it’s completely different in almost every other respect. More features, better performance and a much higher price tag mean that this small notebook is a tempting, albeit pricey, solution for those craving more from their tiny machines.

The most impressive aspect of the LifeBook is its tiny stature. Measuring just 172x135x34mm and weighing just 590g minus the power supply (800g all together), the U2010 is barely the weight of two smartphones. It’s also aesthetically impressive, avoiding the bizarre wings of its cousin, the .

The 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor that powers the U2010 has been designed for this type of unit. Small and energy efficient, the relatively powerful Atom compares favourably to previous CPUs and runs the Windows Vista Business operating system very smoothly during basic office tasks. Heat isn’t an issue and the device remains comfortable to hold throughout use.

One of the major upgrades to the U series is the jump to the Atom platform. Not only does it perform much faster than the previous 800MHz processor, it surprisingly uses less power at the same time. Thanks to the new chipset, the rated battery life has also been significantly improved from around 2 hours on the U1010 to up to 8 hours on the LifeBook U2010.

As an interesting aside, this LifeBook uses the Atom z530 chip instead of the newer Atom n270 processor. The main difference between them is that the former supports virtualization technology and generates less heat at 2W (compared with 2.5W for the Atom N270). However, since both models have the same clock cycle and 512KB L2 cache, it’s unlikely that there will be any discernable performance difference during usage.