4. Using The Fujitsu Lifebook N6410: Buttons, Lights And Ports And Switches

Let's take a walk around the N6410 for a quick look at its wide array of buttons, lights, ports, switches and other interesting features.

Under Windows XP Pro or Home, you control the CD/DVD player in a unique way, at least for a mobile computer. You use a round control that sits just north of the keyboard. It works like the circular control wheels on some DVD players and video tape recorders. You can see the control wheel in the photo below. The control wheel can also function as an application launcher. You choose among the two functions with the mode button also shown in the photo below. The two illustrations following the photo show how the control wheel works both to operate the CD/DVD player and for launching applications.

From left to right: WAN on/off, mode button, media player/application launcher control wheel, power button. Left to right, the lights in the middle just above the keyboard indicate: battery status (charged or not), battery charging, disk access, new email, num lock and scroll lock.

How the media player/application launcher control wheel works.

The control wheel doesn't work to control the CD/DVD player with Windows XP Media Center Edition. However, Fujitsu does supply a nice IR-based remote control and receiver for MCE, so it is not a great loss. The remote control receiver must be connected to a specific USB port on the N6410. For the record, the control wheel does work for the application launcher function under MCE. Also, there is no support for using the CD/DVD player without booting Windows.

A remote control lets you control the Fujitsu N6410's CD/DVD drive under Windows XP Media Center Edition.

To round out the N6410's multimedia functionality, Fujitsu provides an optional internal or external TV tuner/video capture device that supports recording video and audio signals. This device, which in the USA can tune VHF-UHF channels 2-69 and a range of cable TV channels, adds a number of audio and video inputs to the N6410. See the photo and caption below for these inputs.

From left to right: DC power jack, [With the TV tuner/video capture device installed: S-Video input, video input (composite), analog audio input], CD/DVD drive.

From left to right top to bottom: card slot (MS, SD, xD), ExpressCard, IEEE 1934, headphone/SPDIF, microphone, USB 2.0, PC Card.

From left to right: S-Video out, USB 2.0 (3 ports), air vents, VGA out, USB 2.0 (the IR receiver must be plugged into this port), LAN, lock slot.