11. Of Keys And Mice

Though the keys on the P1510D keyboard are smaller than normal, with a little practice I was able to use my touch typing skills to input text with reasonable accuracy. Key travel and feel are fine. The P1510D's keyboard and keys are so much easier to use than those on Toshiba's U100-S213. However, don't get the idea that the Fujitsu's keyboard is anywhere near the equivalent of keyboards on larger ultra lightweight laptops like Dell's Latitude X1 or notebook computers or that keyboard you use with your desktop computer. Ergonomically they're all superior to the P1510D's keyboard.

There is no room for a mouse touchpad for controlling the position of the mouse on the screen. Instead the P1510D has a joystick pointing device situated just below the G and H keys. Initially I found the device very difficult to use. The on-screen mouse arrow consistently drifted beyond the object I wanted to highlight and activate. So I spent a lot of time moving the joystick back and forth and up and down in an effort to get the pointer on target. With a few Control Panel adjustments and a period of using the joystick I was better able to control the mouse arrow, but never anywhere near as well as with a touchpad.

Although there is no touchpad, the P1510D does have standard left and right mouse buttons where the touchpad would be. Between the mouse buttons is a button that can be used to scroll in a Window. As if all of that isn't enough, you can push down on the joystick to accomplish various things. The default is a left mouse click. I had various levels of success with this capability. For example, I sometimes pushed down ever so slightly on the joystick as I was passing over the close button on a window, which I then closed by accident. Again, after a few Control Panel adjustments, I was able to get press-the-joystick functionality to work better for me.

Of course all of these cares about keyboard and key size and the lack of a touchpad simply melt when I use the P1510D as a Tablet PC. Handwritten and voice input coupled with an on-screen graphical keyboard with keys activated by the stylus makes almost all of the pain go away. Without Tablet PC, some might find the P1510D difficult to use for extended periods. With Tablet PC the laptop becomes a highly functional, highly mobile computer.