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The good: Light enough for mobile use; four USB 2.0 ports; Suspend/Resume button; fast data transfer.
The bad: No modem connection; difficult to connect notebook; lacks modular bay or hard drive; cannot raise screen to eye level.
The bottom line: The Fujitsu Port Replicator offers a decent array of ports, but not much more.
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 02/11/2005
- Released on: 05/01/2004
The eye-catching black-and-silver Fujitsu Port Replicator supplies the ports you need at the office, and at 1.3 pounds, it's portable enough to bring on the road. The Replicator provides a quartet of USB 2.0 ports, and it's a good thing--when we docked the LifeBook S7010, its two USB outlets were blocked. The dock provides serial, parallel, external monitor, LAN, digital video, audio, and a PS/2 port, and it will charge the notebook?s battery. On the downside, it lacks a modular bay for an optical drive, a built-in hard drive, and a modem connection, although the notebook?s modem remains active when docked. The Replicator has a pair of Kensington cable lock slots--one for the notebook and one for the dock itself--but we don?t put much stock in this as an antitheft device: it'd be easy enough to pull it apart with a good-size screwdriver and a little elbow grease.
We had trouble aligning the LifeBook S7010 with the Replicator--simply docking the notebook was consistently frustrating. Once it was docked, we could tilt the notebook's screen backward a comfortable 5 degrees, but we couldn't raise the display to eye level. Thankfully, the notebook releases easier; there's a single button in back. The big bonus for those who move often between the road and a desk is the dock?s Suspend/Resume button, which conveniently puts the notebook to sleep or quickly wakes it up.
With a throughput of 75.6Mbps, the Fujitsu dock held pace with the Dell and Toshiba docks we tested, but it was slightly slower writing data with a throughput of 59.5Mbps. Fujitsu doesn?t include any printed manual with the device, but the company backs the Port Replicator with the typical one-year warranty; we prefer the three years offered by IBM and the two years promised by Targus. While we're fans of Fujitsu?s excellent online resources for notebooks, we were disappointed to find no mention of the Port Replicator on the company's support Web site. Fujitsu makes it easier to start a service or support request with e-mail or in its online chat room, but the toll-free phone help desk is open 24/7.
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