Competing in the budget laptop market is hard, what with the cut-throat competition from giants like Dell and HP and the countless low-priced models being offered. Amid this struggle, Fujitsu was faced with a particular challenge with its LifeBook A1110 ($799 direct): How to add value to this clunker without driving its price up? The company chose to hide its boring design (and maybe disguise some of that heft) by offering the A1110 with any of three interchangeable snap-on lids—colorful, bold-looking faceplates that will either impress or scare you away. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to make the LifeBook stand out among its peers.

The A1110 is basically a less-expensive version of the Fujitsu LifeBook A6120. Gently tap the frame and you can feel the vibration of the cheap plastic from which it's made. The look bespeaks simplicity, and its bulky (6.3-pound) frame isn't very flattering. Granted, the heft is a result of a 15.4-inch screen, one of the brightest I've seen on a value system. The A1110, however, would've fared better with a 14-inch screen, like those of the HP Pavilion dv2800t and the Gateway T-6828. With the smaller—yet roomy enough—screens, those two systems are more portable, both weighing well below 6 pounds.

Fujitsu is trying to enliven the A1110's looks with three different snap-on lids that fit snugly over the top half of the laptop. The one that came with my configuration is called Labyrinth Green. For me, its swirling flourishes conjure up images of a mythical reptile. The other two options are Boyle Blue and Butterfly Pink. Dell has played around with the idea of snap-on skins on its XPS M170—a three-year-old gaming laptop—but retired this gimmick some time ago. Maybe Fujitsu will have better luck with theirs. In contrast, the HP dv2800t offers a more permanent solution—in-mold decorative design with a modern appeal. Even the T-6828's solid, glossy red is more appealing.

The A1110's full-size keyboard is well made and comfortable to type on. The mouse buttons felt loose when pressed, but I suspect that may be a preproduction flaw. This laptop comes with three USB ports, a dual-layer DVD burner, an SD slot, and a built-in webcam. The 250GB hard drive is a good size, which both the HP dv2800t and the Gateway T-6836 offer as well.

Speed is the A1110's one redeeming quality. It runs on a 2.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800, which is faster, on paper, than the Gateway's 1.8-GHz T5450 processor. Most Gateway laptops, even the budget ones, are now offering 3GB of memory, so the A1110's 3GB configuration is nothing unusual. Still, with its combination of the processor and memory, the A1110 performed well on SYSMark 2007 Preview benchmarks, where it bettered the T-6828's Overall score by 4 percent. On CineBench R10, it surpassed the Gateway's score by 10 percent. The A1110's performance on the MobileMark 2007 battery test was underwhelming: with its 43-Wh battery, is smaller than those in the T-6828 and the dv2800t, it managed only 2 hours 20 minutes.

With laptops, when you get down to a very low price point, it's the little things that set them apart. In this case, the Fujitsu LifeBook A1110 performed as well as its competitors in speed tests, yet it came up short on battery life. Its price is right—the same as the T-6828's, and $200 less than the dv2800t's—but its features are hardly worth bragging about. If Fujitsu had spent more time working on differentiating the A1110, instead of disguising the flaws with snap-on lids, this laptop would have fared better against its peers.

Check out the Fujitsu LifeBook A1110's performance test results.

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