tweaking toolbox 3.0

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550

As we've noted before, Windows is a far from ideal tablet operating system — but manufacturers continue to use it on their tablets, so there's clearly a market. Fujitsu's latest Windows 7 tablet is the 10.1in. Stylistic Q550 . A relatively small and neat device, the Q550 costs as much as a notebook, with prices starting at £749 (inc. VAT; £624.16 ex. VAT); it uses the new Intel Atom Z670 processor, which is designed primarily for tablets.

Design
The Stylistic Q550 is quite compact for a 10.1in. tablet, measuring 27.5cm wide by 19.2cm deep by 1.62cm thick. It's heavier than it looks, though, at 870g; this is noticeable if you hold the tablet in one hand for any length of time.

The build is quite robust, despite being entirely plastic. Fujitsu's trademark black and pale-grey colour scheme is used, the latter shade adorning the backplate. The back is dominated by a cover for the battery, but also houses a fingerprint scanner and 1.3-megapixel camera — there's a second front-facing VGA camera in the screen bezel. Neither of these camera specs are particularly high, but they're adequate for low-res photographs and videoconferencing.

The screen is surrounded by a fairly thick bezel, and — in what looks like a design effort to make it look less lost — the edges of the tablet are angled outwards. This also provides the opportunity to use icons to indicate the location of side-mounted connectors and ports.

These sit on all four sides of the tablet. Along the bottom edge (in landscape mode) is the power connector, a speaker grille and a connector for the optional docking station, which doubles as a stand. We'd prefer a kickstand built into the main chassis, but Fujitsu has not opted for this — perhaps for fear of denting docking station sales.

The Stylistic Q550 is 1.