Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 hands-on

Unless you're eagerly anticipating your IT department handing one of these to you, something tells us the Stylistic Q550 isn't the tablet you're looking for. Why's that? Everything about the experience screams "corporate," starting with our time at Fujitsu's booth earlier today where business dealings to deploy the tablet in some corporate environment were literally happening before our very eyes. There was only one unit in the vicinity -- and the suits were relentless in trying to get their paws on it -- but we spent just long enough with it to figure out that there are far, far better-suited consumer options out there; as far as we can tell, that's exactly how Fujitsu wants it. That opinion was further reinforced by the presence of a smart card reader on the side (for secure logins), a fingerprint scanner on back, and old-school pen input, which Fujitsu tells us that legacy tablet users (read: medical personnel and field data entry folks) still want. It can take fingers, too, but we felt like the quality of the display is compromised a bit for the dual-mode support. Interestingly, there's no place to store the pen in the tablet anyway; you'll need the accessory case for that.

The company is talking about its custom Windows 7 skin as a key differentiator. The build they had on the demo unit was a little buggy, but at any rate, we came away with the impression that it's basically just a finger-friendly view to launch apps; fortunately, the full Windows experience -- which is just as non-touch-optimized as ever -- is just a tap away. We were hoping the Oak Trail guts would keep everything snappy, but the pre-release code here was actually lagging pretty badly as we navigated from screen to screen. Don't get us wrong: we're sure these are precisely the specs that some enterprise customers are looking for... but as an individual, gadget-loving, tablet-wanting human being, we're pretty sure they aren't the specs that you're looking for.