Fujitsu LIFEBOOK P772 (PH772 in Japan)

The P772 has been available for a few weeks in North America and even longer in Eastern markets.

I am currently using a P771 as my main mobile system with a ThinkPad X220 as a secondary.

The P771 is mostly great with a few exceptions; a glossy black lid, a keyboard that doesn't quite meet the original ThinkPad model, no trackpoint, and lastly, in the North American markets there is no option for a WWAN card (in turn, no secondary mSATA). Fortunately, the P772 also has an option for a matte lid although it seems nearly impossible to track down even in the few markets where it is available (parts of Europe, Southeast Asia). There are so few options available in the North American market that I have no desire to procure one from it. The North American market offers no WWAN/mSATA slot, no option for matte finish on coating (why Fujitsu covers the lovely magnesium body with plastic - I can't say) and no option for the secondary HDD/SSD modular bay chassis (One of my favorites and reasons for choosing the P series). There are many more options available in the foreign markets that you can research if you so choose.

Given the aforementioned, I am forced to purchase in either the Australian market or perhaps from a German company if I am to get the following configuration:

-WWAN/mSATA
-Swappable secondary modular HDD/SSD sleds
-no pre-installed Windows (I loathe when companies make me pay for something I delete immediately)
-DisplayPort with ExpressCard slot (North American market only allows DisplayPort/Smartcard or HDMI/ExpressCard combinations)
-Secondary modular battery
-I already have the modular bay pico projector for the P771. I believe it also fits in the P772.

Something I desperately need help with is where I can purchase a system from an Australian or German company who will sell and ship it to North America. I have contacted 5-6 Australian companies and they have all acted as though I am insane even for asking. I was going to use something like Conics or Dynamism to import from Japan but Fujitsu doesn't even offer as many options in their local Japanese market as they do in Australia. I consider that preposterous given Japan is the domestic market for the Japanese market and secondly, because the Japanese buyers are so technical and demand so much from their tech companies in terms of options et cetera.

Anyway, I really need to find a way to get a P772 out of Australia (possibly Europe if they offer the "2nd HDD fitting kit (FPCHFK58-K) "). If anyone has any ideas I would be very grateful as this is the system I have decided upon and have become neurotic about obtaining it. It has all the features I want in a 12" form factor (ideally, there would be a few more ports but it is doing well for a 12").

Sincerest thanks,

Abe

Also, I have scoured the net for the only available images of the P772 in a matte finish (Note: Fujitsu calls it the "P772 SC Matt" ["e" removed]). They are as follows:

Google Translate

OR as follows without translation:

U772³¬¼«±¾ÁìÏΣ¡¸»Ê¿Í¨Ïļ¾Ð±¾Í¼ÉÍ_¿Æ¼¼¹ö¶¯_Öйú¹ã²¥Íø

You will have to scroll down to find the images. The P772 fits my need of many features in an 11" to 12" form factor with a thick body (I can't stand slim notebooks, I prefer more ports and features with superior heat dissipation).

Lastly, you can also see a video of the P772 wherein a glimpse of the system can be seen:

Fujitsu LIFEBOOK P772 - YouTube

 

Has anyone taken delivery of a P772?

If so - impressions? Thumbnail reviews?

My P770 is going very, very strong, and may be in line for an upgrade to one or two SSDs. However, my second laptop (ASUS 17") is getting really old and never was properly supported for Windows 7, so it is a candidate for replacement.....

 

I just received my P772 a few days ago and have not had time to test it yet. I am happy with the layout, as the HD and RAM are easily accessed from rear panels. It's not so different in configuration from my current P8K notebooks, but so far I am unable to figure out how to attach a second 1TB drive as in the P8K. The P772 optical drive (Panasonic UJ8B2) has what appears to be a slimline SATA/power connector. There are some female slimline SATA to male SATA adapters available, but the opposite would be needed in this case. Of course the removable drive bay option would be best, but they are not available anywhere that I can find. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

 

I purchased an optical drive replacement caddy that allows putting a hard drive in the optica bay. This is in my P770, and it worked just fine. Don't have a drive in there just now since I don't need the space and don't want to kill the battery for no reason, but I can put a drive in any time.

It does mean opening up the system, since this does not give you access to swap devices from the outside.

The only drawback was that the cover for the caddy did not have a cutout for the SD card reader. I was able to modify the cover to allow this easily, it just mean filing the plastic back in one spot.

The caddy came from eBay. That was a couple of years ago, so I don't recall any other details.

Given that 2.5" drives are up to 1Gb capacity, and SSD drives are also up to 1Tb capacity, why do you need so much drive space?

 

Normally I download image files to three drives simultaneously, preferably two internal and one external. After using a Samsung 830 as the boot drive for a couple of days, I may just decide to put a 1TB drive in the bay drive and then eventually replace the boot drive with a 1TB SSD. The current 2.5" SSDs are not natively 1TB. I don't want to spend significantly more for a less reliable and lower-performing internal RAID drive.

Overall I am satisfied with the P772 after adding the SSD and 16GB of RAM. Together with the 2-core i5 CPU, performance is quite good for a 3 lb. notebook. For $2K it really should have an IPS display. I'm not a fan of the shiny plastic and the giant infinity logo. I'll probably put some gaffer's tape with my ID scrawled in Sharpie on the lid anyway. The P772 seems solid enough for my purposes and similar to the P8K it will be replacing. I am a little annoyed about the lack of some installed drivers, but they were easy enough to find.

The only remaining problem now is that the OmniPass fingerprint software will not install and does not seem to be downloadable. I really need to have this working for several people and would appreciate any ideas.

 

EB-1,

Really glad to see there are other people in North America who are fans of the P series. I'm using a P771 and an X220 at present. I'm usually on the P771.

I saw that you were considering some different options for drives in your P772. If you are like me, you opened it up and saw that they actually physically removed the PCIe connector that would have allowed you to plug in a WWAN card or, hopefully, an mSATA drive. It would be awesome if you could open the little door on the bottom of your system and see if they have left the port for it. In the case they did, I would test it with an mSATA drive. It could be the answer to your drive needs. You could pop a 128GB mSATA drive in and use the main drive bay for a large HDD or just use a secondary SDD. In my X220 I have one mSATA SSD and a second Intel 320 in the main drive bay. I've got FreeBSD on one and Linux on the other. I know that the PCIe unit is there for all models outside North America but I have yet to find out if they support mSATA. It is rather important to me as I am gearing up to buy a new notebook this month.

Just so you know, that modular bay that came with a DVD drive, Blu Ray, pico projector (I have one for my P771 that should fit the P772), or a secondary battery ALSO comes with an option for a HDD/SSD modular bay sled. It is only available in the Asia Pacific market which is why I went to all the trouble of finding the ONE place in all of Australia which will ship the P772 with WWAN and matte exterior as well as the HDD/SSD modular bay to international customers. It took emailing over 30 companies to find one. I am just on the verge of ordering one. I am definitely going to buy two of the HDD/SSD mod bays (they will likely also work in my P771 and switching SSDs between two notebooks would be wonderful. I am always unscrewing backplates/sideplates and moving drives around.)

The only question for me is if I am going to settle on a P772 or a Panasonic system. I almost ordered a CF-J10 through Dynamism but Panasonic stopped shipping it with an ExpressCard. If they still shipped with the ExpressCard slot on the right side I would be typing on one right now; I'm a big fan of the J10.

Then there was the NX2/SX2. Again, no ExpressCard slot (I use the ExpressCard slot all the time with various network adapters and smartcard reader/writer. I have a dual gigabit ExpressCard from StarTech which is invaluable. There is also the serial adapter.). The SX2 has a huge section taken up by a (in my opinion) a useless optical drive. The NX2 removes the drive but replaces it with nothing. What a waste! They could have added the ExpressCard slot there that so many professionals use or fill the space with a secondary battery. Instead, Panasonic just took out the useless optical drive and left a big empty hole. I considered getting the NX2, opening it up, and seeing if the connector on the mobo that would have connected to the optical drive could have been modified to by inserting an SSD in the empty space and connecting it. I would love to see the inside of an NX2 if someone has some pictures.

Finally, Panasonic just today released the CF-C2. I'm a big fan of that system. Dual batteries, ExpressCard, Dual cameras, NFC, fingerprint, barcode scanner, serial port, and much more. I really dislike the swivel touchscreen. I've never been a fan of tablets but at least they added supporting hinges on the side. If Panasonic made an 11.6" or 12.1" version of their CF-53 system it would be the absolutely perfect system for me (assuming they also hacked off the giant ridiculous handle). The one thing that may keep me from ordering a CF-C2 is the lack of swappable SSD bays that I will have with the P772. And one last thing... it is two-tone! I can't stand business systems that are not all black. I dislike the silver and black mix so much it could keep me form ordering it. I don't know why you can't simply order an all black model. It is one of the extremely few aesthetics I care about in my notebooks. I want matte black on everything.

As for your inquiry on the OmniPass issue - I have the same problem. My P771 came with the 32 bit version of 7 Pro. I installed 64 bit Pro when I discovered there was no way of getting the modular bay projector working under Linux. I was really let down. I honestly keep a partition installed JUST to run the modular bay in the rare times I pop it in. Anyway, the problem arose when I tried to download a 64 bit version of OmniPass from the Fujitsu site. There was no option. I emailed support and they said I would have to purchase it directly from OmniPass. I though that was ridiculous. You are stuck with whatever came on your initial install from Fujitsu. All they will provide is the drivers for the fingerprint reader which is largely useless without the OmniPass software.

Hope some of that helped.

Kind regards,

Abe

 

There is no connector for an mSATA card or anything else. I did receive a better drive tray for the 1TB HD and used the Fujitsu frame from the optical drive, so that all works and looks fine. Even the paid version of the OmniPass does not detect the fingerprint reader, so it is rather hopeless unless there is some other completely different software I can find.

 

Does anyone use the port replicator? Are any of the ports USB 3.0?

 

Only USB 2.0 on the port replicator.

 

Where did this end up being? I'm less interested in the HDD/SSD modular bay, but the lack of a matte exterior and WWAN capabilities were definite deficiencies I noted while looking at the North American P772. (I think I'm down to trying to decide between the P772 and the SX2 myself.)

 

anbaricGareot,

Still interested? Private message me.

Cheers,

Abe