TH2002
Experienced Member
Released in 1999 and discontinued less than a year later in 2000, the Fujitsu Stylistic LT was an extremely short lived tablet PC, quickly succeeded by the LT C-500 in 2000 and the LT P-600 in 2001.
Again, it is NOT to be confused with the LT C-500! Although they look very similar and are compatible with the same accessories, they are different systems. I have attached a photo of my LT and LT C-500 next to each other for reference.
On to my usual categories:
Specifications:
-233MHz Pentium I MMX (compared with a 500MHz Celeron on the C-500)
-TFT active matrix display (some of these came with transflective displays)
-NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD
-64 MB of RAM
-4 GB Fujitsu HDD
-ESS 1879S AudioDrive
Build Quality: A
Nothing to complain about in regards to the machine itself; it feels very solid. Unfortunately I did have one of my styluses break, but thank goodness I had an extra one to take from my C-500.
Display Quality: A+
The TFT active matrix screen actually looks fantastic! Colors are bright and the contrast is good.
Overall Design: B+
The Stylistic LT has a lot of things going for it: for one, it's a very compact machine, coming in at only 6.3 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches - and that includes the extended battery. For those looking to save space with their vintage computer collection and/or looking for a system that is extremely portable, it's a great choice. The battery on mine holds a charge for about 45 minutes, not half bad for a computer this age! The port selection is a bit underwhelming without the docking station: you have headphone and microphone jacks, an IR blaster, two PCMCIA card slots, a USB port and a charging port. Fortunately, the USB port makes data transfer a breeze by vintage computer standards. With the right drivers (in my case, Inside Out Networks USB 1.x v2.55) you can easily use a USB CD drive or pen-drive for data transfer. With the docking station you gain PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, ethernet, another USB port, a floppy drive port, another power port, parallel, VGA out and serial. Definitely a much better port selection if you intend on picking up the docking station along with the tablet.
One complaint I have in this section is that there's very little room for upgrades. After removing seven or eight screws, the back panel comes off fairly easily, revealing the HDD and motherboard. The HDD can be removed after removing another screw, but everything else including the 64 MB of RAM is soldered directly to the motherboard. By comparison, on the LT C-500 the HDD is underneath its own little door and requires just two screws to remove, though it also needs an adapter cable that uses a proprietary connector - on the original LT, it is just a standard IDE connector.
Gaming: D-
Warning that this section is extremely subjective, and I only speak by my experience here. Regardless, this is where I had lots of trouble. These systems can run Windows 95 (though I couldn't get the pen driver to work under 95), NT 4.0 and Windows 98. I ended up going with NT 4.0 since this is my first time running it on actual hardware. While NT 4.0 is definitely a fun OS to tinker with, it's NOT a gaming OS and the amount of games you can run is even less when you combine it with a Stylistic LT.
Early 32-bit Windows games are going to be your best bet. Here's a list of the games that worked:
Bottom line: Can it game? If you want a space-saving Windows 98 desktop setup, then sure, if you can manage to get your hands on one. Still, should you get one of these with the sole idea of using it as a retro gaming machine? Absolutely not.
Novelty: A
It's a compact tablet running Windows NT 4.0! How many times can you say you've seen one of those? In my opinion, running Windows 98 just isn't as special, but still pretty cool if you find old tablet computers fascinating.
Other comments:
For some reason, under NT 4.0, the pen driver sometimes cuts out when trying to drag files about. Not sure if it's a driver issue or something I'm invoking accidentally, but it is incredibly infuriating at times. Fortunately, pressing the power button to put the computer on standby and waking it back up seems to fix the pen issue, but annoyingly doing so kills the USB driver - and to fix the USB driver, the only fix is to restart the computer. Another thing is that to log on to the computer, you have to plug in a keyboard (or use the Fujitsu IR wireless keyboard) to press CTRL+ALT+DEL - unless you install autologon, which I can't get to work either. Finally, the SB16 emulation by the ESS chip is acceptable, but the FM synth emulation is awful.
Overall Verdict:
These aren't great gaming machines, at all. They can certainly play games, especially with the aforementioned use of Win98 and the docking station, but there are much better options out there if you want to get into the vintage computer hobby primarily or solely for gaming. Regardless, it's a neat system that you can definitely have some fun with if you like OS tinkering, drawing and enjoying certain games in a rather silly way. It's overall well designed and feels very solid, not to mention a space-saver and very portable if those are on your checklist. I don't recommend these systems for gamers or first time collectors, but if you're into vintage tablet computers, old operating systems in general and/or looking for an interesting challenge to see what programs and games you can get running, you will definitely find one of these systems to be fascinating.
My rating: 6/10
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Again, it is NOT to be confused with the LT C-500! Although they look very similar and are compatible with the same accessories, they are different systems. I have attached a photo of my LT and LT C-500 next to each other for reference.
On to my usual categories:
Specifications:
-233MHz Pentium I MMX (compared with a 500MHz Celeron on the C-500)
-TFT active matrix display (some of these came with transflective displays)
-NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD
-64 MB of RAM
-4 GB Fujitsu HDD
-ESS 1879S AudioDrive
Build Quality: A
Nothing to complain about in regards to the machine itself; it feels very solid. Unfortunately I did have one of my styluses break, but thank goodness I had an extra one to take from my C-500.
Display Quality: A+
The TFT active matrix screen actually looks fantastic! Colors are bright and the contrast is good.
Overall Design: B+
The Stylistic LT has a lot of things going for it: for one, it's a very compact machine, coming in at only 6.3 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches - and that includes the extended battery. For those looking to save space with their vintage computer collection and/or looking for a system that is extremely portable, it's a great choice. The battery on mine holds a charge for about 45 minutes, not half bad for a computer this age! The port selection is a bit underwhelming without the docking station: you have headphone and microphone jacks, an IR blaster, two PCMCIA card slots, a USB port and a charging port. Fortunately, the USB port makes data transfer a breeze by vintage computer standards. With the right drivers (in my case, Inside Out Networks USB 1.x v2.55) you can easily use a USB CD drive or pen-drive for data transfer. With the docking station you gain PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, ethernet, another USB port, a floppy drive port, another power port, parallel, VGA out and serial. Definitely a much better port selection if you intend on picking up the docking station along with the tablet.
One complaint I have in this section is that there's very little room for upgrades. After removing seven or eight screws, the back panel comes off fairly easily, revealing the HDD and motherboard. The HDD can be removed after removing another screw, but everything else including the 64 MB of RAM is soldered directly to the motherboard. By comparison, on the LT C-500 the HDD is underneath its own little door and requires just two screws to remove, though it also needs an adapter cable that uses a proprietary connector - on the original LT, it is just a standard IDE connector.
Gaming: D-
Warning that this section is extremely subjective, and I only speak by my experience here. Regardless, this is where I had lots of trouble. These systems can run Windows 95 (though I couldn't get the pen driver to work under 95), NT 4.0 and Windows 98. I ended up going with NT 4.0 since this is my first time running it on actual hardware. While NT 4.0 is definitely a fun OS to tinker with, it's NOT a gaming OS and the amount of games you can run is even less when you combine it with a Stylistic LT.
Early 32-bit Windows games are going to be your best bet. Here's a list of the games that worked:
- Over the Reich: Works perfectly, and since it is a mouse-based game, uses the stylus well. Overall a lot of fun to play.
- Tetris Lite for Windows 95: Works well except for the high score board. Can even use the buttons on the side of the tablet, though recommend hooking up a keyboard.
- Roller Coaster Tycoon: Works well with the stylus, though the game requires the CD (and thus hooking up a USB CD drive) to play unless you patch the game to run without it.
- DOOM: Doom95 is the better choice and very playable, though I recommend lowering the resolution and playing in full screen for it to run at an acceptable framerate. NTDOOM also works, though you're stuck playing in a small window unless you want to deal with extremely low framerates and screen tearing. Obviously no use for the stylus here.
- SimCity 3000: loads to "unknown exception" error
- Microsoft Entertainment Pack: 16-bit Windows 3.x applications don't work
- Warheads: doesn't run under Windows NT
- Return Fire: doesn't run under Windows NT
- Close Combat: doesn't run under Windows NT - installs using a special RUN command, but won't launch after installing
- Close Combat - A Bridge Too Far: loads to a "multimedia error" - might be fixable, but I didn't bother trying
Bottom line: Can it game? If you want a space-saving Windows 98 desktop setup, then sure, if you can manage to get your hands on one. Still, should you get one of these with the sole idea of using it as a retro gaming machine? Absolutely not.
Novelty: A
It's a compact tablet running Windows NT 4.0! How many times can you say you've seen one of those? In my opinion, running Windows 98 just isn't as special, but still pretty cool if you find old tablet computers fascinating.
Other comments:
For some reason, under NT 4.0, the pen driver sometimes cuts out when trying to drag files about. Not sure if it's a driver issue or something I'm invoking accidentally, but it is incredibly infuriating at times. Fortunately, pressing the power button to put the computer on standby and waking it back up seems to fix the pen issue, but annoyingly doing so kills the USB driver - and to fix the USB driver, the only fix is to restart the computer. Another thing is that to log on to the computer, you have to plug in a keyboard (or use the Fujitsu IR wireless keyboard) to press CTRL+ALT+DEL - unless you install autologon, which I can't get to work either. Finally, the SB16 emulation by the ESS chip is acceptable, but the FM synth emulation is awful.
Overall Verdict:
These aren't great gaming machines, at all. They can certainly play games, especially with the aforementioned use of Win98 and the docking station, but there are much better options out there if you want to get into the vintage computer hobby primarily or solely for gaming. Regardless, it's a neat system that you can definitely have some fun with if you like OS tinkering, drawing and enjoying certain games in a rather silly way. It's overall well designed and feels very solid, not to mention a space-saver and very portable if those are on your checklist. I don't recommend these systems for gamers or first time collectors, but if you're into vintage tablet computers, old operating systems in general and/or looking for an interesting challenge to see what programs and games you can get running, you will definitely find one of these systems to be fascinating.
My rating: 6/10
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