March 5th, 2008Details of HP Compaq 2510p
That thriving noise you just heard is Compaq/HP firing a shot across the bow of the USS ThinkPad. With its new 2510p, the corporation is showing it can compete—and beat—Lenovo and others at the ultra-portable business notebook game. This is a notebook brimming with all the latest and greatest portable technology, and is one of the best ultra-portables available.
Features and Design
The 2510p is a highly-anticipated ultra-portable notebook from HP Compaq (seriously, can’t they just pick one name and stick with it?) that is aimed squarely at business users who demand portability over all-out performance. It’s been completely redesigned and packs all the latest in portable technology.
An ultra-portable notebook lives, and dies, by two metrics alone: battery life and weight. On the battery side of things, HP has packed an Ultra Low Voltage Core 2 Duo Processor, which should do its part to boost battery life since it merely sips CPU juice rather than guzzle it like its standard-voltage counterparts. The only downside is the unit we tested came with a 1.2GHz U7600, which is a bit slower than what we’re used to in a PC. On the scale, the 2510p weighs in at a claimed 2.9lbs. Which is extremely light and a sweet nothing to road warriors everywhere. The right-side of the 2510p sports an Express Card slot, an SD slot, mini FireWire, headphone/mic, one USB port, VGA out and a port for use with a docking station. The back of the unit features just an Ethernet port, a Kensington lock mount, and the battery. We received the six-cell battery, which sticks out the back a bit, but a three-cell and a nine-cell battery are also available.
Most ultra-portable notebooks ship with a 12-or13†display, and the 2510p uses a 12.1†display that has a widescreen aspect ratio, with a matte—rather than glossy—finish. The matte finish helps reduce glare that is so common to glossy displays, but it is arguably less “shiny and pretty†in our opinion. The big deal with the 2510p is it’s the first Windows-based notebook to use LEDs to taillight the display rather than a cold cathode backlight. The benefits to this approach, based on what we’ve read, is more even and consistent lighting, lack of backlight poking through on the top or bottom of the display, and less battery usage. We have to say that it does look good, while it’s by no means a mind-blower. At first glance it’s hard to really tell the difference to be honest, but after using it for awhile and doing side-by-side comparisons, it does look more even and “normal†in terms of the lighting. Overall, we like it but it did not blow us away.
The 2510p ships with the newest Intel mobile chipset, aka the Santa Rosa platform. It features Intel’s X1300 onboard video chipset, which is fine for email and web surfing, but not sufficient at all gaming as long as you stay in the realm of casual titles like Chuzzle and the like. We tried in vain to run Portal on it, but it be unplayable. This is not surprising, as ultra-portables be not meant for gaming.
Battery
The unit we received for testing includes a six-cell battery, but a three-cell and a nine-cell are also available. To put the battery to the test we charged it to 100 percent, unplugged it from AC power, and started our stopwatch. At the default brightness setting, with Wi-Fi enabled and a DVD playing we arrived at a final time of three hours and 35 minutes. Overall that’s not too shabby, and is about what we would expect from an ultra-portable notebook.
Like any business-class notebook, the 2510p comes with Vista Business edition. The literature that accompanied the notebook indicated that XP as well as Vista Home Basic would be options but we did not see any such OSes available on the HP website. Regardless, Vista Business is the OS of choice for business users and comes on pretty much every business notebook, and we think it’s a decent OS in that it includes backup functionality; something the Home versions of the OS are lacking.
The Touchpad
If you are a nub-user or are fond of a touchpad, the 2510p offers both and is sure to please everyone. The nub is concave-shaped and holds your index finger perfectly. We found it to be very easy to use and accurate at all times. The touchpad is also very slick - literally. We’ve run our fingers over hundreds of touchpad’s over the years and have never felt one made of this ultra-smooth material. It almost feels like it has a Teflon coating or something. It’s very accurate, and it even includes page scrolling functionality. The only drawback to the touchpad is its quite small, which is no surprise given the size of the notebook and the fact that it offers a full-size keyboard.
The 2510p includes a biometric fingerprint scanner, and we had some issues with it. We never had any trouble swiping our finger or anything like that; we had issues with how it configures itself. For example, once we had registered our fingerprint, when we booted to Windows it would give us the option of swiping our finger, or just clicking the name of the account, which would boot to Windows. What’s that all about? What is the point of having a fingerprint log-in if the system is just going to offer a fingerprint-less login right next to it? We thought maybe it was a setting we could adjust, but we could not find it in the individuality boss software, which is also puzzling. With links to belongings like “register virtual token†and “register credentials,†it’s a software suite best left to Domain administrators, and not end-users. One cool feature is that you can use your fingerprint to log into websites. For example, go to Gmail.com, swipe your finger and it inputs your username and password and logs into the site. That is pretty cool, in our opinion.
The 2510p comes with a 100GB hard drive, and here’s the bad news: It’s a 4200rpm model. The good news? Its still seems reasonably fast, despite its rotational velocity. It’s nowhere near as fast as a 7200rpm model, obviously, but it does assist in prolonging battery life and keeping the unit whisper quiet at all times. HP also has amazing called 3D DriveGuard System installed, but it does not give you real-time information about the drive protection like you get with Lenovo. Also, HP has stated that it will offer a solid state hard drive for the 2510p at a later time, which would be quite intriguing.
Wireless
Even though the 2510p ships with the Intel 965 chipset, the wireless card only supports 80211.A/B/G, and the lack of support for the N standard is disappointing. Any next-gen notebook shipping currently should support the N standard, as it’s astonishingly fast and will certainly be the dominant 80211 standard in the future. It also includes support for Bluetooth 2.0, and select models include broadband cards from Verizon and AT&T as well.
The 2510p has some fancy doodads on it. One of the more interesting is an ambient light sensor that resides below the LCD. When you are running it off the battery it detects the amount of available ambient light and automatically adjusts display brightness. It works rather well too, and dims the display in low light and brighten it in well-lit environments to offer augmented contrast.
Another attractive feature is touch-sensitive buttons for volume control. There’s a small, two-inch area at the top of the keyboard for volume, and you drag your finger back and forth across it to raise or lower volume. Sadly, it does not work very well. It senses your touch, but you then have to drag your finger over it again and again and again and again to get it to work. And then suddenly, the volume will rocket to the highest setting and vice versa. We would have favored just a single touch-sensitive button for raise and lower, and think that would be easier to control. The Wi-Fi button is also touch-sensitive, which is slick but confused us at first since we’re used to either moving a physical switch or pressing Fn F2 or similar.
Use and Testing
When we broke the 2510p free from its cardboard confines and our initial impression was one of shock, simply at how thin and light it was. The notebook uses a magnesium alloy shell that is very light, and yet pleasingly firm. The notebook feels well-made and solid despite its thin stature. What’s most striking is how razor thin the LCD is. It’s just a few millimeters thick, and weighs next to nothing. From there we booted to Windows and were right away satisfied at the sparse software payload displayed by the more often than not empty desktop. Most Tier 1 builders pile on the free software trials and fill up the system tray with useless widgets, but we saw very little of that on the 2510p. In fact, the only ones that aren’t a part of Windows were icons for the pointing device, a Norton icon, HP Quick Launch and an Intel icon.
For daily business use, the 2510p is fast enough. It has 2GB of RAM, which does wonders for Vista performance. The full-sized keyboard is easy to type on and doesn’t seem cramped at all. We had a few problems getting used to the small touchpad, and the only real issue is that the left-and-right click buttons are right on the edge of the chassis which is something we’re not used to. In terms of overall performance, the Vista experience score is a 2.5, which is not surprising given the low clock speed of the processor and its integrated graphics. Like we said, it’s more than capable for office work but you won’t be playing Crysis on this notebook, that’s for sure. We carried it around with us for about two weeks for testing, and it’s amazingly light. If you stick it in a laptop bag you would roughly forget you are carrying it due to its weight, which is listed at 2.9lbs. If you travel a lot, the 2510p should be right at the top of your list. Your lower back will thank you.
Sure, we have some gripes about the 2510p, but overall it’s a very imposing notebook that offers a powerful grouping of technology and cleverness. First off, an ultra-portable that includes an visual drive is rare, and we love this feature since it means you don’t have to buy a docking station. Secondly, the 2510p is swarming with new tech, including the LED backlight display, ambient light sensor, and a very elegant design that is spot-on in our eyes. The lack of 80211.N is disappointing, as is the speed of the hard drive, but these quibble aside the 2510p is a must-have for people who demand maximum portability with minimum sacrifices.
Pros:
• Very portable
• LED backlit display
• Very little pre-installed software
Cons:
(1). Touch-sensitive controls are finicky
(2). 4200rpm HDD
(3). No 80211.N support
