Hewlett-Packard has struggled for years to find a way to define its duelling Compaq and HP brand names. The company tags its HP Pavilion systems as multimedia-friendly consumer devices, while the Compaq name is used for the company's line of business-oriented laptops and desktops (although some cheaper consumer desktops use the name Compaq Presario, so the naming confusion continues to a degree).
The current line-up of Compaq-branded business laptops, including the 14-inch HP Compaq 6910p and the 12-inch HP Compaq 2510p, has comprised solid, if uninspired products. Another new addition, the AU$3,999 HP Compaq 2710p convertible tablet takes a more design-oriented approach. With brushed-aluminium accents, this is one of the nicer looking tablets we've seen, but it's marred by one unthinkable omission. Although the wrist rest supplies enough room, there's no touchpad, leaving only a ThinkPad-esque point stick for your mousing pleasure. You may be able to overlook the absence of a touch pad if you plan to use the Compaq 2710p as a full-time tablet, or perhaps you're one of the few pointing-stick fans left; it seems to be a generational thing. With many laptops offering both a pointing stick and touchpad, including HP's own Compaq 2510p, a tiny ultraportable, we fail to understand HP's motive here. In the end, we found the HP Compaq 2710p to be very hard to use in regular laptop mode.Tablet PCs are generally a little thicker and heavier than similarly configured non-tablet laptops, and the HP Compaq 2710p is no exception. At a little more than 2.5 centimetres thick and weighing 1.67 kilograms, it's certainly quite portable, but we've lately been spoiled by ultraportable laptops that break the 1 kilogram/2.5 cm barrier. The 2710p's construction, however, gives the tablet a very sturdy feeling, with a solid mix of brushed aluminium, magnesium alloy, and heavy-duty plastic. Both the lid and the central one-way rotating hinge felt like they could take a good deal of abuse.
A 2-megapixel Webcam sits above the screen, next to a tiny light that pops out right above the screen for typing in the dark. In the centre of the keyboard sits the aforementioned ThinkPad-style pointing stick, with two mouse buttons right below the spacebar. We know a lot of people still use pointing sticks, but touchpads have become the default for laptops, and we've seen them omitted in only a very small subsection of ultraportable systems for space reasons.
We understand the arguments -- in tablet form, a touch pad could get in the way, and maybe there's a bigger pointing-stick contingent out there than we think, but in the end it just feels off. There's clearly room for a touch pad on the empty wrist rest; we kept instinctively reaching for it, only to end up dragging our fingers across the blank, brushed aluminium. HP says it tried to cut weight by omitting unnecessary components.
When the screen is flipped around in tablet mode, we found it both easy to read and responsive to the included active stylus. Many tablet screens can be overly grainy but the HP Compaq 2710p's 12.1-inch screen, with a native resolution of 1,280x800, was clear and bright under a variety of lighting conditions.
You'll find a standard set of ports and connections on the 2710p, including support for the 802.11n, aka Draft N, Wi-Fi standard. HP seems to be including this on most of their current business laptops on the sly; as with the 2510p model, the HP Web site makes no mention of it. But sneaking in new technology instead of cutting corners is always a plus.
One thing you won't find is an optical drive. Unlike recent consumer ultraportables such as the Sony VAIO TZ150N/B and the Toshiba Portege R500 that manage to squeeze DVD burners into their slim frames, the 2710p is left to using external drives.
Compared with other recent ultraportables using Intel's ultralow-voltage CPUs, the HP Compaq 2710p performed as expected, but remember that Intel's ULV chips are great for battery life but are clearly not as fast as non-ultralow-voltage CPUs. The Fujitsu LifeBook T4220, for example, is a convertible tablet with a Core 2 Duo T7500, and it did much better at handling CNET Labs' Multimedia multitasking test. Still, in anecdotal testing, both as a laptop and a tablet, we were able to simultaneously surf the Web, work on documents, and play media files without any slowdown or stuttering, much as we'd expect from any current laptop.
The HP Compaq 2710p ran for two hours, 23 minutes on our DVD battery drain test, using the included six-cell battery. Our DVD battery drain test is especially gruelling, so you can expect longer life from casual Web surfing and office use. We have yet to see a tablet that matches the more than five hour life of the best laptop batteries, and tablets are rarely used plugged in, so make sure this has enough juice for your needs.
NOTE: Products in this test are for comparative purposes only and are not necessarily available in the Australian market.
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System configurations:
Averatec 1579
Windows Vista Home Premium; 1.06GHz Intel Core Duo Ultra Low Voltage
U2400; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB Intel Mobile Express 945GM;
120GB Fujitsu 5,400rpm
Averatec 2371
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition; 1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52;
1,024MB DDR SDRAM 667MHz; 64MB Nvidia GeForce Go 6100; 120GB Fujitsu
5,400rpm
HP Compaq 2710p
Windows Vista Business; 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage
U7600; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 148MB Mobile Intel 965GM Express;
80GB Toshiba 4,200rpm
Sony VAIO TZ150N/B
Windows Vista Business; 1.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage
U7500; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 64MB Mobile Intel 945GM Express;
100GB Toshiba 4,200rpm
Toshiba Portege R500
Windows Vista Business; 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage
U7600; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel 945GM Express;
120GB Toshiba 5,400rpm
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