'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
HP Compaq 2710p
HP Compaq 2710p - 12.1" - Core 2 Duo U7600 - Vista Business - 1 GB RAM - 80 GB HDD
pros and cons
- Attractive design
- Available with Windows Vista or XP Tablet PC Edition
- Excellent screen/keyboard light
- Moderate performance
- No optical drive
- Only two USB ports
- No touchpad
- Editors' review
- Specs
When Hewlett Packard restructured its notebook range earlier this year it came up with three groupings. So far, we have reviewed one notebook from the Balanced Mobility range (the 6715b) and one from the Performance range (the 8710p). Now it's the turn of the Ultra Light range, which starts at around £950 (ex. VAT). For this review, we've chosen a model that costs just over a thousand pounds: the HP Compaq 2710p, a convertible Tablet PC.
Design
The first impression of this notebook is one of stylishness. All too often, business notebooks are somewhat clunky affairs, styled in predictably dull colours and somewhat boxy in their design. The HP Compaq 2710p bucks that particular trend.
Even when it's closed, this notebook has a certain elegance thanks to its rounded corners. The lid is a dark silver/grey colour, while the main system unit is black and has a rubberised finish that helps to stop it sliding around on a desk or lap.
The lid and system unit are held together with a single strong clasp. The same clasp holds both together when the screen is rotated 180 degrees around its central hinge and laid flat facing outwards to work in Tablet PC mode.
Build quality is very good indeed. The lid is robust and has little give, affording the screen good protection.
As befits a member of the Ultra Light range, the HP Compaq 2710p is small and lightweight. It has a footprint 29cm wide by 21.2cm deep and is a maximum of 2.8cm thick. The styling is such that the edges are often indented inwards to give the illusion of a paper-thin design. At 1.6kg the 2710p isn't as 'ultraportable' as some notebooks we've seen, but it's still perfectly feasible as a regular travelling companion.
The display is a relatively small 12.1in. active touch-screen with a native resolution of 1,280 by 800 pixels. The stylus, which you won't want to lose, is housed at the top on the right-hand side when the screen is in (outward-facing) tablet mode and the system held in portrait orientation.
Top ZDNET Reviews
The top part of the screen bezel can house a webcam, although our review sample did not have one fitted. If you do have the webcam version, then business card scanning software is also included.
The top part of the lid section also houses what looks like a circular cover protecting some sort of slot. In fact, this is the HP Night Light: press a small button on top of the lid and an LED pops out to light up the screen and keyboard. This simple yet clever feature should prove useful to business travellers.
The keyboard, which is the same dark silver/grey as its surroundings, is comfortable to use and we had no difficulty touch typing at speed. Above the number row is a half sized row of function keys plus six further keys offering Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, Insert and Delete functions. An inverted T is available for directional movement.
Above the keyboard is a similar touch-sensitive strip to those we've seen in HP's other new notebooks. This gives access to volume controls via a slideing bar, as well as a mute button. The strip also houses a Presentation button that, when touched, brings up a dialogue box where you can set application and display options for presentations.
What's different here is that the 'buttons' are backlit (in a blue-green colour) when touched. The Caps Lock and Num Lock keys also have associated LEDs next to them. We rather like the overall effect of this lighting scheme.
One irritation is the lack of a touchpad. HP relies on a pointing stick, which nestles between the G, H and B keys and is accompanied by a pair of mouse buttons under the space bar. Those who prefer a conventional touchpad may find its absence is a deal breaker, which is a shame for what's otherwise a superbly designed notebook.
Features
The HP Compaq 2710p comes in several configurations. Our review sample had at its heart a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 processor and 1GB of RAM, upgradeable to a maximum of 4GB. You can specify either Windows Vista Business, which came on our review sample, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. It can also be configured with FreeDOS, a free open-source operating system.
Graphics are handled by the Intel GMA X3100 module built into the Mobile Intel GM965 chipset. This can use up to 384MB of shared system memory dynamically as required.
Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g, Draft-N) and Bluetooth (2.0) are both built in, along with Gigabit Ethernet for wired connections. For wide-area wireless connectivity, 3G is an optional extra —: although this was not fitted in our review sample. An antenna sits in the top right-hand side of the lid and is released by pressing a small button next to it.
Our review sample had an 80GB hard drive, with 60GB and 100GB also available. All of these drives spin at a relatively sedate 4,200rpm. There is no optical drive, which must be added as an external Multibay II option if required.
Ports and connectors are spread around three of the four sides of this notebook: the front is bare apart from the sliding on/off button.
The right-hand side carries a FireWire (IEEE 1394a) port, headphone and microphone connectors, a single USB 2.0 port and an SD card reader. There's also a fingerprint sensor on the right-hand side, but this is unobtrusively located on the edge of the lid.
On the left-hand side you'll find a second USB port and a sliding illuminated button for turning Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on (blue) and off (red). The button controls both radios with a single sliding action, but it would be preferable to have separate manual controls for the two connections. Between the wireless button and the USB port is the HP 'info button'; this brings up the HP Info Centre, a dialogue box hosting various device management utilities and system information.
In the middle of the left-hand side is an ExpressCard/54 slot; a smartcard reader can be housed here too, although this was not present in our review sample.
At the back are the modem (RJ-11) and Ethernet (RJ-45) connectors and a VGA-out port. The back of the lid section has two small recessed buttons that can only be pressed by using an object such as the digitiser stylus. One rotates the screen between landscape and portrait orientation, while the provides a convenient Ctrl-Alt-Del command if you're in tablet mode.
Performance
The HP Compaq 2710p delivers a Windows Experience Index (WEI) rating of 2.4 (out of 5.9). The WEI takes the value of the lowest component score, which in this case is for Graphics (Desktop performance for Windows Aero).
Other scores range from 4.4 for Processor (Calculations per second) to 3.0 for Gaming Graphics (3D business and gaming graphics performance), taking in 4.2 for RAM (Memory operations per second) and 3.7 for Primary hard disk (Disk data transfer rate) along the way.
None of these scores is particularly high, which illustrates that if you choose an ultraportable notebook you inevitably sacrifice some performance. The best way to squeeze more speed from the system would be to upgrade the RAM to at least 2GB.
HP does not make a claim for this system's battery life, and unfortunately the standard 6-cell Li-ion battery in our review sample refused to hold a charge so we were unable to produce any kind of benchmark.
Conclusion
The HP Compaq 2710p stands out as a business notebook by virtue of its stylish design. It's not the lightest ultraportable, though, and many mobile professionals will want to specify the 3G option, which will increase the cost. The lack of an optical drive and a touchpad may also bother some potential buyers.