HP Compaq 2510p

That booming noise you just heard is Compaq/HP firing a shot across the bow of the USS ThinkPad. With its new 2510p, the company 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.

Specs

CPU and Memory Processor Brand Intel
Processor Class Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed 1.06 GHz
Installed Memory 1 GB
Maximum Memory 2 GB
Memory Technology DDR II SDRAM
Cache Size 2 MB

Storage Hard Drive Capacity 60 GB
Included Drives DVD±RW (+R DL) / DVD-RAM
CD Write Speed 24 X
CD Rewrite Speed 10 X
CD Read Speed 24 X
DVD Read Speed 8 X
DVD Write Speed 4x (DVD±R)

Display and Graphics Display Size 12.1 in
Display Type TFT active matrix
Graphics Processor Intel GMA X3100
Resolution 1280 x 800 pixels

Battery Battery Type Lithium ion

Communications and Networking Modem Speed 56 Kbps
Network Support Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11g

Software Operating System Microsoft Windows Vista Business

Connectors Interface Provided VGA, Phone line, Headphone, Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T

Warranty Warranty Information 3 years warranty
Base Warranty 3 years warranty

General Product Info Input Devices Keyboard, Touchpad, Pointing stick
Included Sound Card Sound card
Weight 2.9 lbs



Ports and connectors

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 left-side features a single USB port, a DVD-R/RW multi-reader drive, a modem port and the AC power jack.
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.

The Big Screen

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 backlight 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.

Onboard video

The 2510p ships with the latest 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.

OS situation

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.

Biometric security

The 2510p includes a biometric fingerprint scanner

Storage

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 something 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 amazingly 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.
[Source]