Digital Trends

HP Compaq 2510p October 22nd, 2007 | by Josh Norem

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. 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 keyboard on the 2510p

Biometric security

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 Identity Manager software, which is also confusing. With links to things 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 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.