jkOnTheRun review- first impressions of the HP 2710p Tablet PC Part 1

The HP 2710p Tablet PC has been in my hands (literally) for less than a day but it’s already making some strong impressions with me so I felt I should share those.  Judging from the number of inquiries I have received about the 2710p there are a lot of people interested in this new Tablet, and rightly so.  A big thanks to HP for sending the evaluation unit to me so I can share my thoughts with you.

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The first big impression for me came when I picked up the box at theFedEx depot.  It is the smallest and lightest box I have ever seen witha Tablet PC inside and this gave me an inkling of what the Tablet islike.  There wasn’t much in the box, the Tablet, standard battery, pen& string for attaching it to the device, some DVDs and the A/Cadapter.  Taking the 2710 out of the box it was immediately apparentjust how small and thing the device really is.  It’s also evident thatHP had their designers working overtime as it is the most attractiveTablet PC I have ever used.  There are many facets of the 2710 that remind me of the tc1100, a Tablet I still think is the best form ever.  The immediate impression of the 2710p as far as the looks goes is it is exactly what the tc1100 would look like if it were a convertible.  That’s pretty high praise from me.

Specs & Performance

The evaluation unit I am using has the following specs:

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These specs are not as healthy as other Tablet PCs out there but I am finding the device to be more than fast enough.  There is very little lag in the OS, menus pop out quickly, and things generally happen fast.  The user experience is quite nice from a performance perspective and I have no complaints at all about that.  Boot time is no longer (nor shorter) than on any other device running Vista and standby and resume are pretty fast.

First look

When I first started playing with the 2710p last night I ran into my first issue.  There is no PC Card slot, rather HP has included an ExpressCard slot.  This makes sense given the size of the device but it meant that I can’t use my Verizon AirCard for EV-DO connectivity.  That’s a big ouch for me, but I found that tethering it to the HTC Advantage over Bluetooth was painless and quick thanks to the video instructions Kevin recorded a while back.  I’m getting pretty decent speed out of the tethered HSDPA and it will be interesting to see how this works in practice.  The second issue I ran into, and I suspect it’s this particular unit I’m using, was the Ambient LIght Sensor (ALS) that automatically brightens and dims the display based on room light levels.  This particular ALS is so sensitive that it would not let me brighten the screen beyond 50% and it was too dim to see comfortably.  A quick trip to the Getting Started guide pointed me to the Fn-F11 key that toggles the sensor on and off, I turned it off and the screen is now bright and vivid.  I am curious to hear if this is the same on other units if anyone has one.

Swiveling the screen rotates the display as you would expect and the hinge feels very solid.  I like the minimalist design that HP has used on the display, with only the webcam and keyboard light on the bezel.  It is very much like the tc1100 in this regard with little to get in the way or to be accidentally pushed.  I do wish that HP would have used soft keys like on the tc1100, those two keys for rotating the screen and launching the Journal (or OneNote).  Those keys sit on the bezel and can only be toggled with the pen, a method that would have worked well on the 2710p.  Instead of soft keys HP put the screen rotation button on the side of the screen where you push it through a hole with the pen.  This is clumsy at best and the soft keys would have worked much better.  There is a second hole for the C-A-D which is a good solution for this seldom used key.  The one glaring omission from the 2710p is the jog dial such as that found on the side of the tc1100 screen, a mechanism perfect for performing up/down functions in the web browser, for instance.  The 2710p has nothing that can be used for scrolling like this, you must use the pen on the screen.  This is the single biggest disappointment I have with using the 2710p in slate mode.

The web cam is a 2 MP camera and works well with Skype and other solutions.  It also performs as a business card scanner that works surprisingly well.  I took it to Starbucks today and had a guy give me his business card and it shot it with the camera into the included application.  There was only one letter interpreted incorrectly on the card and the guy was blown away at the usefulness of this function.  Of course he’s a salesman and gets dozens of card a week so YMMV.

Using the 2710p in laptop configuration is very pleasant, I find the keys to be very nice for touch typing with a good layout.  I love how the CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK have LED indicators right next to those keys which is a clever way to do that.  The dual microphones work well for Skype but I haven’t had time to play with the speech recognition yet.  The capacitive touch volume slider is interesting and works fairly well but I would rather have buttons to do that like on the Lenovo.  I definitely like the trackstick that HP has chosen for this device, the flat rubber tip is just like that on the ThinkPad and I really like it.  I find it very precise and easy to use and so far I haven’t hooked up an external mouse to it yet.  That’s some kind of record for me as I prefer mice over anything else.

A picture says a thousand words

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Keyboard w/ trackstick

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Full frontal

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Right side- Firewire, mic, headphone, USB, Kensington lock

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Back- modem, Ethernet, VGA, Power jack

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Left side- WiFI/ BT on/off switch; I-Info button (programmable), USB

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Frontal- power switch, screen latch.  All photos to this point have the slice battery attached adding ~.5 inch to thickness.

Day One- in the field

Last night I installed the core programs I would need to carry the 2710p with me today.  This was easily done with the DVD drive in the base station that HP sent with the Tablet.  I have never seen a thinner optical drive and am impressed that a base station that is about half an inch thick can contain a DVD burner.  The programs I installed were Microsoft Office Pro 2007, OneNote 2007, Project 2007 and my time billing software.

I carried just the 2710p with me today and it performed very well.  I have to say that holding the unit in slate mode and inking feels very reminiscent of using the tc1100.  The 2710 is heavier, sure, but the slate experience is very similar.  It felt like running into an old friend at the market.  Using OneNote on the slate was a real joy with that long notepage in portrait mode.  The 1280 x 800 resolution on the 12" wide-screen is the perfect resolution in both portrait and landscape.  You can see a lot of information without things seeming to be too big or too small.  It’s just about right in that regard.

A new battery strategy emerges

The included standard battery is supplying me with 4.5 – 5 hours of usage, depending on exactly what I’m doing and the power savings I have set.  I am keeping the screen brightness a little higher than the canned power profiles because I attend a lot of meetings in bright flourescent lighting, so I feel that battery life is pretty good.  It’s not enough to get me through a whole day, however, and if this was my Tablet PC I would have ordered a second battery to carry in the bag.  This is what I do with most mobile devices I carry for whole day outings.

HP thoughtfully sent one of the optional ultra-slim batteries along with the 2710p.  This battery covers the entire bottom of the device and is incredibly thin, I would estimate less than 1/2 inch.  It weighs about a pound which brings the entire device weight to over 4 pounds which is too heavy for me to deal with all day.  Since I use my Tablets largely in my hands in slate mode, the extra weight is just too much for me to handle comfortably.  I don’t mind the weight in an emergency as it’s better than no juice at all but not for all day usage.  Last night it occurred to me that since the ultra-slim battery is used in conjunction with the standard internal battery, that you can connect and disconnect it without powering down the device or going into hibernation.  Armed with that thought, today I kept the slice battery in a pocket in my bag and used just the standard battery all morning.  Around 1 pm today when I was in Starbucks doing some writing the battery started getting a little low, around 25%, so I popped the slice battery on.  Voila!  Instant increase from an estimated 1 hour left to over 6 hours left.  This is cool and I can live with this method of using the extra battery.  That way I keep the device weight as light as possible as some days I won’t need the second battery.  I haven’t had this long enough to get detailed battery life estimates but it should easily be  9-10+ hours with the two batteries.  That’s all day!

Comparing the size to the tc1100

It’s no secret that my favorite Tablet PC to date has been the tc1100.  Detachable 10-inch screen, light weight, nothing will be smaller than this, especially with a 12-inch screen like the 2710p, right?  Guess again.  I shot this photo comparison of the 2710p versus the tc1100:

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2710p (with slice battery attached) versus the RIM BlackBerry 8830

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2710p (with slice battery attached) vs. tc1100 thickness

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2710p (no slice battery) vs. tc1100- yes, the 2710p is thinner!

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side by side (in soft yellow mood lighting)

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tc1100 on top of 2710p- yes you can barely see it under there.

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uber-thin slice battery

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slice battery in front of tc1100

This concludes Part 1 of my first impressions of the HP 2710p.  I will be adding more impressions soon and possibly a video review of the Tablet should that be desired.  Leave any questions you have about the 2710p in the comments and I’ll answer all that I can.

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