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HP's latest tablet is good to go—and it's not bad as a couch companion either.

HP has designed a new tablet computer for business users—the Compaq 2710p and, best of all, they sent it to JPR to try out. We've been really curious about going to a tablet since we spend a lot of time listening to people and taking note. Also, we spend a lot of time travelling. For this, the 2710p is a good size, not too big, not too heavy. The screen size is comfortable and the keyboard, one of the critical aspects for me, is very nice. It has a nice snap to it.

HP has opted for an embedded pointer mouse which makes me delirious—I do not like touch pads one bit. But if you listen, you can hear howls from the mouse pad crew. Sure, there are plenty of people who just love touch pads and hate pointers. Who cares, I'll use whatever I have to get the job done and so will you.

Among the features I really like is the included light at the top of the screen. The cover pops out with the touch of a button and the light discretely lights up the keyboard. I almost forgot to mention it but as I was writing this review the sun went down and there I was typing in the dark. I'm still typing in the dark. This is a state of affairs travelers have come to live with along with taking off their shoes and waiting for their plane to come in from Denver.

The version sent to us came fully equipped with a sliver of battery that attaches to the bottom of the computer, along with an optical disk drive. The battery is surprisingly heavy for such a thin little thing. The disk drive is an average-sized device. Once you've put the whole tinker-toy set together, the HP 2710p is the same size as any normal computer. What did you expect? Miracles? I'm happy enough with the miracle of a nice tablet computer.

There are issues however, there always are. Some of them are Vista oddities and some are HP's over-confidence in the capabilities of the average user—i.e. me.—and hey, I hardly like to think of myself as average. My motto is generally, if I can't figure it out, it's broken. That, unfortunately, is not the case with this brand new computer. HP just delivers this baby without a lot of information. Yeah, I think the biometric scanner is kind of cute. I wonder how I configure it? Yeah, I can see there's a video camera, how do I use it?

So let's take the video camera issue. I found the Webcam software listed in the programs list on Control Panel and I checked Device Manager and found that the drivers were installed correctly. So where the heck is the web cam? After much poking around and trips to the web I blundered across a review that praises an included software utility from Newsoft called Presto! BizCard that captures business cards using the video camera. That, I managed to get working, which told me the video camera was working. By now, the already battered and disillusioned users of Vista out there already know what's up. There is no explicit knob or button or icon for the web camera—you just have to open a program that can use the webcam like Microsoft IM or Windows Messenger. HP is squarely on the hook for this. No matter how awkward the original Microsoft implementation might be, no new user of a computer should have to devote several hours to trying to figure out how to make included hardware work. That goes for the thumb ID too.

Other features are dead easy. There's a tiny touch strip above the keyboard that turns up or down the speakers, turns off the audio, and brings up the presentations settings. The multi-monitor settings are also right up front .

I am not delirious about the display quality. The resolution is limited to 1280x800. It's passable for YouTube and movies but disappointing for photos. But, this is a business computer, ladies and gentlemen, and furthermore it's a Tablet PC. Its job is not to make your life more enjoyable with entertainment but to let you take notes in meetings. So let's discuss the tablet features.

The jury, i.e. me again, is out on the value of tablets except that I think it's really fun. I'm a fast typist. I have no trouble keeping up with conversations to take notes with the keyboard. But a tablet is more discrete. You don't go through the somewhat rude ritual of raising a screen between you and your colleagues. Rather, the HP 2710 has the flip screen feature meaning you can turn the screen around and lay it flat to form a tablet. One drawback, what you're doing is visible to everyone else so people can tell if you're not really taking notes but you're actually checking your email—so you're probably not.

I've used the tablet several times in meetings and I've had the screen reorient itself during sessions. Frankly, I'm not sure what actually causes this yet but I'm figuring out how to recover quickly. Perhaps I moved the screen to a more acute angle—as a left-handed person I'm likely to do that. It's really embarrassing to be chasing your paper around as it reorients itself as you try to take notes in a meeting. As I say, I'm getting this figured out gradually, and I suspect no one is really paying all that much attention to my travails as I'm taking notes.

The philosophy behind the tablet has been very well documented before this article so I won't belabor it other than to remark that Microsoft's vision is that users will probably keep their notes as they're written and not convert everything to text—only that stuff that you might want to copy and paste in a document. So far, that's how I've been using it.

The tablet form factor is also useful for lying on the couch and watching TV—it is a business computer you know and, sadly enough, there are a few of us lying on the couch, watching TV, and answering email. But, in all, I can't really say that the tablet feature is something I'd have to have in a mobile computer. That said, the design of the HP 2710p—slim and light—means that having the tablet doesn't add unnecessary bulk

And then, there's the price—

The PC starts at $1599.00—a bit on the high end for a notebook these days. It's $1749 if you want the video camera. The battery is $179 and it's a mighty valuable asset for travelers. If you get stuck in coach, the addition of this batter will get you anywhere in the United States and probably to Europe.

The Expansion Base—i.e. your DVD+/-RW drive—is another $299.

All of which brings it up to about $2,227 for a machine I'd really like to have anyway.

Review model specs:

Model: HP Compaq 2710p
Operating System: Windows Vista Business, 32-bit
Processor: Intel Core Duo CPU, U7600@1.20 GHz
Memory: 3063 MB

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