HP 2510p - replacement to the tc4400 & tc2400

Hey,

Has anyone sen reviews for this new laptop?

So far the specs i can find are:

CPU Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processors3
Chipset Mobile Intel GM965 Express Chipset
Graphics Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 up to 384MB
Memory 667-MHz DDR2 - 2-GB maximum (system runs at 533-MHz) single sodimm!!!
Hard Drive 60/80/100-GB 4200 rpm, 1.8” PATA, HP 3D DriveGuard
Ports Two USB 2.0, audio in/out, power, RJ-11, RJ-45, docking, VGA ,1394a, integrated microphone
Expansion 1 Type I/II PCMCIA Slot
Communications 56K modem, Intel Gigabit Network Connection Wireless (optional) Mini card (WWAN, 802.11 and Bluetooth)
Battery 3, 6, 9-cell primary (cylindrical) batteries and optional 3/6/9-cell
Display 12.1” Illumi-Lite WXGA, ambient light sensor
Optical drive support Integrated optical drive supported or External MultiBay II (9.5-mm drives)
Flash memory slot Integrated Secure Digital slot
Docking (optional) Supports HP 2400/2500 Ultra-Light Docking Station (may dock with all three primary batteries)
Security (standard) HP ProtectTools, HP Fingerprint Sensor, TPM embedded Security Chip, Drive Encryption for ProtectTools Security Integrated Smart Card Reader (optional, replaces PC Card slot)
Input Devices Full-sized keyboard, Dual-pointing devices (poinstick and touchpad with scroll zone), Touch-sensitive controls
Weight Starting at 2.9 lbs/1.30kg
Warranty 3-3-0 standard

Depening onthe cost its going to be a tough choice for me between this and the new 2710p which is tablet but no built in optical and no touch pad, and looks a lot better

 

no one interested in a 12" with built in optical and weigh 2.9 lbs/1.30kg?

i thought finally there was some competion to the Fujustu 7120/7230

 

I am interested in this laptop, but it has not been released or reviewed yet.

 

I'm definitely going to buy the 2510p, though I wish I could find a release date for it.

 

Any updates?

 

July 07 is meant to be the release date, so we got about 1 month. I would have tought there would be some pre relases versions floating round at shows and stuff but cant seem to find much mention (seen plenty of pics of the 2710p though)

 

I believe that the 2510p is the replacement for the nc2400 and nc4400. The 2710p is the replacement for the tc4400; the tc2400 unfortunately does not exist. It would be awesome if it did though...

 

Found a quick tech spec document in NZ for most of the new (and current) HP business notebooks. Note prices in NZ Dollars, excluding our 12.5% GST. Looking at NZ$3300 + GST for the 80GB HDD/1GB RAM 2510p (note only one ram slot). C2D 1.2Ghz ULV. Thats around US$2500.
For the tablet 2710p, a bit of a premium starting at NZ$3600 but note it includes the ultra slim docking expansion bay with DVDRW Still 4200rpm HDD though and C2D 1.2Ghz ULV. Thats around US$2800.
HP Compaq Business Line Notebook Quickspecs

 

I just got an NC2400 (Duo U2500) for work to replace my old NC4200, and it's a reasonably nice machine. The new 2510 has some nice upgraded specs plus a track pad and WWAN (neither of which the 2400 has). Hopefully the screen is nicer (not sure what "illumilite" means) because the 2400 screen is nothing to write home about, though serviceable for a work machine.

I would note that the battery life on my 2400 is OK but not great in my limited experience so far. I've not tried draining the batteries entirely, but with the 9 cell the other day, I was on battery for about 2 hours (wireless, full brightness, using productivity s/w), and XP estimated it had about another 5 hours left... for the hefty weight of the 9 cell I would have liked to see more battery life. Just got a 6 cell to make the machine a little more portable (like it was meant to be!) but haven't had a chance to see what kind of life it will have.

 

I have been using the 2510P for two days now. I have tried both the Toshiba R500 and the Dell D430 and this is hands down a much better quality system than both of them. It is fabulous! Mine has the following specs:

1.2Ghz, 2GB RAM, Vista Business, DVDR, 100GB HD, Bluetooth and 4965 a/b/g and the LED display.

Pros: Keyboard is better than a Thinkpad and I have used Thinkpad's for years. You can get over 8 hours of battery in power saver mode with just the 6-cell battery. The LED screen is bright and clear and works great outside. Very quiet laptop. Solidly built and small. Smaller than the X60/X61 and has a built-in optical drive. The touchpad is one of the most responsive I have ever used. It uses the new Santa Rosa chipset with X3100 graphics which are much faster than what you will get on either the Toshiba or Dell. 3 year warranty from HP which has excellent service. Many proven accessories available. More reliable fingerprint software than Lenovo or Dell models. No bloatware. Will be able to upgrade my HD to SSD when the prices come down. Plays movies flawlessly.

Cons: Takes about 6 minutes to boot up with Vista. I wanted to purchase with XP but that configuration isn't available yet. I will probably load XP from scratch and load the drivers individually. It does run Vista OK, I think the 2GB of RAM helps. The keyboard has full size main keys but the function keys and some of the others are smaller than the Thinkpad, Toshiba or Dell. I haven't had any problem typing on this one though. I actually am typing just as fast or faster than the other models.

I won't be doing a full review for a while but hope this helps anyone who is looking to make a decision between the most popular ultraportables available on the market right now.

 

I currently have both the 2510p and the nc2400. Externally, both units look almost identical. Some of the differences that I have noticed to date include:

• battery life - the 2510p has slightly better battery life than the nc2400, likely due to the efficiency of the new LED screen. I would estimate the difference to be in the vicinity of 20%.
  
• new LED screen - whilst the LED screen adds to battery life, it makes no discernable difference to the size, thickness or weight of the 2510p compared to the nc2400. The LED screen on the 2510p has a much whiter colour cast than the LCD screen on the nc2400 (akin to the difference between fluorescent lighting and incandescent lighting). Whilst the LED screen is probably more accurate colour wise, I have a slight preference for the older screen as the picture on the 2510p seems a little more "washed out" when watching videos. Not a major issue but worth noting. Sharpness is good on both machines and viewing angles are about the same.
  
• performance - although both run at 1200Mhz, the Core 2 Duo of the 2510p benchmarks about 15% faster than the Core Duo of nc2400. This difference is not discernable in day to day use.
  
• track pad - the track pad is a nice addition for people who prefer this method of input. However, it also means than the mouse buttons which are used in conjuction with the eraser head are now much smaller making those same mouse buttons a little less comfortable to use.
  
• built in microphone - this is a welcome addition for those of us who use Skype.
  
• SD slot - handy for those with digital cameras/mp3 players that use this format.
  
• Draft 802.11n - the new Santa Rosa chip supports draft 802.11n for future proofing.

In summary, whilst the 2510p is not a significant improvement over the nc2400, it is a very nice machine. All things being equal, I would purchase the 2510p over the nc2400. However, if you can pick up a nc2400 at a good price, then I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on the nc2400. Happy to answer any questions that people may have.

 

Hi,

I have ordered this machine a week ago and expect it to arrive within in a couple of weeks. I am happy to see the good reviews here. It seems to be a perfect complement to the 8710w, that I also ordered a couple of weeks ago. (I had long since descided to buy a 15.4 notebook to cover all my needs, but I finally ended up buying two ; one for the road and one for home, when I realised that my company got some extraordinary good prices on these machines)

One question about a concern I had on the 2510: Is it easy to replace the HDD? As preconfigured, there are only options with 4200 rpm disks. Perhaps that is one reason that it takes such a long time to start up Win Vista. Can you swap it with lets say a 7200 100GB drive? Is it a 2.5" drive or 1.8"?

Also, are you Colcha also experience this (extremely) slow startup? I cannot believe it takes 6 min to start up the OS. It sound weird consideríng the components in this build.

/Toke

 

OK, all I needed to do was to read the documentation online. It appears that it is a 1.8" drive, in my configuration of 100GB, that is removable/exchangeable. But can you buy faster/bigger 1.8" drives? I cannot find any on my regular buying sites in Sweden. Or do we wait for the SSD drives, which will be faster, but not bigger?

(and my question regarding the startup times is still a question).

 

I believe we will have to wait until the SSD prices come down to upgrade the drives. I think that 4200rpm is the fastest drive available in 1.8". My Vista startup time has gotten a little faster after removing some of the startup programs I didn't need. It now takes about 3 minutes to get to the desktop from hitting the power button. I know after adding an SSD that bootup time will become much faster.

 

Your options for replacing the HDD are pretty limited given that the 2510p uses a 1.8" drive. Most of these drives are designed for low power consumption rather than high performance. Consequently, I am not aware of anything faster than 4200rpm in this form factor.

6 minutes seems like a long time for start up. Try uninstalling any bloatware - Symantec's antivirus would be a good place to start. Also, how much RAM do you have? Using Vista with 1GB of RAM is always going to be an uphill battle. Upon receiving my unit, I formatted the HDD and started again with a fresh install of Windows XP. It now takes me about 90 seconds to boot into Windows. Using Vista would have added another minute or so.

 

Hey Colcha,

I have the 2510P with Vista Business. I wanted to order the same unit with XP but it wasn't available yet. I think Vista is just way too slow with this processor. I have a full copy of XP at home but am a little nervous to reformat and load on this computer. Did you reformat an XP machine or did yours come with Vista as well? Was it easy to load XP and did you have to download drivers first or did you do it after the clean install. I would like to have XP on this and any install help or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Mine also came with Vista but I much prefer the performance of XP (plus User Access Control in Vista drives me nuts!) The process of switching over is not difficult. This is what I did:

1) Create Vista install discs - as the laptop does not ship with Vista install discs, you must create these first just in case you ever wish to restore your laptop to its original configuration. Use HP's backup and recovery manager for this. If you don't already have it installed, you can download this utility from the following URL: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?&lang=en&cc=au&pnameOID=3355634&taskId=135&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=3355633&submit.y=0&submit.x=0&lang=en&cc=au
Keep the Vista install discs in a safe place as you won't be able to make another copy.

2) Download all relevant drivers - you can download these drivers from the URL above. You will need them once you have installed Windows XP.

3) Backup any data - as you will be doing a clean install, back up any data that you want to keep (including the drivers that you have just downloaded) onto some form of external storage eg. DVD-R, external hard drive, etc.

4) Install Windows XP - insert your Windows XP discs and restart. If you would like to reclaim the 5GB or so which is used to create the Vista install discs, delete the relevant partition when prompted. Continue with a clean install.

5) Install drivers - after you have installed Windows XP, install all necessary drivers from your external storage.

Once you have performed the preceding steps, you should have a system which boots and performs much quicker than under Vista. Good luck! Let us know how you go.