Hewlett-Packard has struggled for years to find a way to define its duelling Compaq and HP brand names. The company tags its HP Pavilion systems as multimedia-friendly consumer devices, while the Compaq name is used for the company's line of business-oriented laptops and desktops (although some cheaper consumer desktops use the name Compaq Presario, so the naming confusion continues to a degree).

Tablet PCs are generally a little thicker and heavier than similarly configured non-tablet laptops, and the HP Compaq 2710p is no exception. At a little more than 2.5 centimetres thick and weighing 1.67 kilograms, it's certainly quite portable, but we've lately been spoiled by ultraportable laptops that break the 1 kilogram/2.5 cm barrier. The 2710p's construction, however, gives the tablet a very sturdy feeling, with a solid mix of brushed aluminium, magnesium alloy, and heavy-duty plastic. Both the lid and the central one-way rotating hinge felt like they could take a good deal of abuse.

A 2-megapixel Webcam sits above the screen, next to a tiny light that pops out right above the screen for typing in the dark. In the centre of the keyboard sits the aforementioned ThinkPad-style pointing stick, with two mouse buttons right below the spacebar. We know a lot of people still use pointing sticks, but touchpads have become the default for laptops, and we've seen them omitted in only a very small subsection of ultraportable systems for space reasons.

We understand the arguments -- in tablet form, a touch pad could get in the way, and maybe there's a bigger pointing-stick contingent out there than we think, but in the end it just feels off. There's clearly room for a touch pad on the empty wrist rest; we kept instinctively reaching for it, only to end up dragging our fingers across the blank, brushed aluminium. HP says it tried to cut weight by omitting unnecessary components.

When the screen is flipped around in tablet mode, we found it both easy to read and responsive to the included active stylus. Many tablet screens can be overly grainy but the HP Compaq 2710p's 12.1-inch screen, with a native resolution of 1,280x800, was clear and bright under a variety of lighting conditions.

You'll find a standard set of ports and connections on the 2710p, including support for the 802.11n, aka Draft N, Wi-Fi standard. HP seems to be including this on most of their current business laptops on the sly; as with the 2510p model, the HP Web site makes no mention of it. But sneaking in new technology instead of cutting corners is always a plus.

One thing you won't find is an optical drive. Unlike recent consumer ultraportables such as the Sony VAIO TZ150N/B and the Toshiba Portege R500 that manage to squeeze DVD burners into their slim frames, the 2710p is left to using external drives.

Compared with other recent ultraportables using Intel's ultralow-voltage CPUs, the HP Compaq 2710p performed as expected, but remember that Intel's ULV chips are great for battery life but are clearly not as fast as non-ultralow-voltage CPUs. The Fujitsu LifeBook T4220, for example, is a convertible tablet with a Core 2 Duo T7500, and it did much better at handling CNET Labs' Multimedia multitasking test. Still, in anecdotal testing, both as a laptop and a tablet, we were able to simultaneously surf the Web, work on documents, and play media files without any slowdown or stuttering, much as we'd expect from any current laptop.

The HP Compaq 2710p ran for two hours, 23 minutes on our DVD battery drain test, using the included six-cell battery. Our DVD battery drain test is especially gruelling, so you can expect longer life from casual Web surfing and office use. We have yet to see a tablet that matches the more than five hour life of the best laptop batteries, and tablets are rarely used plugged in, so make sure this has enough juice for your needs.

NOTE: Products in this test are for comparative purposes only and are not necessarily available in the Australian market.

Multimedia multitasking test
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

In seconds

Averatec 2371

1,650 

HP Compaq 2710p

1,671 

Toshiba Portege R500

1,748 

Sony VAIO TZ150N/B

2,142 

Averatec 1579

2,301 

Adobe Photoshop CS3 image-processing test
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

In seconds

HP Compaq 2710p

411 

Averatec 2371

527 

Toshiba Portege R500

547 

Averatec 1579

600 

Sony VAIO TZ150N/B

1,208 

Apple iTunes encoding test
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

In seconds

Averatec 2371

282 

Toshiba Portege R500

347 

HP Compaq 2710p

349 

Sony VAIO TZ150N/B

415 

Averatec 1579

625 

DVD battery drain test
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

In minutes

Sony VAIO TZ150N/B

247 

Toshiba Portege R500

228 

Averatec 1579

164 

HP Compaq 2710p

143 

Averatec 2371

95 

System configurations:

Averatec 1579
Windows Vista Home Premium; 1.06GHz Intel Core Duo Ultra Low Voltage U2400; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB Intel Mobile Express 945GM; 120GB Fujitsu 5,400rpm

Averatec 2371
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition; 1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 667MHz; 64MB Nvidia GeForce Go 6100; 120GB Fujitsu 5,400rpm

HP Compaq 2710p
Windows Vista Business; 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage U7600; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 148MB Mobile Intel 965GM Express; 80GB Toshiba 4,200rpm

Sony VAIO TZ150N/B
Windows Vista Business; 1.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage U7500; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 64MB Mobile Intel 945GM Express; 100GB Toshiba 4,200rpm

Toshiba Portege R500
Windows Vista Business; 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage U7600; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel 945GM Express; 120GB Toshiba 5,400rpm