HP Compaq 6910p in Review

To start with it must be said that the HP Compaq 6910p is not pretty on the outside. It is dark, dull and screams of ancient business geekness. The notebook might be very business-esque but what I can say that I am impressed with the little nuances that designers have implemented to try and make up for the shady look.

Touch Sensitive Buttons

The power button on the top left of the laptop also has a series of touch sensitive buttons that activate certain things on the laptop. The wireless is turned on and off with a clean, simple touch of an icon. There is also an information key that pops up the HP help centre when touched. Next to that appears to be “presentation” mode. When this button is touched the presentation settings open up and allow you to ready the laptop for a presentation of any sort at any time. Nice touches that make the laptop fairly pleasant to make use of.

Fingerprint Reader

One of the nicest features of this laptop is the Credential Manager which runs off the built in Fingerprint reader. You can now log in to Windows with the swipe of a finger and it also works well with remembering passwords to websites and applications. It’s a great feature that seems pretty fool-proof and we enjoyed playing swipe-the-finger.

Standard Features

The mouse pad is fairly standard with scroll option to the right of the pad and click buttons below. Fairly regular stuff. There is also a “roller mouse” situated between the G, H and B keys, for users who are predisposed to this sort of mouse. Personally, not my cup of tea.

The HP Compaq comes equipped with Windows Vista. I doubt that I can tell you anything about Vista that hasn’t already been written. It’s OK, it’s pretty standard but at least it looks better than XP and it’s certainly starting to come into alignment with Mac OS X!

Just below the mouse pad there is an SD-MMC slot for your memory card. This is something that Macs don’t have that I quite like. There is also a nifty little DVD writer that one would expect to come standard.

Using the DVD writer was a breeze. Insert CD/DVD and a window pops up asking you what sort of disc you would like to create. Click on the option that suits you best and follow the steps. One time shoe-shine, too easy.

Hardware Performance

Playing AVI movies was simple and effortless. The built in sound card was loud enough to be audible and the graphics were extremely acceptable for a business-orientated machine. I used Windows Media Player to play files and had no trouble whatsoever. However if you are going to play mp4 or mpeg’s it’s probably a good idea to find a converter program to help you through.

I particularly like the fact that there are three USB ports. I cannot stand it when I have more things to plug in than there are USB ports.

The batter life isn’t fantastic – it only lasted about an hour and a half of hard work time involving watching parts of a movie and trying to set up a wireless connection. Unfortunately I struggle some trying to connect the HP Compaq to my home wireless network. In the end I gave up trying. There was some error about incorrect security settings. I fiddled, faddled, diddled and daddled but came up short. I’m not a dumb guy.

Justin on the other hand had no issues connecting to his wireless at home. In fact, he reports that the HP was able to connect to the wireless at much greater distances than his Mac does. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

We also installed CorelDRAW 12 on the machine and let Justin’s wife (a designer by trade) on the rampage to test out how the processor would perform under heavy graphics mode. Overall we are told that the machine performed very well and was noticeably faster than the home desktop PC. I guess it has something to do with those dual-core Intel processors.

If business and function is your thing then this is a laptop for you. For those of you looking for a more aesthetically pleasing machine you’ll probably want to shop around or Design your Personal Life.

Here are some of the standard geeky dimensions:

• Price: R12,565 (RRP including VAT)
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.00GHz
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Business
• Hard Drive: 120 GB SATA @ 5400RPM
• Screen: 14.1″ WXGA Widescreen (1280 x 800) (WXGA+ option available)
• Graphics: Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics
• RAM: 2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM (2 x 1GB)
• Optical Drive: DVD SuperMulti drive (DVD+/-RW) w/Double Layer Support
• Battery: 6-cell lithium ion, 55WHr
• Wireless: Intel PRO / Wireless 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Optional WWAN: Integrated HP ev2200 1xEV-DO Wireless Module
• Security: Fingerprint reader, TPM hardware-based encryption
• Weight: 5.2 lbs
• Dimensions: 13″ (Width) x 9.4″ (Depth) x 1.1″ (Height)
• Ports/Slots: docking connector; 1 IEEE 1394 (FireWire); 3 Universal Serial Bus (USB 2.0); VGA monitor out; S-video out; RJ-45 Ethernet LAN; RJ-11 modem; Type I/II PC Card Slot; SmartCard; SD card reader; headphone/speaker jack; microphone
• Warranty: 3 year parts and labour

Rate this review:

(4 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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Filed Under Computing, Featured Reviews, Hewlett Packard, Laptops