The HP Compaq 2710p (reviewed from a consumer perspective in our recent group test) is a hard device to categorise, being something of a compromise between a conventional notebook and a tablet PC.

Moreover, with a foot in both camps, it’s inevitably far from perfect, with a number of both good and bad points which need to be clearly understood before making a business buying decision.

We’ll start with the good points, the most notable of which is portability. The 2710p weighs in at just over 1.6kg (2.12kg with the power supply), which is very light compared with most business notebooks. It’s also very compact, making it comfortable to carry around and use. Despite which, we got almost six hours of battery life in our Labs tests. It’s also solidly built with a brushed alloy outer casing, making for a robust as well as very businesslike product.

The basic computing specification is pretty good, too, starting with a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. And it’s a low voltage chip, hence, the good battery life.

On the downside this didn’t return particularly good scores in our tests, although it is good enough to run most business applications. We would also have liked to see more than just 1GB of memory configured as standard, especially given the note in the box telling us that HP recommends at least 2GB for Windows Vista, the Business edition of which is supplied with this model.

Another nice feature is the display. Open up the 2710p and you find a 12.1in colour TFT with a resolution of 1,280x800 pixels. This can be swivelled round and folded flat, tablet PC style, and used with an active stylus that pops out of a holder built into the side (it’s not a touchscreen model). Whether or not you want to use it that way will, of course, be down to personal taste. But Vista’s tablet implementation is a big improvement over that for XP and we found it quite easy to get to grips with.

Other good points include Centrino Pro wireless, delivering 802.11b/g/a Wifi with an optional antenna that pops out from the top of the screen to improve reception. A wired Gigabit Ethernet port is also provided, plus there’s Bluetooth as standard, together with a couple of USB2 connectors, an IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port and a slot for SD memory cards. A built-in webcam is another option on some models.

And the bad points? The lack of Ram is one, although that’s easy enough to resolve. Harder to fix, however, is the lack of a CD or DVD drive, omitted for the sake of portability. We would also have liked a bigger hard disk than the 80GB model provided.

We found the fiddly little keyboard light in the top of the screen a waste of time and the fingerprint reader on the edge hard to operate. The screen was reasonable and the keyboard nicely spaced for this size of notebook, but we didn’t get on with the keyboard ‘Pointstick’ and longed for a touchpad as well.

Finally, a lot of extra ‘bloatware’ is included with the notebook, mostly aimed at enterprise customers and of little value to the smaller business. As a result it took ages to get the 2710p up and running out of the box; several hours, in fact, to install the operating system, load all the HP add-ons, then apply the various updates. OK, it was mostly automated, but others come with this already done, making for faster deployment and a more pleasant experience all round.