GearWERKZ TechBlog

I am getting older. In addition to being able to run not so fast and lifting weight that is not so heavy, I am keeping my PCs longer. The unfortunate truth of getting older and having a mortgage. The oldest laptop in current usage in my gear kit is my HP EliteBook 2730p TabletPC, which is entering its 18th month of servce. Yes, I know. I have nothing to complain about in terms of how old this laptop is. And I agree. This report is more about what I am getting done with the HP than it is about how I need a new one.

Follow up:

Let me start out by saying that the EliteBook is aging well. I have two other laptops, both running Core i7 processors, but the HP does not seem overly slow in comparison to those PCs. I am still in awe of the chemically treated non-glare LCD. My other HP, the Asus G73, and the iPad all have hi-gloss screens that I have to clean weekly. It is great to have a lot of computing power in the 2730p's diminutive size.

There is a small quirk with the fingerprint reader, where it will not accept registration of index fingers. My work-around has been to simply swipe the other fingers I can. Other than that, things on the HP are pretty good. No hardware discrepancies have crept in since the laptop passed its original warranty date.

While I rarely work directly on the HP's keyboard, it is still a delight to do so. I actually use the pop-out light that is on the top of the LCD bezel to illuminate the keyboard when necessary. This was a function that I thought I would never use. I guess the joke's on me. Bluetooth, USB ports, wireless...all items that I still use heavily and are still in good working order.

The HP seems to run a little warm these days, and I do not recall this always being the case. I've been using an easel cooling stand, both in order to work on it in tablet mode at my computer table, and to keep it cooler.

I did a wipe and clean install of the tabletPC back in December in order to update to Windows 7. It took some doing, but about three months into it, I had all of the kinks (mostly drivers) worked out. I use the HP predominantly for work, so it covers a lot of ground and runs a lot of hours.

I used to try and use just about every pen-enabled app I could find. Now, I pretty much just stick to MS OneNote and Outlook. The integration between these two applications is such that I cannot remember why it took me so long to jettison those other applications.

The machine can get a little bogged down from Outlook, but I suspect this is because my work email volume exploded this year and the HP is trying to sort all of those folders in my core PST file when I initially open Outlook. Other than louder speakers, I cannot think of much I would have wanted HP to change for the 2740. I normally don't like buying the same name brand for two PCs in a row. But when it comes time to replace the 2730, I will have to consider making an exception to that rule.
- Vr/Z..>>