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Small may be beautiful. And while it may be great to tote about a 10 inch laptop for assignments across town or across the globe, long hours of staring at a little screen, makes you wish for something a little more easy on the eyes, minus the bulk and weight.
Enter the HP, with its latest 'balanced mobility' business laptop, the 6910p.
Standing between the light-weight, ultra-portables and high-performance mobile workstation-class machines, the 6910p is aimed at people who have to lug a laptop, have no muscles for it and would prefer not to break out a sweat while travelling about.
So I wasn't at all surprised to see a petite colleague from our print newsroom , whip out her HP after an assignment to update the story,pop in the photos just taken by her cameraman and send it all across town to her editor in one click.
Flashing a smile, while declaring that her day was finally done, the young lady who stood no taller than 1.3 metres tucked the HP into her bag, neatened her dress, checked her shoes and was off for a night with the girls. Amazing! Yes, that was what I thought too.
The 6910p has for starters a 14.1 inch diagonal widescreen display, so you don't need to squint.
Packed with an Intel Core 2 Duo with processing speeds of up to 2.2 Ghz, means your laptop will easily run Windows Vista and handle a number of tasks with no compromise.
Putting the test laptop through its paces, I managed to burn a DVD while playing a video from a flash drive and surfing the web, all at the same time. The 6910p with some 2GB of RAM hardly blinked.
Users have the choice of running either ATI Mobility Radeon X2300 for graphic intense environments, or the Mobile Intel® GMA X3100.
The laptop boasts of a full sized keyboard which was enjoyable to type on with the right give in response to typing.
The Durakeys finish appear like any other keyboard, but the keys have in fact been tested to be 50 times resistant to wear. Magnesium alloy is used for the support structures and enclosures which again means you won't have to worry about bumps, knocks or fatigue setting into parts of the laptop.
While it's tough, the 6910p has also been made to be lightweight, coming in at just some two kilograms.
There's also an in-built detector to guard data should there be sudden, forceful movement such as the laptop falling off the desk or slipping from your hands.
You will want to carry it about, even in your hands, from meeting room to meeting room, because it is a comfortable weight even with the battery pack in.
When it comes to laptops, there is nothing more annoying than having a laptop that runs our of 'juice' after just a few hours. With this laptop there is no worry about that.
After leaving it on for more than 24 hours, I was able to pick it up and work on it for about an hour, even playing a small video clip, before the AC adapter had to be called into action.
Those who are forgetful also needn't worry as the laptop has a finger print reader, so you don't have to remember passwords and if you lose your laptop, it can't be cracked open either! The 6910p comes with drive encyrption which makes the hard drive unreadable to unauthorised users.
There are enough ports and docks to satisfy every work need, from USB2 points, to S-Video TV outlet, SD-MMC reader slots and space for a DVD/CD-RW Combo drive, or in some cases, dual layer burners as well.
The ultra-slim MultiBay II drive also allows you to swap optical drives with secondary hard drives for increased storage, or switch the drive with a weight saver so you carry less when on the road.
The laptop comes with wireless LAN and Bluetooth so whether you're in the office or out of it, you can be connected.
The finishing touches are the dual options of touchpad and pointstick; and touch sensitive pads to control the laptop's audio.
This is a laptop that is really what it has set out to be, a middle-of-road, hard to hate, work horse.
The fact that it doesn't join the brigade of black laptops built for work means that this smooth,silver-grey device will keep you happy at work and if you must, at home too.
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