HP 2760p reliability and battery life questions.

[TacoJ]

I have a few concerns about the 2760p, maybe some of you can clear up for me.

1.) What is the realistic battery life of this device? Under these sorts of conditions, WiFi On, 50% screen brightness, primary uses One Note, Power Point, and Firefox running. If any 2760p owners could give me some insight on how long their unit lasts that would be great.

2.) Reliability and quirks. I know that basically every model of computer has it's own "known issues" such as the Lenovo had horrible edge accuracy with the digitizer. Are there any major issues known about the HP 2760p I should be aware of?

3.) Recently there's been a lot of talk of HP dissolving or passing it's laptop/desktop division to another company. If I purchase a 2760p how likely do you current owners feel that HP will continue to support it's warranty, and keep the product updated if there are ever any major issues.


More importantly the reliability of the tablet itself, as I mentioned before I had 2 defective Lenovos and it's already been disruptive for me to be shipping them back and switching between temporary setups while I wait for a new tablet. So I'm looking for something I can depend on not failing, are there any known parts of this tablet that fails regularly, I know HP's build quality and reliability varies to a great degree between notebook models.


I've been using a HP TM2 tablet pc for a while now and I found it to be a great machine, almost perfect except for that it has a horrible screen, with dismal viewing angles.

I decided to buy a Lenovo X220T and after about two weeks I had some build quality defects so I exchange it for another one which after a few days of normal use it decided to give up and die. So I've returned my X220T for a refund and now I'm back in the market for a new tablet.

In terms of what I'm looking for the Lenovo was in theory perfect, lightweight (for a tablet-pc), great screen, good form factor, good battery life (5.5-6hrs with my usage WiFi-on 50% screen brightness, in power-saver mode), and supposedly rigid build quality.

Since I had two X220Ts with defects I'm no longer willing to give Lenovo another try, mainly because I use my tablet for note-taking and annotations so reliability and battery life are the two main factors for me.

Now I'm strongly considering these two tablet-pc models. The HP 2760p and the Fujitsu T901, the difference in price is of no consequence to me as this is something I plan to use over the next couple of years.


While the Fujitsu T901 and HP 2760p seem like very different machines, I'm assuming the HP's standard battery will not be consistently sufficient for me (I realistically need ~5-5.5 hours use on a charge) Once you add the external Slice battery onto the 2760p it's size & weight is similar to the Fujitsu T901. This put the T901 in contention with me because when you add the Slice battery to the 2760p they are virtually the same thickness (1.5 inch) and weight while the Fujitsu has a larger screen and modular battery/optical system as well as other tablet features like more dedicated screen buttons.


Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated, I know I'm asking a lot of general questions and I've been searching for answers to them myself but information about the 2760p is sparse.

[Agent 9]

1. don't know, but my 2730p will get 2-4hrs of heavy to medium use on standard battery, add the slice and it is a bit more than double (main battery is ~15% worn, slices are both 1% worn), when only note taking @ max brightness and nothing else I get 9-10+hrs of use time on both batteries; I think the 2760p will be about the same
2. don't know
3. By law HP (or whoever would have ended up in charge) would be bound to 'service' any released products for 7 years (not sure if that is entirely correct info, but its what I heard)... but they aren't selling off the computer portion... it was a big fiasco about 'communication problems' that ended with some top people being replaced/ removed; but business seem to be moving ahead regardless of the issue -there is more about it in the HP Slate 500 sub-forum, and elsewhere on the Internet


Personally:
I say go for the Fujitsu T5010/ T900/ T901 simply for the larger screen (13.3") that is always a Hydis screen (where as with the 2760p you have to find a model with the outdoor screen to have a Hydis screen, though it will only be 12.1" -that 1.2" will make a good difference in usability, simply the total screen space will make it easier to use for a lot of notes and general use, even though it is the same resolution), and if you have the money to spend and have the need (ie: applications like 3D workstation stuff) then splurge on the Nvidia card for $120 on the T901

The HP 27xxp line is great (very solid build, very good overall design, so forth), but the lack of a full sized HDD/ SSD bay, smaller screen, lack of modular bay, and lack of some ports (T901 has a built in USB 3.0 port, as well as HDMI and lots of other ports)




No matter what you pick out, if you are able to choose configuration please save yourself several hundred dollars (literally!) and get as little ram as possible/ that is the cheapest (and then buy 8GB DDR3 for ~$50 and pop that in... I think Fujitsu wants to charge $300 for 8GB in the T901 ), then if you are eying a SSD system then spec it for the lowest HDD (then buy a SSD separately, replace the HDD with it, then install Windows 7, or 8 if you wish -either get it with recovery DVD's, or download Win 7 install media and use the key on the bottom of the machine to have fully legal/ active Win 7... though there are now like 3 standard sized 1TB 2.5" HDD's going for $110 on Newegg if you need space not speed)

-But be sure to get at least one secondary battery for your system -so that you can alternate between which you use each week so you really minimize wear on each battery and get the most life span out of each (plus you can carry both secondaries with you when on long trips/ days and have loads of battery life to do more intensive things without having to worry about time remaining
-and If you are between home/ work or school a lot then buy a second A/C adapter -one to leave at home, and one for your carry bag (this has saved me countless times with my 2730p)

[TacoJ]

Thanks for the detailed response Agent 9.

I ultimately just put in my order for an Elitebook 2760p with i5 2.5ghz + 4gb ram (ready to order prebuilt build) from Amazon.

I spent quiet a lot of time over analyzing every detail of just about all of the few current convertible tablets out there. The Lenovo X220T is what I considered a perfect mix as I detailed above, for my uses. But due to it's very poor reliability, at least from the two units that I received I can't consider getting another one of them just to be burnt by it later. Luckily I backup most of my important files regularly, or I would of been royally screwed by my last Lenovo if whatever happened with it involved the hard drive.

I spent a lot of time reading user impressions of both the HP and Fujitsu from this very web forum and other review sites.

What I found is that the new T901 Fujitsu is commonly being reported as feeling cheap, I guess due to having a lot of plastic construction, although its still rigid. What I found most alarming was some reports of motherboard failures and screen separation from the bezel. Good but not outstanding battery life. Keyboard quality not being the best, although that can be subjective.

Where as on the 27X0p series of computers most everyone has reported the build quality to be top notch, very rigid, as well as having a great keyboard. The only alarming fault I found on the 2760p series of computers is that apparently there is a design flaw with the little pins on the sides of the keyboard to keep the screen in place when closed; if you close the screen while its still partly rotated you may crack your screen. Obviously that's a major flaw but people are reporting that HP is aware of it and generally good about warrantying the issue. I see this as something that I can avoid by just being careful when closing the screen. Although I intend to buy some additional accidental warranty if I can.

Now as to why I decided the way I did. Obviously the Fujitsu has a great 13.3 inch screen compared to the similarly good but smaller 2760p screen at 12.1 inch. I've been using a Tm2 with a 12.1 inch screen, same resolution and aspect ratio, so I know that while I'd appreciate the larger screen at the same time I'm fine with a 12.1 inch screen. The Fujitsu is larger than the 2760p by some margin. I found the Lenovo I had to be OK in size, it was slightly larger than I would of liked but I had no issue dealing with it on a day to day basis.The 2760p is smaller than the Lenovo at 1.27inch thick vs 1.3x inches thick and with a considerably smaller footprint. While the Fujitsu was the opposite, being 1.5 inch thick + larger footprint (because of the screen of course) The 2760p also weighs less but has less battery time. While the hardware available in the T901 is practically the same in the 2760p, the 2760p has a smaller 43W 6-cell battery vs the 63W 6-cell battery in the Fujitsu, so I'd expect the 2760p to get less battery life. In order to surpass the battery life of the Fujitsu I would need to use a slice battery. Which will make the 2760p weigh about the same as the Fujitsu and give it the same thickness, but during times when I don't need the battery, or after the battery wears down I could always remove the slice and continue on with the lighter, thinner standard setup. So that played greatly in the 2760p's favor. Also in general I find the 2760p more aesthetically pleasing, while it's not anywhere near as good looking as something like the Samsung Series 9 laptops, I think the 2760p is one of the least dated looking convertible tablets available.

Hopefully when I receive the tablet later this week it will live up to or surpass my expectations because I was really quiet happy with my Lenovo before it decided to become unreliable.

Companion devices:

This played greatly in my decision, I was starting to feel outside of the Lenovo and my Tm2 there was no tablet I'd be satisfied with because of weight/thickness, build/reliability issues, and battery life. I ultimately landed on the 2760p because I realized that I can't go back to a normal laptop no matter how enticing having a sub 3 pound laptop with slightly above .5 inch thickness is. I simply prefer inking annotations and notes vs typing them. I also feel that writing notes helps memory recall of the information more vs typing but that's another discussion.

I realized that while I still use my tablet/laptop for intensive web surfing, and video playback. There's a new generation of devices coming out that will replace many of those basic functions in my tablet and spare me weight and battery life.

I purchased an Asus Transformer recently and found that it's great for reviewing PDFs, Power points, light web surfing, and media playback. I was disappointed to find that it can not handle most 720p mkvs without converting them (time consuming) even with paid apps, as it's a limitation of it's processor (something I sadly realized after my return period ran out) But the next generation of tablets should be able to handle 720p mkvs/avis (this makes up 90%+ of my video library)

So a few months down the road from now when the next generation of tablet CPUs hit the market. I feel that I could purchase another android tablet device as a companion to my full on windows convertible tablet, and use programs and cloud based storage to keep them synced. I'm already experimenting with this on my Asus transformer. So that I can have a lighter device to handle most of my media playback and reviewing of documents to save me from having to carry or charge my main tablet as frequently. Then the 2760p would take on more of a work horse role, generally only being needed when I have to ink something or need to do more intensive web surfing than would be comfortable on a android tablet.


Sorry for the long sloppy wall of text above, but I'm in a rush and figured I'd throw some ideas out there in case someone else was also having some indecision over what tablet to choose. I'll try to clean it up later when I have more time available. I also intend to report my findings on battery life and compare it to what I've experienced with my X220T in case anyone was wondering.

[AndreR]

I´m interested in your thoughts about the laptop when you receives it. I feel it´s generally very quit about the 2760p here on the forum.

[XeneL]

Hi Folks

I have been using the 2760p for a few weeks now. I've owned a 2730p previously and it was excellent in terms of build, which contributed partly to my decision. I'm biased! We have a number of notebooks here for home and business and the elitebooks have been as good as our macbooks.

I was also amazed at the silence on reviews of the 2760p - globally. I'll try to fill in the gaps here somewhat.

To try and answer some of your questions. The battery life - hard to answer that - given conditions change a bit when I am using it - I've not tried to run it just on one type of activity for the whole battery. I will turn up the screen brightness if I need to, and/or turn off wireless if I remember a couple of hours into some work at a cafe. I also move out of writing into solid computation data analysis too, so this is not a stable test of batterylife. I have 3hrs left now on 73%, full brightness, wireless, just internet and painttool sai on . I think it was 4ish on 100%- can't remember. Reducing to half brightness the battery life just went up to 3:24mins on 72%. Just commenting back here again on the battery - For some reason battery down to 68% now but the time remaining has gone up to 3:27mins, still on half brightness and just blogging here. Now 3:29mins on an increased 69%, work that out - it's going up in %. Now 3:14 on 66% - 2:45 on 63% - appears to recalibrate quite a bit pending on what I am doing (watching TV or typing!). See if you can do the numbers on that!

Likes and dislikes:
Likes: Screen quality and brightness. Solid build all around. Keyboard is different to the 2730p, but still crisp and not noisy. I can type in committee meetings and no-one takes any notice. I really wanted a trackpoint, but am finding with the touchscreen I just have not noticed the need - just touch and screen to close the application! Speed and ability of the system (64bit Win7 Prof). But put these together - machine and system: I'm using snipping tool, printing docs and pdfs to MS Journal to write on with the pen - then print back to pdf. It's just a breeze and revolutionises my ability to use documents and email. I've used the same approach in tutorials, seminars and lectures and used the pen on powerpoint. Onenote, journal and powerpoint are just wonderful with this tablet. It's stable and quite solid physically and in performance.
Dislikes: 1. It's true about the accuracy of the digitiser is less on the edges, but not dramatically enough to make you miss the start button, perhaps it has more to do with the size of your finger in ratio to the button size on the edge (e.g. some programs have tiny close/maximise buttons which I can miss with my average to large size fingers. I have not otherwise had any need to pen/ink on the edges (say powerpoint etc), even writing on pdfs margins it is far enough from any significant edge to notice issues).
2. The screen latch when closing or in tablet mode. The latter is not a core problem, just requires some familiarity with locking in, how to close the lid so the hook just clicks in. The lid is solid and swivels correctly, just the last part of locking into position the magnet latch/hook just needs to nudge in... It's not enough of a problem to detract from the unit overall, but it is the only noticeable thing to mention. There's nothing else I have experience with to comment on...

The other positive is the model I bought - LJ466UT came with the base station with additional power pack, so you can just land you laptop at home or the office and it charges up etc. I have not even setup a mouse or monitor off that base station yet, just the nice solid build.

I'd buy this model again and am very pleased with the unit, am really enjoying the new innovation in daily practice which the machine+software brings. The folks at work don't know what hit them with inked pdfs, highlighters and scribbles all over the place!

XeneL

[TacoJ]

Thank you for your insights its good to read some positive real world accounts of the 2760p.

Luckily Amazon shipped my 2760p out the same day, even though it said it would take a couple of days of additional processing. So I should have my 2760p later today, I'll post my initial impressions later but ill reserve my overall thoughts until I've had about a week of day to day use.

[Liberty]

Thanks for the detailed response Agent 9.

I ultimately just put in my order for an Elitebook 2760p with i5 2.5ghz + 4gb ram (ready to order prebuilt build) from Amazon.

I spent quiet a lot of time over analyzing every detail of just about all of the few current convertible tablets out there. The Lenovo X220T is what I considered a perfect mix as I detailed above, for my uses. But due to it's very poor reliability, at least from the two units that I received I can't consider getting another one of them just to be burnt by it later. Luckily I backup most of my important files regularly, or I would of been royally screwed by my last Lenovo if whatever happened with it involved the hard drive.

I spent a lot of time reading user impressions of both the HP and Fujitsu from this very web forum and other review sites.

What I found is that the new T901 Fujitsu is commonly being reported as feeling cheap, I guess due to having a lot of plastic construction, although its still rigid. What I found most alarming was some reports of motherboard failures and screen separation from the bezel. Good but not outstanding battery life. Keyboard quality not being the best, although that can be subjective.

Where as on the 27X0p series of computers most everyone has reported the build quality to be top notch, very rigid, as well as having a great keyboard. The only alarming fault I found on the 2760p series of computers is that apparently there is a design flaw with the little pins on the sides of the keyboard to keep the screen in place when closed; if you close the screen while its still partly rotated you may crack your screen. Obviously that's a major flaw but people are reporting that HP is aware of it and generally good about warrantying the issue. I see this as something that I can avoid by just being careful when closing the screen. Although I intend to buy some additional accidental warranty if I can.

Now as to why I decided the way I did. Obviously the Fujitsu has a great 13.3 inch screen compared to the similarly good but smaller 2760p screen at 12.1 inch. I've been using a Tm2 with a 12.1 inch screen, same resolution and aspect ratio, so I know that while I'd appreciate the larger screen at the same time I'm fine with a 12.1 inch screen. The Fujitsu is larger than the 2760p by some margin. I found the Lenovo I had to be OK in size, it was slightly larger than I would of liked but I had no issue dealing with it on a day to day basis.The 2760p is smaller than the Lenovo at 1.27inch thick vs 1.3x inches thick and with a considerably smaller footprint. While the Fujitsu was the opposite, being 1.5 inch thick + larger footprint (because of the screen of course) The 2760p also weighs less but has less battery time. While the hardware available in the T901 is practically the same in the 2760p, the 2760p has a smaller 43W 6-cell battery vs the 63W 6-cell battery in the Fujitsu, so I'd expect the 2760p to get less battery life. In order to surpass the battery life of the Fujitsu I would need to use a slice battery. Which will make the 2760p weigh about the same as the Fujitsu and give it the same thickness, but during times when I don't need the battery, or after the battery wears down I could always remove the slice and continue on with the lighter, thinner standard setup. So that played greatly in the 2760p's favor. Also in general I find the 2760p more aesthetically pleasing, while it's not anywhere near as good looking as something like the Samsung Series 9 laptops, I think the 2760p is one of the least dated looking convertible tablets available.

Hopefully when I receive the tablet later this week it will live up to or surpass my expectations because I was really quiet happy with my Lenovo before it decided to become unreliable.

Companion devices:

This played greatly in my decision, I was starting to feel outside of the Lenovo and my Tm2 there was no tablet I'd be satisfied with because of weight/thickness, build/reliability issues, and battery life. I ultimately landed on the 2760p because I realized that I can't go back to a normal laptop no matter how enticing having a sub 3 pound laptop with slightly above .5 inch thickness is. I simply prefer inking annotations and notes vs typing them. I also feel that writing notes helps memory recall of the information more vs typing but that's another discussion.

I realized that while I still use my tablet/laptop for intensive web surfing, and video playback. There's a new generation of devices coming out that will replace many of those basic functions in my tablet and spare me weight and battery life.

I purchased an Asus Transformer recently and found that it's great for reviewing PDFs, Power points, light web surfing, and media playback. I was disappointed to find that it can not handle most 720p mkvs without converting them (time consuming) even with paid apps, as it's a limitation of it's processor (something I sadly realized after my return period ran out) But the next generation of tablets should be able to handle 720p mkvs/avis (this makes up 90%+ of my video library)

So a few months down the road from now when the next generation of tablet CPUs hit the market. I feel that I could purchase another android tablet device as a companion to my full on windows convertible tablet, and use programs and cloud based storage to keep them synced. I'm already experimenting with this on my Asus transformer. So that I can have a lighter device to handle most of my media playback and reviewing of documents to save me from having to carry or charge my main tablet as frequently. Then the 2760p would take on more of a work horse role, generally only being needed when I have to ink something or need to do more intensive web surfing than would be comfortable on a android tablet.


Sorry for the long sloppy wall of text above, but I'm in a rush and figured I'd throw some ideas out there in case someone else was also having some indecision over what tablet to choose. I'll try to clean it up later when I have more time available. I also intend to report my findings on battery life and compare it to what I've experienced with my X220T in case anyone was wondering.

My thoughts exactly. I am thinking of buying one. I have looked at the asus and was thinking the same thing.

[TacoJ]

Just a little update, I'm going to reserve my full opinion about the 2760p until I've had a week or two of real world use from it but here are some of my initial impressions and feedback.

I received my 2760p last night, after the first boot up and windows setup, I tested everything to make sure all components were functioning. I then went ahead and swapped in a SSD drive + 4gb of additional ram. Then I did a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate and spent some time hunting down and installing drivers/updates. With the SSD installed it runs extremely fast, I had the same SSD installed in my X220T which had an i7 processor but it didn't run nearly as quickly for some reason.

The 2760p is very very well built, I was surprised at how well balance it is too. The good weight distribution makes it feel lighter than it really is when holding it. The only thing I don't like about the design is how small the touchpad is, I've used netbooks with bigger touchpads; but after turning up the pointer sensitivity I've gotten used to the reduced surface area.

Sadly, my 2760p only lasted 3 hours and 48 mins run time on Power saver mode, modified to throttle the CPU to a maximum of 35%, 40% screen brightness, and WiFi on. Doing mostly annotations on power point slides and some light web surfing. It ended up dying in the middle of my last lecture for the day, which was disappointing; I have a slice battery on the way which should be here by Friday. This was some fairly light weight use, so I was hoping to get somewhere between 4.5-5 hours run time, which would of been about 1 hr less than the Lenovo was getting on an unmodified power saver plan and 50% brightness + WiFi but still sufficient to get me through the day.

The battery has only been charged once overnight, and today was the first time it was fully discharged, I'm hoping that I'll get more run time out of it once I've cycled the battery a few more times. I'm also researching to see if I may of somehow missed a hardware driver that could be effecting the battery life in a negative way. My unit didn't come with a recovery disk or even recovery software pre-loaded to make my own recovery disks, so I just did a fresh install of a retail windows 7 and manually installed most drivers off the HP site, it's possible I missed an important driver.

I'm not going to pass full judgement on it's battery life just yet, until I'm 100% satisfied that it's running in optimal configuration.

[XeneL]

Taco-Out of interest, which SSD did you use?

I thought the same about the touchpad, but increasingly am using my finger on the screen, after all that's what it's for... I was showing someone today about using the snipping tool (now pinned to my task bar) PowerPoint and then the pen to annotate the slides and print to PDF doc. It's changing the way we learn and teach and think, so I take it that I have to break through my dependence on any mouse or touchpad. originally I thought I must have a track point, but really have not used it... I'm even doing my own artwork for the backgrounds of slides and presentations (export from paint tool sai to insert picture background into PowerPoint- did a great bloodstain on parchment the other day)...

XeneL

[TacoJ]

I agree, I don't use the touchpad as much as I would on a normal laptop because I do reach and touch the screen for scrolling or making selections pretty often. There's something very natural feeling about just reaching out and touching the screen to scroll though a webpage, I've even caught myself touching the screen on other non-touch enabled laptops.

Snipping tool sounds interesting, to be honest I haven't made use of it, I'll look into it and see how it can make my work flow easier.

I'm using a Crucial M4 SSD 6.0Gb/s drive, it's very fast I purchased it for my tm2 which it fit in just fine after altering a small bracket inside the Tm2. But the Lenovo X220T and 2760p both take smaller profile 7mm SSDs which the Crucial M4 is not. What I did was removed the 4 screws on the drive and opened it up, inside there's a black plastic spacer, I removed that spacer effectively turning the Crucial M4 into a smaller 7mm drive, although probably voiding my SSD's warranty in the process.

I then insulated the top of the chips with some electrical tape then taped the cover back onto the SSD, because the screws that hold it in place are sized for the cover+spacer so they are too large to screw back in to hold it in place. I'm sure I could buy some shorter screws but electrical tape seems to be holding it just fine, and once you put it in the hard drive caddy and into the laptop it's a snug fit so there's nothing to worry about. Had I purchased an SSD specifically for this laptop I might of got an Intel or some other brand that's designed to fit within these specifications, but otherwise I have no regrets about the Crucial M4 it's very fast. Like I mentioned before for some reason it appears to be much faster here in my 2760p than it was on the Lenovo, and the Lenovo had a faster i7 processor compared to the i5 in my 2760p. Maybe the Lenovo has a slower SATA connector, the boot time on my Lenovo was around 30 seconds, on my 2760p I believe it's under 15 seconds I haven't timed it but it feels extremely quick. I'll time it later and post the result.

EDIT: Just timed it 3 times, it came in between 14-15 seconds from hitting the switch to Windows login screen. After swiping my finger to login I can immediately open Firefox and other programs with no lag time, that's what I mean by fast.