The overall user-friendliness of the HP ProBook 4510s is good, but it could be better. We like the fact that the touchpad keys don’t make a sound when you press them, but hate that the buttons are hinged at the top and can only be pressed from the bottom. Apart from this little annoyance, using the notebook is a joy: the palm rest is large, the number pad is useful for making quick calculations, and the screen isn’t susceptible to reflections.
The cells developed aren’t going to be of much use in a laptop, offering 1.5V a piece. Multiple Uniwill U40 batteries can be linked in series, though, providing 3V, 4.5V and 6V (as if you couldn’t work out those steps yourself).
The cells are made using a silk-screen printing process similar to that used of printing t-shirts. The result is a battery weighing less than a gram and of negligible thickness.
The materials used in the teeny cells - a zinc anode and manganese cathode, to be specific - degrade over time. The Sony VGP-BPS2 batteries are therefore, for now, limited in use to applications where the relatively low power and short lifespan aren’t a problem; such as greetings cards.
The sites will accept all types of household batteries, including rechargeable battery packs used in DIY tools and digital cameras, laptop batteries, small “button” or watch-type batteries, as well as the typical AA and AAA type batteries.
If you need Internet access only at a hotel, make sure that the hotel you stay at provides wireless or wired access. If wireless is the only access available, ask for a room as close to the wireless access point — or router — as possible.
At the top of the deck are three function buttons and a power switch. One button is a Web browser quick launch key, one turns the display on and off, and the third is a speaker mute button. The speakers are low powered and lack volume, which is just as well as they are tinny sounding.
Framed by a silver bezel, the 1366-by-768 display is unusual because uses a 15.5-inch panel, rather than the 15.4 or 15.6-inch sizes that are currently all the rage. It delivers a 16:9 aspect ratio and features Sony’s XBRITE-ECO technology, BTP-63D1 battery,which uses a glossy coating to deliver rich colors and deep black levels. Image quality is superb, although the shiny screen can be distracting if you’re working in a brightly lit room. At only 5.5 pounds, the slim (1.2-inches at its highest point) NW-120J is as easy on the shoulder as it is on the eyes.
Bigger notebook hard drives make room for more creative configurations. In my case, I decided to divide up the new machine’s 500GB disk before migrating so that I can multiboot into Leopard, Compaq Presario 2100 battery,Snow Leopard, or Windows 7. Disk Utility in the latest release of Leopard is able to alter the internal drive’s partition table nondestructively, while the boot volume is mounted. For the most part, there is no need to boot from the install DVD or use special tools to divide up your drive.