Well-equipped students on the move

As the new academic year is about to start, many students will be clamouring for a new laptop, insisting this piece of equipment is as important as the textbooks.

Over the past couple of weeks i-Tech had the opportunity to test the HP 4310, part of the successful S-series.

This new model is designed for the mobile professionals, but it is a perfect choice for students who really want a good machine to use both at home and on campus. It's worth the extra weight they will have to carry around if they opt for this model rather than a lighter netbook.

This range is highly customisable and the model we tested sported an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.10 GHz processor, a 13.3-inch screen, 2 GB of RAM, a 230 GB hard drive, Windows Vista Business, Microsoft Office 2007 (trial), McAfee Total Protection, and HP Professional Innovations software.

The HP ProBook is very nice to look at with the glossy finish, however untidy fingerprints are left all over the place after some heavy use, so it will need regular cleaning to keep it spotless.

In power save mode we got two and a half hours of juice with Office applications, web browsing and WiFi going strong all the time (in-built WiFi adaptor was "draft n" compliant and was pretty good). It takes less than two hours to get a full charge again.

Windows Vista was exceptionally fast to booth, though at certain times we had to wait for updates to be installed even at booth time. Computer users who are not Vista fans must not panic, for the next Windows, named 7, is out in a few weeks' time and the release candidate has got very good reviews so far. The LED-backlit screen was nice but we had issues with the graphics driver on the Mobile Intel 4 Chipset, which needed an update.

Our 13.3-inch screen was enough for office work and to watch a movie, a compromise in favour less weight rather than a bigger screen.

At just two kilogrammes, it wasn't a heavy burden to carry around.

Speaking of screens, this particular model has an HDMI output which we found very good to watch DVDs on a bigger high-definition TV screen. The keyboard and touch pad are responsive, but the latter is relatively small.

The in-built memory card reader takes all the popular format like SD and MMC. If users want better performance in terms of capacity or hardware they have several options as HP has made customisation a top priority in this series.

The overall verdict is that this is a good machine to look at and use, and makes perfect sense to those who need good and reliable computing power on the road.

www.hp.com