A Decent Featured/Priced Mobile

I go to HP's website to check-out a laptop I saw in the student store (university campus). It's a clean, functional, liteweight, model laptop with a good screen, decent (brilliant) LED backlight, an isometrick joystick, plenty of connections, headphone jack and mic jacks, a Sim reader in the back, long battery life...it's discontinued.

A momentary digression, the website. Navigating to find HP's chat functionality, I clicked-through only to be presented with a dazzling maze of options I must first select before finally reaching a representative, as if a buyer should know every detail about make and model before inquiring with a representative. One might just facetiously click-through till gaining support, but it was so annoying I decided not to. Moving-on to e-mail support, I similarly found pre-determined topics of questioning. This is common in modern business, simplifying for the business rather than a customer. It may seem to be an improvement to the business, to ask the customer's question before they do, but the real effect may be the customer goes elsewhere.

Returning to the subject, as a computer, the one I just saw, it is several years old, but it's so well-built and feels so great in hand, it's attractive. Holding it, one wouldn't know or care that it is ancient by computer standards--and why care when the chips dominating the market are models from Intel that have also dominated a while? This computer is not cartoonish as are the models contempor. (There are no garish color glosses imprinted with bubbles on the backs and palmrests of this model.) However, it's overpriced versus current features of notebooks, for sure, even at its rate of going as a discontinued store model. But...it has the isometrick joystick--absent the HP's os now. The only other joystick'd ultraportable near a thousand bucks is from Lenovo, and the two paragrand models have neither LED backlighting, nor optical drive integration (without a thousand dollar boost); this little HP has a D.V.D. writer.

But it's discontinued.

HP, like other manufacturers, is seeking to be hip and trendy. Perhaps they're all coat-tailing Apple? Some centuries aback one translator wrote, "imitation is seldom good taste". The consumer-syncophants have arriviste pretensions, (like Dell with Adamo--who couldn't even get the name in translation, much less the configuration, right to be attractive: looks sure, but overall?)

HP is now fudging with swirls and ugly colors, too much gloss, no class. I liked this older model, it's the hp2510p. It's sharp, liteweight, imbued with simplicity--much like Apple's products, yet not as bland (several shades on the chasis). Updated with a higher resolution screen and bigger, faster HD, even keeping the same chipset and configuration overall, and HP would have a great product if they'd learn to market it. Actually no, make the resolution upgrade optional, and lower the price: especially in this recession; students make thousands a year, so a clean grand could be a third of annual income--too much for students. The hard drive surely needs upsizing, (due to modern media consumerism), but really, it's fine otherwise. One minor complaint: where Dell's products are known as heating devices, HPs are known for hard-drive failure; and both for brick-supplies. Better HD components and connections, and smaller powerbricks, and the chic meter rises. Capishe?

(And HP, integrating a tuner (HDTV) into this sucker, and perhaps an optional cable-connection, and you've got yourself a sharp, pro-level, strong-bodied, student-oriented, lappy on hand: I'd even help boasting it for you, so long as the pretensions of "premium" cash-raping don't creep into your business model (like Dell with the Adamo--I love myself (Dell)). Keep the "professional" (make it standard) chassis with its sturdiness, and you've got a sale. Drop the garish art, save it for the ladies, and chic? Striveth not to be as the arrivist'ed (as Apple), which haveth not the other manufacturers. Apple's is much illusory, yours is hurt by shackles to slow, painful, Windows: but 7 is around the corner, and Linux too wants to arrive--and perhaps it will, (I also learned it runs well on the 2510p, so my Kubuntu should run nicely).)

[And yes, I know, I did use internal bracketing above! The "'eth'd" verbs allude to the translator being one of the Bible.]