The HP TouchSmart tx2 is a fully functional multi touch tablet PC. In the past tablet PCs have been a big hit with business and medical professionals but haven’t really been designed for general use as such. This one is attempting to break that pattern by bringing multi touch features to everyone.
This machine is probably a little too large and a bit on the heavy side to be classed as an ultraportable device though. The dimensions are 22.40 x 30.60 x 3.87 and it weighs in at just less than 2kg, but I suppose it’s still light enough to carry around if you have to.
I like the reasonably sized 12.1” WXGA High Definition HP BrightView wide screen display with a resolution of 1,280 x 800 which makes it a lot easier to see the screen in different kinds of light and you can make use of the multi touch feature either with or without a stylus.
You can navigate, select applications, zoom in and out, change the size of icons, and drag files around without using your mouse or touchpad. I could see myself making use of that.
The display screen actually swivels 180 degrees which is great and very convenient if you’re sitting comfortably at your desk but I wonder how it would cope on a bumpy ride. I can imagine it swivelling all over the place, again, something else that doesn’t lend itself very well to functioning as an on the road PC.
Standard specs include 2.2 GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual Core Mobile ZM 82 Processor, up to 4 GB DDR2, 250 GB SATA (5400 rpm), up to 958 MB Video Memory, an ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics with 64 MB, Wi-Fi 802.11 pre-n, Bluetooth, Ethernet, Fingerprint Reader, one ExpressCard/34 slot and a combination of ports.
It also comes with a 101 key compatible keyboard but the function keys at the top are a bit on the small side.
As is too often the case with a new notebook these days the HP TouchSmart tx2 comes with a whole host of pre-loaded software and shareware, most of which is probably completely irrelevant and taking up valuable space, why do they do that?
Ok so tablet PCs can be a bit more expensive to buy, this one sells for around $2,400, and multi touch screens can become quite grubby rather quickly, which means it may not suit everyone, but apart from all that, overall it’s not a bad machine.
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