Hands on with the HP Pavilion tx2000
By Dan Ackerman, CNET.com
08/01/2008
We don't actually know too many people who use a convertible tablet PC, but everyone's always asking us about them, and the tech press likes to cover new tablets extensively. While most of these systems are meant for industrial use, in hospitals, industrial sites, and occasionally by note-taking students, HP hit on a novel idea last year, introducing a tablet aimed strictly at movie-watching consumers, called the tx1000.
When we first saw the original tx1000 at 2007's CES, we liked the media-friendly options, such as a credit card-size remote control, and glossy 12.1-inch screen--plus it turned out to be the very first Windows Vista laptop we had gotten our hands on.
No other strictly consumer-targeted tablets have crossed our path since then, but HP still believes in the concept, revamping the unit as the Pavilion tx2000 for this year's CES. From the outside, it looks almost exactly the same, and it includes the same (fairly useless) HP QuickPlay media playing software, plus a Webcam and touch-sensitive screen. Inside, the main difference is the addition of Wacom digitizer support to the finger-sensitive 12.1-inch touchscreen, something missing from the previous tx1000 model.
We got a chance to play around with the new tx2000, and like its predecessor, it's an impressive portable media laptop. It earns points for the media-friendly controls and included remote, but it's still a bit on the heavy and bulky side for a system with a 12-inch screen--the entire system's nearly as large as a 13-inch MacBook. Shaving a couple of milimeters or grams from it would make it that much more impressive.
