More Impressions of the TX1000

The more I work with the HP Pavilion TX 1000 Entertainment Notebook (and I just now decided that I'm never typing all of that again) the more I realize that despite having tablet functionality, this machine was not designed for me. This is not a "Tablet PC", and I think that the lack of Tablet PC branding on the machine should have been a huge clue. In fact, I'm seriously debating at this point if I should even try using this machine at school next week. You can't write on it ... well, you can in a technical sense, but it requires so much effort to write anything legibly enough that it just isn't worth it. Ever try to write on the screen of a PDA? It's exactly the same thing.

It's clear now that HP knew this, and thus the "Entertainment Notebook" branding. So what exactly is that supposed to mean? It means that it's designed primarily as a computer you can watch movies on. So why can you turn the screen? Because it's actually easier to watch a movie when you swivel the screen and put the keyboard behind the machine. The speakers are part of the screen, so they'll always be posititioned correctly for you. Combine that with dedicated DVD playback buttons, DivX codec preinstalled, and a free trial for Vongo, and you've got a capable entertainment device. So what's up with the touchscreen and stylus? Well, it looks like the touchscreen is for ease of video watching when you've got the screen turned, and the stylus is for fingerprint prevention. The only problem is that the touchscreen turned on the Tablet features and that causes a bit of an expectations issue for someone familiar with a Tablet PC feature set.

I'm going to talk with an HP representative later today, and will probably adjust my review plan to focus more on the entertainment features, but that will depend on whether or not HP really wants to position this machine in the Tablet space or not.