Hands-on Review: HP Pavilion tx1000

If the HP Pavilion tx1000 were a car, it would be a Toyota Prius. Remarkably inventive and decidedly hybrid, it provides a great multimedia experience and a solid road warrior experience in a small, efficient form factor.

The Pavilion tx is one of the more innovative PCs I've seen, and at the core of its innovation is the combination of a tablet/touch-screen PC with a swivel screen that converts it to a small form factor notebook. The unit has a sturdy center hinge to rotate the screen from tablet to notebook. And you can also (and everyone forgets this) rotate the screen outward to face an audience or watch a movie without being encumbered by the keyboard.

I've been playing with the tx1000 for the past week and I've only begun to scratch the surface—it may, in fact, turn out to be more innovative than many of us want. So, here's a snapshot of one of the most innovative PCs available today. You tell me what you think.

Starting with the surface: HP has a new, sexy imprinted finish on their notebook PCs so both the black cover and silver innards have subtly-textured wave-like ripple patterns. My fingerprints were all over this immediately, but the smudges clean up "real nice" with a glasses cloth.

The 12.1-inch screen can be a bit tough on these old eyes, but BrightView technology, HP's name for the glossy polarizing-like finish on the screen, makes it easily viewable even in bright outdoor light. The weight of the system, just over five pounds with the AC adapter, is easy on my back, though it's not as thin as many other portables I've used. A full-sized keyboard (yeah!) and a comfortable, thin palm rest area feel really good.

Little design touches pleased me both visually and ergonomically. For example, when you plug in the AC to charge the PC, the connection glows "blue" giving me a visual clue my laptop is really being juiced. You can remove the optical drive and use a weight saver if you want to lighten your load, and you can choose between heavier and lighter batteries depending on your travel needs. The touchpad is the most unique I've seen: It's a grid of vents that reads your finger as it passes over the pad. The scroll bar is also a row of vents separated from the touchpad, making it easy (even in a dark room) to know where you're mousing.

There's a button to turn wireless on and off—much easier than fumbling through software menus or function keys. Buttons control your DVD experience, so you never have to boot your machine to watch a movie. The built-in Altec Lansing sound is great. There are also dual headphone jacks, a microphone, an integrated webcam, three USB 2.0 connectors, a mini-FireWire jack, an ExpressCard slot, a media card reader, and solid wireless 802.11 b/g support. It's hard to find something HP left out of this one. By the summer you'll be able to enable the integrated Verizon EV-DO. The only thing that felt uncomfortable was the placement and overall feel of the optical DVD drive. I found myself turning the machine on its side to get the DVD unit opened and having to use the tip of a fingernail to hit the button.

One of the most radical decisions HP made was to use a passive touch screen technology. It wanted you to be able to use the pen applications of Vista, but also to use touch screen controls with your finger or other pointing device to control things like multimedia. And so HP made a tradeoff to use a passive system—one that doesn't require a special stylus with electronics in it to control the screen.

The good news is that you aren't attached to having (and losing) a special stylus. But this means you'll have better luck if you learn not to lift your pen from the tablet and keep a steady, applied pressure. I found this perfectly acceptable and mastered it quickly; others—especially those used to active tablets—may not. I had more trouble with the touch screen controls than the pen input. I had to rap the screen quite sharply with my fingernail for best results.

Multimedia lovers will be in heaven. In addition to a Windows Media Center and DVD quick launch to let to you play a movie, for example, without booting the machine, it has its own QuickPlay—a sort of shorthand way of arranging your personal media by activity. QuickPlay even adds things like support for Slingbox's remote control of your media and a karaoke mode.

I haven't run benchmarks on this machine, but others like CNET found the early benchmarks quite impressive. It uses the AMD Turion 64 processor, has 2GB of RAM, a 160MB hard drive, and the NVIDIA GeForce graphics system—all components that can competently handle Vista's intensive requirements. The system comes with Vista Home Premium Edition.

The Pavilion tx1000 is not for everyone, but it is an adventurous PC that will really allow you to reap the benefits of the new world of Vista, including pen-based applications and touch-screen multimedia. The review machine I looked at cost around $1,700 and will be available on February 28^th.