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HP TX2-1020US TouchSmart 12.1-Inch Laptop Review from Grayson Hill. Works well for me, I’m pleased with it.

I’m a heavy Mac user; I purchased this to keep different parts of work separate from one another, and to make it easier to work with clients and students. I needed something small so I could carry it and a 17″ MacBook Pro.

RUNDOWN:

Bulk: It’s thick for its size. BUT, most of the outlying thickness is due to the touchscreen. Tradeoff.

It doesn’t have Firewire or HDMI. Don’t know if either is common in SMALL notebooks. Tradeoff.

The processor speed seems fine to me. But I’m not trying to play first-person shooters or run Maya or Mathematica on the thing.

The keyboard is a real pleasure compared to a lot out there. I wanted small, but mini-notebooks are too tiny for my paws. The trackpad works nicely. The buttons seem a little misplaced, but I may just be used to the over-sized one on the MacBook. YMMV. The fact that you can manually lock out the trackpad is nice.

Sound volume gets loud enough, thank you. The DVD drive is removable to cut weight. Sometimes DVD playback doesn’t synchronize video and sound, so you feel like you’re watching a 70’s Kung Fu movie.

(Waaatchah!)

Another reviewer complained about the battery jutting out from the back. I find it useful, and I think it was done on purpose, because it makes it easy to hold the computer when you’re using it as a tablet. Otherwise the screen would have to be small for the lid, or your thumb would be on the screen at all times.

The screen image is very pretty. Sharp, bright. Good contrast. The built-in software controls are easily accessed via a button on the lid, so you don’t have to go bird-dogging through Vista to chase it down. The touchscreen is unresponsive on battery power if you’re not using it frequently. Also on startup. It is multi-touch, for what it’s worth. It took some getting used to. But if you don’t have sausages for fingers, you’ll be fine. In fact, I enjoy it so much, I find myself jabbing in vain at the MacBook’s screen.

The fingerprint reader is annoyingly on the face of the lid (next to the screen) instead of on the body in front of the keyboard as on most laptops with these things. So you have to use your thumb. Since mine’s the size of a Norway rat, it’s a little tough to hit the sweet spot. But then, tradeoff. It has to be there to be accessed while in tablet mode.

It can get cookin’. I use the Targus HeatDefense pad to perfect satisfaction.

Use OneNote instead of HP’s drawing software if you ever want to get a usable file out of it.

The neck seems durable enough when you’re doing the Exorcist thing with it.

I haven’t been a WIntel user much since Windows 3.11, but I found the Vista 64-bit Home Premium to be perfectly adequate and was glad to have it instead of the 32-bit version. Not that I know the difference. Goodies! Aside from the usual Mac-user whining about interface design, poor organization, and the use of so many detailed icons it goes from wayfinding to hieroglyphics, it’s navigable enough. (Simplify! Use color to organize, not to merely decorate!)

The big downside: battery life is miserably short. I suppose more juice is going to the monitor than usual, but the 17″ MacBook Pro’s battery is nearly 2 years old and it still outlasts this thing at least by half. I hear there are better batteries out there, but that’s the kind of consolation prize you get when you buy a $1000 laser printer and the salesmen tells you they went to the effort to supply you with a tiny toner cartridge, instead of just producing more of the most common one and charging you what it’s worth. It’s also environmentally irresponsible.

To check price or purchase HP TX2-1020US TouchSmart 12.1-Inch Laptop.

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