Review of Touchsmart tx2-1020
Preamble
I’m a gadget hound and have been keenly interested in the idea of tablet pc’s since they launched way back in 2002. In fact, I worked the launch event in NYC running the automation system for the show. I also would love to incorporate touch-capability in our motor control software, but have been chronically fearful of the small-screen, under-powered tablets available.
The latest tablet offerings from HP & Dell come with dual purpose displays that accommodate the classic pen interface and a multi-touch screen similar to the iPhone. Windows 7 has a lot of touch & multi-touch provisions built into the system, so it feels like this coming year is going to be a great time to get into touch development on the desktop since the hardware and software are falling into place.
I decide to grab an HP tx2-1020 Touchsmart to use as a testing machine for adding touch features to our SpikeMark software. As I researched the purchase, I found a fair number of people who loved this laptop and those that were less sold on the product. I figure I’ll add my 2 cents to the hive-mind and hopefully help others with their purchasing decision.
The other tablet option for multi-touch is the Dell XT2, but since it is twice the price, I started with the more affordable HP laptop.
It Arrives
The packaging is very tidy and clean. I opened up all the contents and found everything to be in pristine condition.
First Look
Included in the box were:
- Compact power adapter
- A paper notebook, which does not instill confidence in the machines ability to replace paper
- A media remote that can slip into the ExpressCard slot, very cool
- The tablet pen
- An install disc for Microsoft OneNote
- A cleaning cloth
- A plastic “plug” to take the place of the removable optical drive if you want to reduce the weight of the laptop
- The tx2-1020 convertible tablet (of course)
First Boot
After reading about the horrible initial boot time of this machine, due to all the bloatware pre-installed, I was not surprised when the initial boot and set procedure took roughly 20 minutes to complete.
Since I intended wipe the drive and install Windows 7, I was not worried about the sluggish performance of the 2.2 GHz AMD machine, I presumed that it was just bogged down by all the pre-installed gack. Sadly, HP doesn’t bother to ship recovery discs and the documentation strongly encourages you to make your own with the included recovery utility. No sweat, I started the utility and whipped out some DVD’s. After 1-1/2 hours of waiting for this thing to make the discs I gave up and canceled the process. I find this tactic really annoying. If the manufacturer KNOWS that you should have the discs, they should be included. I don’t want my first 2 hours of using this machine to be all about housekeeping, let me play with the cool stuff.
Installing Windows 7
I wiped the hard drive and installed the Windows 7 RC. Everything worked with the Microsoft drivers except for some of the speciality keyboard buttons and the multi-touch display. The keyboard drivers are available from the HP site and the multi-touch driver is available from N-Trig.
The whole installation of Windows 7 took about 1/2 hour.
Touchy-Feely Display
The touch features of the display work great. The Windows 7 interface has a bunch of little optimizations that make touch interfaces easier even on the somewhat cramped 12.1″ display. The taskbar icons are square making it easy to launch applications or switch windows. IE8 is very smoothly integrated with touch gestures to allow for scrolling, zooming, and navigating all with the tip of your finger.
The big, big downside of this laptop, however, is the display. It’s…uh… how to phrase this nicely… Oh forget it, there’s no nice way to say it, the display is horrible.
Do you see how the image looks like the screen has been lightly sandblasted? There’s a moire pattern on the screen that is apparently caused by the recent correction HP is doing to reduce glare on the previously glossy screen. Let me be clear, I dislike glossy screens, so I was really glad to hear that they were switching to a matte display, but this is not a normal matte display. It behaves like a glossy screen with a poorly applied matte screen protector. The finish creates a speckled shimmer across the screen that changes based on your viewing angle. Reading text is induces nausea as the text visually “flutters” when your eyes scan across the screen. The matte finish also fails to eliminate glare.
The color shift on the screen is also severe making it distracting to try to read a full page of text in portrait mode (the most ergonomic mode for a tablet, I’d think).
Deal-breaker.
Performance
Ok, so if you can stomach a horrendously bad screen, let’s read on and find out more about this little guy.
If you can see through the misty screen shot above, you’ll notice that this laptop puts up a pretty impressive 4.4 Windows Experience Index. In fact, most of it’s stats are even better:
- 5.0 - Processor
- 5.9 - RAM
- 4.4 - Graphics
- 5.1 - Gaming graphics
- 5.5 - Primary hard disk
The machine very zippy for such a small notebook. The graphics numbers are particularly surprising to see in a tablet.
Build Quality
For a $900 multi-touch tablet, the build quality (excepting the screen) surpassed my expectations. I thought the fit and finish of the components were high and the machine felt pretty sturdy. The swivel hinge on the screen felt good and the notebook had nice little features like the spring loaded pen-storage slot and remote control storage. The keyboard is very good, typing was crisp and the keys are full-size.
Portability
At 4.5lbs it is a heavy tablet, but you sacrifice portability for speed and a built-in optical drive. It’s also quite thick making it impractical to handle like a pad of paper.
The battery life is pretty poor, I got under 2 hours of run time in “Balanced” mode, surfing the web. I did turn the screen brightness up during this time, but it’s hard to fathom using less than full-intensity if you aren’t in a dark room.
Noise
Next to the shortcoming of the screen, the noise of the tx2 is it’s worst flaw. The fan runs frequently and it’s quite loud. Also, if the screen brightness is turned up beyond 50%, it emits a high-pitched squeal. For comparison, the noise of the tx2 drown out the noise of my desktop computer. So if you’re sensitive to noise, this could be a problem.
Conclusion
It’s a neat concept with some potential in future revisions. Because of the unacceptable screen and high noise level, I returned this within a week of purchase. I wanted to love it, I really did. The touch interface is very cool and I would love to develop some touch features into our software, but I’ll need to find a machine that I can stomach to work with for more than 1 hour at a time before I devote serious development effort into a touch interface. If you have any experience with the more expensive Dell XT2, or another option please let me know.