Introduction
I had been in the market for a netbook /notebook that had a camera & video out (with the ability to play 1080p videos). I also read a lot of comics & e-books so I was interested in a tablet form factor. I knew of the existence of Tablet PCs but they cost more than what I was willing to pay (~2000 $ !). The announcement of the iPad piqued my interest again.
The iPad announcement was a bit of a letdown but there were other tablets announced. They fell out of consideration for various reasons.
1) iPad - No full OS. No video out. No camera.
2) HP State - Cancelled
3) MS Courier- Cancelled
4) Notion Ink Adam - Still in prototype stages. No concrete announcement yet.
I then noticed the HP tm2 already in the market. The tm2 is a TabletPC by HP. i.e., it is a laptop where the screen can be rotated and folded backwards to get a tablet like form factor. It uses Intel's ULV line of processors, so the battery life is good. The tablet was touted as completely customizable & being powerful enough to run a full OS. More importantly, the tablet had a capacitive multi-touch (2 finger) interface and also a Wacom digitizer (256 level pressure sensitivity) with stylus support. This would make it easy to take notes. I knew first hand that Win 7, the OS the TabletPC is sold with, had very impressive handwriting recognition features built in. Some lurking on forums later, I decided to dive in and order one.
(PS: The whole review text was hand written and Win 7 converted my really bad cursive handwriting into text. I'll provide screenshots of handwriting recognition later on in the review. I only did some final formatting and uploading pics on my desktop.)
Configuration
I customized a base configuration directly off HP's website.
Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300C (1.3 ghz, 800 Mhz fsb)
4GB DDR3 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4550 512MB GPU
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD 4500 (IGP. Switchable with discrete graphics)
500 GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
12.1" WXGA LED screen (1280X800 resolution) - Multi-touch + Wacom digitizer
Webcam + Fingerprint reader
5-in-1 card reader
Intel Wireless N card + Bluetooth
GOBI 2000 WWAN card (SIM card slot) + GPS
6 cell Lithium-ion battery (rated at 9 hours)
Total cost with tax & Shipping = $1015
The base model sold in retail stores has the some processor but a smaller HDD (320 GB). It does not have the dedicated graphics option or the WWAN card. It costs 850$ but can be bought for ~750$ with ebay coupons/ cashback.
Packaging & Contents
The made to order tm2 arrived in a very non-descript brown box with no design on the outside. (It ships directly from the factory near Shanghai) The tablet is sandwiched between 2 pieces of styrofoam and on extra box contains the other accessories. The tablet comes with the usual manuals and the charger. It also comes with a Wacom stylus. The box is small and just about holds everything with very little wasted space.
Construction , Ergonomics & Build Quality
The TabletPC has a nice solid feel. The top and the keyboard handrest area have a brushed metal finish (like the new HP Envy laptops do) and have HP's new design etched onto them (HP insists on calling it Riptide Argento or something like that). The bottom is plastic. The hinge mechanism is metal and operates smoothly. There is very little wobbling and the screen is stable in both laptop and tablet modes.
The base has the usual ports. Charging, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, 3 USB ports, headphone jack and the 5-in-1 card reader slot. Additionally, it has a recess where the stylus can be stored. This a press to click/release mechanism so there no worry about the pen falling out. Those is also a wi-fi on-off button and a sliding power/stand-by switch. The Screen has a webcam and a microphone in the bezel. The sides have a button to change orientation and a recessed fingerprint reader. Altec-Lansing speakers are built in top the bottom of the screen bezel. There is an antenna that can pop out to get better EDGE or 3G reception.
The keyboard is a Chiclet style keyboard with raised keys. It is recessed a bit so that the keys do not hit the screen. The keys feel very nice to type on, with just the right amount of play. One nice feature is that the function keys are set to the media keys by default. The 'fn' key lets us use the F1 through F12 keys. The touchpad is the new design where the pad is a single construct. Then are no separate buttons. A double tap on the top left disables the touchpad. It supports 2 finger scrolling. I do have to state, the touchpad is not very responsive to gestures and is a bit disappointing.
The tablet is 1" at it's thinnest & 1.5" at it's thickest. This provides a good handhold in portrait mode but can be a bit unwieldy in landscape mode.
Screen
The most important part of the TabletPC is the screen performance. The screen itself is a (very) glossy 12.1" TN panel like in most new laptops. It looks very good head on. The viewing angles are as expected from a TN panel (i.e., not that great) and the brightness has to be turned up to use it outdoors.
Where the screen shines is in it's other features. The screen supports 2 finger multi-touch. It recognizes gestures like pinch to zoom, 2 finger rotate, etc. The touch is very responsive and typing is fairly quick using the onscreen keyboard. Windows 7 has built in support for touch so the programs work well with touch (WMP, IE 8, Explorer, etc.) Right click is performed by pressing on the screen/link/button and holding (the behaviour/responsiveness can be configured to the user's liking.).
The other feature of the screen is the stylus support. The screen has a Wacom digitizer built in. When the styling hovers about a centimeter over the screen, it acts as a mouse. (there is a button on the stylus for use as a right click button.) The pressure sensitivity is not as good as standalone Wacom tablets (256 vs 1024 levels) but is adequate for basic sketching & Photoshop work.
The Windows 7 Touch Input Panel & Math Input Panel are very useful for taking notes. This along with the features for Microsoft Onenote, make this perfect for taking notes in meetings/classrooms etc.
Hardware & Performance
The SU7300 processor is powerful enough to handle Win 7 with no slowdowns. It outputs 1080p video with no stutter. (both the IGP and the ATI card). Below are the Windows Experience Index & PC Mark Vantage scores. Compared with a desktop machine (E8400, 4 GB RAM, ATI 4870, SSD)
The gaming performance is pretty impressive as well. Games like Plants vs Zombies, World of Goo, and Crayon Physics are a joy to play using only the touch screen. Games like Civilization IV and Machinarium can be played with just the stylus in the tablet mode & work very well. The GPU & processor are good enough that I could even run Call of Duty 2 at medium settings. (1280 X 800 resolution)
Software
Of course, for something like a tablet, the software experience may make or break the experience. Fortunately, Windows 7 has some nifty Touch features built in and a lot of applications (free and paid) are available to make a good touch screen experience.
OS - Windows 7 itself has good multi touch support built in. The icons and borders can be made touch friendly by setting DPI to 125%. The on-screen keyboard is very responsive and the handwriting input panel is very useful to write emails, forum posts, etc.
Browsers - IE8 has touch support built-in. Chrome with the ChromeTouch extension works very well. (Scrolling, pinch to zoom, swipe to select text, etc). The fingerprint reader with the bundled software makes it easy to store passwords and sign in to often visited websites. Google reader works very well as a feed aggregator in the portrait mode.
Books and Comics - CDisplay works very well to read all your comics. A tap on the edges turns pages. The same goes for the Kindle PC App.
MS Paint - The stylus works very well in MS Paint. The pressure sensitivity gives a natural feel to drawing with the pressure controlling the thickness of the stroke. (The rear of the stylus is detected as an eraser.)
MS Office/One Note - As seen in the screen shots in the 'Screen' section, One Note has good handwriting recognition built in ans is very useful for taking notes, drawing flowcharts and other tasks.
Of course, all software written for Windows run on the machine. Any software that may not be touch optimised can be utilised by going into the laptop mode with the physical keyboard and touch pad accessible.
Battery Life
HP rates the battery at 9.5 hrs. The system does not give that, but it hits 7hrs with wifi & bluetooth off. This is of course on the IGP. Battery life with the ATI card running is about 5 hrs.
Conclusions & Final Thoughts
Overall, the tm2 is a very good buy. I understand that it is not a direct competitor to the iPad/HP Slate and the software integration with the hardware may not be as complete as for those machines. But for people looking for more functionality, spending 200-300 $ more may not be a big stretch. It has it's quirks & issues, but I think it is a very good compromise between a laptop & a tablet.
Pros:
-12.1" screen, 16:10 ratio
-Good battery life
-Great Touch & Pen performance
-Powerful with good dedicated graphics
Cons:
-Bad touchpad
-Niggling issues with drivers/ software (GPS only works if SIM card is activated - Hacked drivers have to be used as a work around)
-Glossy screen is not very easy too use outside
Note 1: I am sure there are some mistakes / things I've left out. (Too many features!). Let me know if you have any questions and I can answer them in the thread. Thanks for reading.
Note 2: HP is going to release a ULV core i3 version of this tablet in 2 months or so. People who can wait a bit may want that processor. It will be a bit more expensive, but the current models will drop in price the closer we get to the new model.
I had been in the market for a netbook /notebook that had a camera & video out (with the ability to play 1080p videos). I also read a lot of comics & e-books so I was interested in a tablet form factor. I knew of the existence of Tablet PCs but they cost more than what I was willing to pay (~2000 $ !). The announcement of the iPad piqued my interest again.
The iPad announcement was a bit of a letdown but there were other tablets announced. They fell out of consideration for various reasons.
1) iPad - No full OS. No video out. No camera.
2) HP State - Cancelled
3) MS Courier- Cancelled
4) Notion Ink Adam - Still in prototype stages. No concrete announcement yet.
I then noticed the HP tm2 already in the market. The tm2 is a TabletPC by HP. i.e., it is a laptop where the screen can be rotated and folded backwards to get a tablet like form factor. It uses Intel's ULV line of processors, so the battery life is good. The tablet was touted as completely customizable & being powerful enough to run a full OS. More importantly, the tablet had a capacitive multi-touch (2 finger) interface and also a Wacom digitizer (256 level pressure sensitivity) with stylus support. This would make it easy to take notes. I knew first hand that Win 7, the OS the TabletPC is sold with, had very impressive handwriting recognition features built in. Some lurking on forums later, I decided to dive in and order one.
(PS: The whole review text was hand written and Win 7 converted my really bad cursive handwriting into text. I'll provide screenshots of handwriting recognition later on in the review. I only did some final formatting and uploading pics on my desktop.)
Configuration
I customized a base configuration directly off HP's website.
Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300C (1.3 ghz, 800 Mhz fsb)
4GB DDR3 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4550 512MB GPU
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD 4500 (IGP. Switchable with discrete graphics)
500 GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
12.1" WXGA LED screen (1280X800 resolution) - Multi-touch + Wacom digitizer
Webcam + Fingerprint reader
5-in-1 card reader
Intel Wireless N card + Bluetooth
GOBI 2000 WWAN card (SIM card slot) + GPS
6 cell Lithium-ion battery (rated at 9 hours)
Total cost with tax & Shipping = $1015
The base model sold in retail stores has the some processor but a smaller HDD (320 GB). It does not have the dedicated graphics option or the WWAN card. It costs 850$ but can be bought for ~750$ with ebay coupons/ cashback.
Packaging & Contents
The made to order tm2 arrived in a very non-descript brown box with no design on the outside. (It ships directly from the factory near Shanghai) The tablet is sandwiched between 2 pieces of styrofoam and on extra box contains the other accessories. The tablet comes with the usual manuals and the charger. It also comes with a Wacom stylus. The box is small and just about holds everything with very little wasted space.
Construction , Ergonomics & Build Quality
The TabletPC has a nice solid feel. The top and the keyboard handrest area have a brushed metal finish (like the new HP Envy laptops do) and have HP's new design etched onto them (HP insists on calling it Riptide Argento or something like that). The bottom is plastic. The hinge mechanism is metal and operates smoothly. There is very little wobbling and the screen is stable in both laptop and tablet modes.
The base has the usual ports. Charging, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, 3 USB ports, headphone jack and the 5-in-1 card reader slot. Additionally, it has a recess where the stylus can be stored. This a press to click/release mechanism so there no worry about the pen falling out. Those is also a wi-fi on-off button and a sliding power/stand-by switch. The Screen has a webcam and a microphone in the bezel. The sides have a button to change orientation and a recessed fingerprint reader. Altec-Lansing speakers are built in top the bottom of the screen bezel. There is an antenna that can pop out to get better EDGE or 3G reception.
The keyboard is a Chiclet style keyboard with raised keys. It is recessed a bit so that the keys do not hit the screen. The keys feel very nice to type on, with just the right amount of play. One nice feature is that the function keys are set to the media keys by default. The 'fn' key lets us use the F1 through F12 keys. The touchpad is the new design where the pad is a single construct. Then are no separate buttons. A double tap on the top left disables the touchpad. It supports 2 finger scrolling. I do have to state, the touchpad is not very responsive to gestures and is a bit disappointing.
The tablet is 1" at it's thinnest & 1.5" at it's thickest. This provides a good handhold in portrait mode but can be a bit unwieldy in landscape mode.
Screen
The most important part of the TabletPC is the screen performance. The screen itself is a (very) glossy 12.1" TN panel like in most new laptops. It looks very good head on. The viewing angles are as expected from a TN panel (i.e., not that great) and the brightness has to be turned up to use it outdoors.
Where the screen shines is in it's other features. The screen supports 2 finger multi-touch. It recognizes gestures like pinch to zoom, 2 finger rotate, etc. The touch is very responsive and typing is fairly quick using the onscreen keyboard. Windows 7 has built in support for touch so the programs work well with touch (WMP, IE 8, Explorer, etc.) Right click is performed by pressing on the screen/link/button and holding (the behaviour/responsiveness can be configured to the user's liking.).
The other feature of the screen is the stylus support. The screen has a Wacom digitizer built in. When the styling hovers about a centimeter over the screen, it acts as a mouse. (there is a button on the stylus for use as a right click button.) The pressure sensitivity is not as good as standalone Wacom tablets (256 vs 1024 levels) but is adequate for basic sketching & Photoshop work.
The Windows 7 Touch Input Panel & Math Input Panel are very useful for taking notes. This along with the features for Microsoft Onenote, make this perfect for taking notes in meetings/classrooms etc.
Hardware & Performance
The SU7300 processor is powerful enough to handle Win 7 with no slowdowns. It outputs 1080p video with no stutter. (both the IGP and the ATI card). Below are the Windows Experience Index & PC Mark Vantage scores. Compared with a desktop machine (E8400, 4 GB RAM, ATI 4870, SSD)
The gaming performance is pretty impressive as well. Games like Plants vs Zombies, World of Goo, and Crayon Physics are a joy to play using only the touch screen. Games like Civilization IV and Machinarium can be played with just the stylus in the tablet mode & work very well. The GPU & processor are good enough that I could even run Call of Duty 2 at medium settings. (1280 X 800 resolution)
Software
Of course, for something like a tablet, the software experience may make or break the experience. Fortunately, Windows 7 has some nifty Touch features built in and a lot of applications (free and paid) are available to make a good touch screen experience.
OS - Windows 7 itself has good multi touch support built in. The icons and borders can be made touch friendly by setting DPI to 125%. The on-screen keyboard is very responsive and the handwriting input panel is very useful to write emails, forum posts, etc.
Browsers - IE8 has touch support built-in. Chrome with the ChromeTouch extension works very well. (Scrolling, pinch to zoom, swipe to select text, etc). The fingerprint reader with the bundled software makes it easy to store passwords and sign in to often visited websites. Google reader works very well as a feed aggregator in the portrait mode.
Books and Comics - CDisplay works very well to read all your comics. A tap on the edges turns pages. The same goes for the Kindle PC App.
MS Paint - The stylus works very well in MS Paint. The pressure sensitivity gives a natural feel to drawing with the pressure controlling the thickness of the stroke. (The rear of the stylus is detected as an eraser.)
MS Office/One Note - As seen in the screen shots in the 'Screen' section, One Note has good handwriting recognition built in ans is very useful for taking notes, drawing flowcharts and other tasks.
Of course, all software written for Windows run on the machine. Any software that may not be touch optimised can be utilised by going into the laptop mode with the physical keyboard and touch pad accessible.
Battery Life
HP rates the battery at 9.5 hrs. The system does not give that, but it hits 7hrs with wifi & bluetooth off. This is of course on the IGP. Battery life with the ATI card running is about 5 hrs.
Conclusions & Final Thoughts
Overall, the tm2 is a very good buy. I understand that it is not a direct competitor to the iPad/HP Slate and the software integration with the hardware may not be as complete as for those machines. But for people looking for more functionality, spending 200-300 $ more may not be a big stretch. It has it's quirks & issues, but I think it is a very good compromise between a laptop & a tablet.
Pros:
-12.1" screen, 16:10 ratio
-Good battery life
-Great Touch & Pen performance
-Powerful with good dedicated graphics
Cons:
-Bad touchpad
-Niggling issues with drivers/ software (GPS only works if SIM card is activated - Hacked drivers have to be used as a work around)
-Glossy screen is not very easy too use outside
Note 1: I am sure there are some mistakes / things I've left out. (Too many features!). Let me know if you have any questions and I can answer them in the thread. Thanks for reading.
Note 2: HP is going to release a ULV core i3 version of this tablet in 2 months or so. People who can wait a bit may want that processor. It will be a bit more expensive, but the current models will drop in price the closer we get to the new model.
