HP Pavilion Tx2130ea Entertainment

For the price, this is a very nice piece of kit overall. The touchscreen works with the stylus or a finger, which is unusual for a tablet.

The unit feels reasonably robust, with the exception of the keyboard, which is not brilliant. Losing a key is way too easy, while reattaching the key when you find it is way too hard. The hinge & pivot mechanism of the screen feel nice & solid. The back of the screen (top of the closed unit) feels ...
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Mine came from Staples and shipped both with a 4 and a 6cell battery, the latter making the laptop rise at the rear - good in keyboard mode, a bit awkward in tablet mode. Nonetheless handy for being able to travel without the power brick.

The multimedia features are good (both HP's Quickplay and MS Media Center), with a nice front end and an IR remote, which is a bit fiddly, but stows away nicely in the expresscard slot ... more

For the price, this is a very nice piece of kit overall. The touchscreen works with the stylus or a finger, which is unusual for a tablet.

The unit feels reasonably robust, with the exception of the keyboard, which is not brilliant. Losing a key is way too easy, while reattaching the key when you find it is way too hard. The hinge & pivot mechanism of the screen feel nice & solid. The back of the screen (top of the closed unit) feels like it gives limited protection to the screen & innards.

Mine came from Staples and shipped both with a 4 and a 6cell battery, the latter making the laptop rise at the rear - good in keyboard mode, a bit awkward in tablet mode. Nonetheless handy for being able to travel without the power brick.

The multimedia features are good (both HP's Quickplay and MS Media Center), with a nice front end and an IR remote, which is a bit fiddly, but stows away nicely in the expresscard slot when not in use. The speakers are of course rubbish, but there are two headphone jacks on the front.

I'm not a fan of these reflective screens - you have to carefully angle the screen to avoid reflections of both natural and artificial light. The image from the LCD is nonetheless clear and bright.

I have to admit that this laptop doesn't feel that quick. I run several machines, but this is the only one with Vista on it. I've turned off all of the gubbins I can and it still isn't all that quick. With 2Gb of RAM and a dual core CPU, this is odd. I've put it down to the 250GB HDD, which seems to be quite slow - I intend to replace it with a decent 5400RPM drive.

At the end of the day, this machine is packed full of features and it's about £400 cheaper than any other tablet PC. So it's compromised, but it's still jolly good value as a traveller's laptop and a student's tablet.

If you live in a matchbox, you could get away with this as an only PC, otherwise, it's a good sidekick to the main beast. 

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