I have been using the HP Pavilion tx1000 Tablet Notebook for over a month now. It's my first experience with a Tablet PC and the going has been quite good and impressive so far.The HP tx1000 tablet is a convertible notebook meaning it can used a normal laptop or swivel it 180° around the hinge, fold and use it as a slate. The tablet automatically senses the rotation and changes the display from landscape to portrait mode.
HP Pavilion tx1000 specs are pretty solid - 2 GB of RAM, AMD Turion 64X2 Dual core processor and an NVIDIA graphics card. Though it ships with Home Vista Premium, the machine is powerful enough to run the Ultimate edition of Vista without problems.
The tablet has a unique touchpad (with hollow dots arranged in a grid) which is very different from the smooth pads that we see in most laptops. This gives you an extra grip and better control over the mouse pointer.
The unit weighs around 4 pounds with the standard battery that lasted around 2 hours in tablet or slate mode. It ships with an additional battery that is supposed to last double that time.
You can write / scribble on the 12.1" bright touch screen using any stylus or even with your finger. Operating the Vista Start Menu or opening and closing Windows via your hand is too much fun but make sure you are not wearing any rings as the tablet screen is very responsive.
The HP Pavilion tx1000 Entertainment Tablet is an ideal choice if you travelling with your partner. It comes with two headphone jacks conveniently located at the front so no more sharing of earphones while listening to music or watching DVDs in an airplane.
The Altec Lansing speakers are attached at the base of the screen on either sides of the hinge. There are two split-microphones on either sides of the 1.3 MP webcam which helps in picking up most of the sounds.
The Media Center can be accessed using a remote that otherwise slips neatly inside the tablet body. The remote can also turn-off the computer or put it in standby/hibernation mode.
There's also an in-built digital card reader and DVD writer with LightScribe meaning it can etch labels on the DVD surface. And if you are using the HP tx1000 tablet in a non Wi-Fi zone, the wireless network scanning can disabled with a slider located near the headphone jacks - that's a nice and easy way to prolong tablet battery life.
I was not very pleased with the location of the fingerprint reader and there were lot of instances when I unintentionally swiped the thing especially while using Microsoft OneNote and Corel Painter.
Overall, an excellent tablet notebook with a unique touchpad, responsive screen and dual headphones. And it looks very sleek and stylish too. The battery life could have been better especially since the HP Pavilion tx1000 tablet notebook is meant for computing cum entertainment on the go.
Read some more first-hand reviews of HP tx1000 by TabletPC2, GearLive, GottaBeMobile, TabletPC and Chris.