Tablet Notebook Review
Another new trend in business notebooks are the tablet PC’s. If you are looking to buy such a gadget or if you are just interested in seeing what this fuss is all about, read this article about tablet notebook reviews and maybe you’ll come across an interesting model which you want to buy for yourself.
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As we suspected, the most popular tablet notebook is a HP. The HP Pavilion tx2500 has a 2.4 GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra ZM-86 processor, 3 GB of RAM, 160 GB of hard drive space and the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 graphics card. it also has 3 USB ports, one multi format card reader, one expansion port, an Express Card slot, one VGA plus one S-Video port and two headphones plus one microphone jack. The design is quite elegant with the glossy black lid which has a beautiful imprint finish. We think this laptops is going to attract some students because it’s great for taking notes in class even if it a bit heavy for constant and every day carrying. The active digitizer plus the touch screen makes it easy to surf the internet and you can use either the integrated pen or your finger (be careful with dirty hands and with leaving fingerprints all over the display).
The 12.1 inch display is not small in a way that can disturb you when your reading big documents and web pages and it’s neither too big to make the notebook heavy. The hinge is extremely powerful so it can resist to numerous rotations of the display. For on-screen navigation you will prefer the pen because it travels with better accuracy than when you’re using your own fingers. For the tx2500, HP went with the AMD “Puma” platform. The keyboard is solid and it offers positive response when you’re typing. The touchpad is also ok and we have no complaints here whatsoever. And now on we go to the pen. The nice thing is that the screen recognizes the pen even if it is an inch away from the display. The touch screen can be disabled and this is cool because your hand will no longer get in the way when you are writing. This is a nice feature especially because most people tent to rest their hands on the screen when they are writing and if the touch screen is not disabled, this could have been a problem. On the other end, the pen has as eraser which is very practical when you make a writing mistake and you need to quickly erase it and continue writing.
If you use this tablet notebook for writing with the pen, editing documents or surfing the internet, the temperature will remain under normal conditions. However, when you run applications which have big memory requirements, you will notice the notebook gets a bit hot. Except for this minor inconvenient, there are no problems. The fan manages to keep the tablet cool without making any kind of disturbing noise. The 6-cell battery is also quite satisfying as it provides about 3 hours of notebook usage under medium settings (like the Windows Vista balance mode) and if this does not make you happy, buy the 8-cell battery which is available to help you get a little more battery life (it’s nice to have two fully charged batteries with you when you’re travelling because you never know when the spare one comes in handy). Even if the display is somehow washed out under bright light, this notebook has left us a good impression thanks to the solid design, the entertainment features and the active digitizer plus the touch screen.
Our second choice for the tablet notebook review was the Asus Eee PC T91. This very cheap notebook ($500) has about the same specs as a regular netbook but the big advantage is the tablet feature that can come in handy when you least expect it. This tablet notebook comes with a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom Z520 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 52 GB of disk storage and the Intel GMA 950 graphics card. As you can see, the specs show nothing of nigh performance but it’s the price and portability that make this Eee PC T91 stand out in front of the crowd. Let’s just hope it will have the same success as the other Eee PCs launched by Asus. This jewel is available in both white and black and the resistance of this notebook is not questionable. The hinge is very solid and it will keep the display steady in place even after long months of rotating the screen from the normal position to the tablet position. Another thing we really appreciated was that this tablet came with a slip case that can protect the small notebook when you carry it around. This will prevent any scratches on the surface of the notebook so you can now slip it in your bag, backpack or purse.
The small 8.9 inch display may bother some people so if you want a notebook which you can use as your primary computer, then the PC T91 in not the best choice for you. It is however ideal for people who travel a lot and need to stay in touch wherever they are. Personally, I would recommend this tablet pc to students that are in need of a small notebook to take notes in class. And now, for the most important part of a portable notebook: the battery life. When we heard that this system comes with a 3-cell battery we imagined that battery life would not be satisfying at all. We were wrong. With the display brightness set at medium level and the wireless function turned on, this tablet notebook provided us with 4 hours and 30 minutes of possible usage time. This means you can rely on this small tablet even if you are away from the power outlet for a couple of hours.
We recommend both of these tablets because they are both priced lower that $1000. However, the HP seems to deliver better performance compared to its price and this is another reason that lead us to believe that HP is really struggling to be the best notebook manufacturer on the market.
