HP Touchsmart tm2 tablet now official!
It’s here! The HP Touchsmart tm2 tablet PC! This notebook has a 12 inch multi-touch display, an all new design (versus the old Pavilion tx1000, tx2000 and tx2), is powered by a Intel Core 2 Duo processor and has ATI graphics. Here’s a list of the Touchsmart tm2′s main features:
- Intel Core 2 Duo low-voltage processor
- ATI graphics
- Full-sized chiclet keyboard “borrowed from the Pavilion dm3″
- 12 inch capacitive multi-touch screen (you can use either your fingers or the included stylus) with swivel function
- 3 USB ports, VGA connector, covered LAN port, headphone jack (no microphone port, probably shared with the headphone port), HDMI output
- Buttonless trackpad like on the Envy 13/15: it supports multi-touch but can also be set to conventional “single touch” mode
- New Touchsmart UI and Bump Top 3D desktop interfaces for interactive multi-touch
- New, slimmer and more solid design (new imprint patterns too!)
- External optical drive (there’s none built-in)
- 9 hour battery life
- Sub-$1000 starting price
In my opinion, the Touchsmart tm2 is a whole lot like a ‘tablet Envy’ with its new design and specifications. You can see a lot of HP Envy design elements on the bottom half of the notebook (keyboard, palmrest, buttonless trackpad, rounded edges and simple port layout) as well as in its features list (long battery life, multitouch trackpad support, an Intel low-voltage processor paired with ATI graphics) which make it sound much like the Envy 13. The upper-half looks like a mashup of the original Touchsmart tx2′s glossy display with the slimness of the Elitebook 2730p tablet’s display. And there are buttons on the edges of the screen too, to be used when the Touchsmart tm2 is in slate mode. Thankfully, the price of the Touchsmart tm2 is more reasonable than the HP Envy series, with a sub-$1000 starting price tag. If you asked me, all of a sudden, the Touchsmart tm2 is starting to look real tasty… it’s almost the perfect ultra-portable notebook/tablet, save for the glossy display.
The Elitebook 2530p is wider and slightly longer than the HP Mini 2133/Mini 2140. I’d gladly carry a slightly larger bag if I owned one though! Oh, naturally the Elitebook 2530p is about 300 grams heavier than the Mini 2140 but the weight difference wasn’t too significant though.
In terms of thickness, the Elitebook 2530p is a wee bit slimmer than the Mini 2133/Mini 2140. HP says the Elitebook 2530p is 25.2 mm thin while the Mini 2140 is 26.7 mm thin. Put on the Mini 2133/2140′s 6 cell extended battery and it becomes a different story – I like the Elitebook 2530p’s 6 cell battery which sticks out the back of the notebook, as opposed to the Mini’s 6 cell battery which extends downwards so you have a thick bulge at the back that makes the notebook hard to store.
One other thing is that the Elitebook 2530p’s keyboard is about the same size as the one on the HP Mini’s except the arrow keys are larger on the Elitebook while its function keys at the top row are a tad smaller. The Elitebook 2530p also has dedicated Page Up and Page Down keys, something I appreciate a lot. Well, that’s all for today, the Elitebook 2530p is perfect for what it is and dare I say, flawless… with the exception of price and the fact I can’t keep it =( , of course.
