Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion TX1205US 12.1-inch Laptop (AMD Turion 64 Processor TL56, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

I wanted to purchase a laptop that had everything without settling... I quoted it around $3800 from Dell...forget that !!

The tx1220us from HP is a very nice Tablet PC. The screen is 12-in and is actually much more comfortable to work with than I thought it would be.

The features this unit has are the ones I wanted and I only settled on three (3) things:

1- Processor is AMD instead of Intel. I did my research and the Intel is substantially faster (10-30%), but this AMD is GREAT ... VERY fast. It doesn't feel like I settled at all.

2- Hard Disk is 5400rpm, but fast enough to watch videos. I don't do anything fancy...except LOTS of e-mail for work and recently watch DVD's.

3- Price. $3800 vs $1300 (I was willing to settle just fine on this point)

All the features I wanted that DO come with this machine...

1- Tablet PC (12-in screen)

2- Light, very light (compared to my clunky 9-lb 15.4in Inspiron 8200)

3- 2GB RAM

4- 200GB HDD

5- Bluetooth 2.0 (unbelievable how many modern machines come without it!)

6- WiFi 802.11 n/g/b/a (n is draft, but it's still n !)

7- Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000TX)

8- Fingerprint reader

9- DVD Quickplay (not as fast as I thought since computer needs to boot, but it works)

10- Remote control (not intuitive, but it works)

11- Built-in Webcam 1.3megapixels

12- Built-in Microphone

13- DVD Writer with Lightscribe (after you burn your DVD you can PRINT text and/or images on the DVD with the same drive built into the machine)

14- SD/MMC/XD/MS-Pro Card reader

15- PCI Express card slot

16- 3xUSB ports, 1x 56kbps Modem, 1xVGA port, 1xExpressPort34, Front Speaker/Line/Headphone jacks

17- 2-speakers

18- Nvidia Video/Graphics Card does NOT have built-in memory... it is shared. Haven't tried 2 screens yet, but moves very well sharing 128MB (max can be shared) with 1 screen.

Only enjoyed it for a couple of days (Aug-14-2007) but it has been a fun-filled couple of days.

The screen is not as BRIGHT as others, but it has something to do with the fact that it is a 'touchscreen' because it's a Tablet PC.

If you are concerned about the AMD processor speed or the screen size (12in) like I was... you can take the leap - so far I'm very glad I did. If I run into problems I will POST right away.

Pros: digitalizes handwritten notes, onboard recording, webcam, wireless, easy connection to anything, touch screen, fun

Cons: arrow keys a bit off-center (mistake it for shift key often), optical drive a bit flimsy

Bells and whistles galore! Super-duper notebook! The pros are far more than what I listed and the cons are so minor it's barely worth even mentioning. I'm careful about lifting it from underneath on the left side because the optical drive is kind of weak...you can feel it press in. Also, when you open and close it, it feels a bit vulnerable.

The Vista OS is superb! Lots of newness and stimulating. Love the 'gadgets' column! The computer itself is awesome! Handwriting recognition is fantastic (regardless of the mixed reviews I read online about that...I had no problem with it at all). This was the main reason I bought this tablet PC, I wanted to cut down hours and hours of evaluation note taking. I used to have to retype my handwritten notes into the computer...now, those days are over! I do not find you have to apply much pressure on the screen at all when using the stylus or even your fingernail. The receptivity level is great! The note taker is cool...you jot down a note and record as well if you wish.

The additional side buttons on the monitor are great alternates for the regular function buttons. Has onboard recording features, built-in webcam, super easy internet hookup (I have home networking...not a problem going from XP to Vista). The keyboard is fine. My current laptop from Averatec has the same keyboard, sort of a tad wider, flatter key pads than normal. It's easy to get used to. The scroll arrow keys are positioned so that the up arrow is right next to the shift key...a bit close, which results in hitting the up arrow instead of the shift key...just check your typing to be certain the cursor remains in the right place.

The touch screen is way cool! It is so easy to get spoiled by this. And the touch sensor pad...it makes maneuvering almost effortless! Typically, I hate touch sensor pads because I strain my hands on them as they don't always allow for the necessary fluency/dexterity of the hands/fingers when moving around...I prefer using a scroll mouse. However, in this system, the sensor touch pad is a vented metal plate that is so much more sensitive to movement than the typical pad (I still have a back up mouse just in case I want to default to my old ways...it's still the easiest method). The finger swipe function is also a nice feature...it kind of makes it feel special. It's like a 'personalized' security system.

The open/close tab is in the front middle position of the lid and although you have to press in a bit more than you would think to open it, it's no problem. The overall look and design is classy yet not overly done. And the slight grainy appearance on the screen is not disruptive at all...the clarity/resolution is still great. And the little handheld remote...how clever is that?! Very!

This system comes with tons of memory, 2GB!! Probably because it has so many games and such on it already...it goes really fast while using it, which is what I like (until I start congesting it with software applications, that is!!). I also find that the computer does not run any hotter than my previous laptop (and that gets pretty dang hot). I think it's more related to where you are resting the thing while it's on...if you block the vents underneath, then it will run hot on any laptop (this happens a lot when I use it in bed and rest it on a pillow). I haven't used the battery yet and am usually conservative when I do (I seek out wall plug outlets, primarily) so I've not much to say yet about the battery life. My bet is it isn't optimal, like all the rest of them, but it's nice to know there is that, albeit brief, backup time that is allowed just in case there is no power outlet. I did insert the battery and it doesn't stick out very far at all as was mentioned in another review I read. It protrudes within a range of about an inch or so...no biggie at all! And it's lightweight...even with the battery in...so convenient.

There are many more features to explore on this computer and since I only bought this last week, I still have yet to discover them. I do find myself, however, continually excited about using it or playing with it! I was so reluctant at first to purchase this and did extensive research on it before doing so. I would up buying it with a $[...] rebate along with a free Canon printer (I've yet to use that but it will be more of a backup since I use the all-in-one's as my default printing system). I bought this unit last week and am still getting to know it. So, perhaps a review would be more fair a bit later on down the line, but for now this will do. Maybe I'll come back and edit. I am so glad I invested in this (so far, anyway)! For just over a thousand dollars, you get a lot of 'bang' for those bucks!! Love it!

This laptop does a great job as an "entertainment laptop" - which is what HP is marketing is as.

The specs are fairly good for this price point, and the design is very modern and appealing. The unique mouse pad is, for me, better than those on other laptops, the speakers are wonderful, and the display smartly transitions from a laptop to a slate, with the screen automatically changing from landscape to portrait (though you can change this in the settings).

However, I bought this notebook for college, and, from an engineering student's perspective, this device does have some flaws. First of all, this laptop (with the 6 cell battery attached) is actually a little bit heavier than some of my friends' 15.4" HP/Compaq laptops with their (larger) batteries.

Second, the screen: If you're considering using a notebook to take notes, consider investing in a laptop with an active stylus (such as those using the WACOM digitalizer) and not a passive touch screen such as this one, as I find it very difficult to press hard and maintain even pressure while noting as fast as some professors talk for extend periods (anything more than 15 min and my wrist starts complaining). Therefore, I'll usually use the keyboard for lectures, though having the ability to quickly convert and input diagrams and charts have been very helpful. The extra pressure-sensing layer on top of the screen also noticeably reduces the brightness of the screen (I would say ~15% dimmer then comparable laptops without the touch screen) The screen also has a protective layer to prevent scratches that is *extremely* reflective and glossy - to the point where it is completely impractical to do any work outside on a sunny day or even sit near a window or under a strong source of light. Also, a 12" screen can really limit the amount of screen acreage, which is a negative if one likes to multi-task and have several windows opened and displayed at once. Again, HP is marketing this as an entertainment machine, and so wasn't designing this with the intention of long note-taking sessions or multitasking in a bright area.

Heat dissipation and battery life is average in my opinion, with a full charge and simple word-processing/editing yielding close to two and a half hours using HP's "recommended power plan", which further dims the display to 70% brightness.

I've also personally had an annoyance with AMD's speed step technology (which slows down the processor in order to save power) while using Firefox and iTunes (or any other audio player) simultaneously, in which the wide dynamic processor load Firefox can put on the processor outpaces the processor's ability to manage the clock speed, resulting in a very occasional slight stuttering of audio in iTunes (at least this is what I think is happening). HP support was rather scripted eventually instructed me to completely erase my hard drive and restore the laptop to its original settings, which still didn't seem to fix the problem.

There are some design flaws as well. My laptop arrived with one of the rubber footpads that it sits on shorter than the other three, making the laptop rest on only three foot pads and was thus wobbly when typing. This was resolved after waiting for more than a week for HP to overnight me a replacement footpad kit, essentially a bag filled with various assorted rubber sticky pads. The screen hinge does seem flimsy although it has held up very well for me and the glossy "impact finish" is a fingerprint magnet, although the included cotton cloth helps mitigate this issue. Finally, although the full sized keyboard on a 12" laptop is very appealing, the function buttons on the top have been fairly reduced and the right shift key was shorted in order to make room for the arrow keys, which can be an annoyance while typing multi-lined works, as instead of capitalizing a letter, one can hit the up arrow key and jump to the previous line.

Apart from the several problems that I personally see in this device, I view this notebook as a grand entertainment machine for the price and I am very satisfied with it. The touch screen, although more of a cool, used sparingly feature, is extremely handy at navigating the included windows media center and DVD menus when the nifty included remote is not in use.

I've read a lot of bad reviews and I honestly do not know what people are complaining about. The tablet pc feature works fantastic, at least for me. I naturally write hard and don't have chicken scratch, so perhaps this factors into the whole experience. If you do write lightly though, this probably is not the tablet pc for you.

This computer is amazing. I have not been disappointed by it yet. It is fast, the screen is beautiful, and it is very portable. I can not praise it enough.

I've read the reviews on this computer and thought them a bit unfair. This is a great machine for the price.

The AMD processor is very speedy. I have an Dell M1710 of 2.0ghz, and the tx1220 is faster or as fast. So also with the graphics card, which surprised me. I can run all the games I want. the 1220 is a touchscreen machine and can do all the things a WACOM touchpad can do. HP has done this by requiring a bit more pressure, your fingernail, if you want something to work. The handwriting recognition is much better than Tablet 2005, but you have to invest the minimal time (29 minutes) in the handwriting recognition software that comes with it. You don't have to spend the 20+ minutes all at once. The wireless card is an "N" card and is alot more sensitive than any other card for picking up wireless. The screen is great. Never had the fuzziness other people complain of. The Altec Lansing speakers are very good also.

Now, the cons. Any computer with high performance trades off battery life. Buy a second battery or wait for an afermarket 12 cell battery to give you 6+ hours of battery life. You'll get three or so, with the battery given you. Windows Vista is an ambiguous advantage. It's not like the Apple commercial, but it's quite different than previous Windows versions. It's better, but it's different and requires getting used to. I heard somebody talk about bloatware. Yes there's about 10 gb worth, but you can figure it out yourself, what you want and dont.

Look for a convertible tablet with a 64 bit processer, 2 gb of RAM (upgradable), a 200 gb hard drive, that had a lightscribe DVD, all in 4.5 lbs., for under 1300 dollars, you woon't do better.

I found out about this laptop from another website, shopped around and decided to buy it from Amazon. It's a nice lightweight, easy to use and setup for the average home user. I perform network administration, so it was a cinch for me to setup. Unfortunately I was misinformed by the site I was referred from and should have spent more time reading and the extra $800 for the faster processor and Wacom tablet functionality they were raving about. All-in-all since it's an internet purchase I will keep this one and I'm sure it will grow on me.

Some of the comments on this site are in reference to a different product number the TX1220US. Some of the reviews are in reference to that item although it's not stated more clearly in the individual review. Since this page contains 3 items it's a bit confusing. I should have known better. Can't complain about the machine, it's faster than my old laptop I paid $2k for and it's a lot lighter.

I've been buying a lot of Dells for the office and decided to look elsewhere after a few factory defects. So this little HP filled the spot.

For anyone looking for a nice 12.1" display it's great, has decent sound. It comes with the Media center version of Vista home, and has enough memory to make Vista's animation acceptable. There are a LOT of extra software items preloaded (I was surprised to see Office in the start menu) and they all want your attention initially. Once that's setup you should have a decent computing experience with this nice piece of hardware.

I gave it 4 stars because if you're going to use it for any sort of work purposes it's going to take an hour or more to clean off the factory software before you should add your own. In addition this is a 64bit machine meaning it will handle the 64bit instructions from Vista Ultimate or XP64, but it only has the 32bit version of Vista installed. Before that's a real factor this laptop will be in need of an upgrade("outdated"), but I was surprised this setup didn't take full advantage of the hardware.

I use my laptop for work so it has to cope with a very large email database and do regular word, excel and ppt.

Compared to the lower spec laptop running XP that it replaced this machine is way too SLOW. I can't blame HP for Vista but I hold them responsible for letting something out of the factory with such poor performance. It never takes less than 5 seconds to open a window to create a new mail message, then another 5 seconds to open up the contact list.. another five seconds to close the window to place the message in the Outbox. Multiply that by 100 emails a day and see if you can tolerate it.

The tablet is unusable for taking notes.

Apart from that it is a great. Lightweight, good battery life and two batteries, good keyboard, good touchpad. All of which is no compensation for its slow operation.

My recommendation: don't buy this machine .. and if you can avoid it don't bother with Vista

Amazon won't let me lower the rating, I wouldn't give it more than 2 stars...

For all that the tx1220us should be with the fast dual-core AMD processor and 2 GB of RAM - the system overall seems to be very slow. Not certain as to whether Windows Vista Premium is always slow, or this computer is just poorly configured. While video has worked well for the most part, I can't seem to configure the laptop to work with iTunes properly (picture is jerky, sound doesn't sync up). Lastly, the keyboard acts up periodically for no reason - sometimes it requires that I hit a button twice for it to register --- could be an issue with overheating. Unfortunately this is the second HP laptop I have purchased and the second I have been disappointed with (the other being a DV5000 series). The package is cute, the hard drive size is enticing, but this is not a product I would recommend.

Bought in July '07, screen died after about 3 months. No biggie, though I wasn't happy about having to mail my computer in and the apparently unavoidable reimaging of the hard drive. Except for problems shutting down, it worked well for about a year then the WiFi died. Again, no biggie, since I had a spare USB WiFi dongle, just inconvenient. Then after another couple of months it started requiring multiple attempts to boot up. Approximately 3 out of 4 attempts yield a blank screen despite all the lights going on and the hard drive flashing on once or twice.

I attempted the fixes suggested in the support info they provide on the power supply (actually bought a new one) and reseating the memory, all to no avail. Emailed HP support and they suggested removing the battery, unplugging, holding the power switch on to get rid of static charge built up over time. Did that and it was also to no avail. HP support feels my pain but told me to bring it to a repair shop because it's probably a "hardware conflict". Given that it's a laptop all the hardware is theirs, so I think they ought to pay to diagnose it.

Bottom line: HP apparently feels that an $1100 laptop should work well for no more than the year or so that it's under warranty. I wish they had told me that when I bought it. Now I get to watch it die a lingering death until I can no longer take it. I hope I can find a replacement that has a longer usable life because I really like being able to use my computer in places of my choosing.

Update 2009 - well two years and my hard drive fails. that's kind of early... least for me.

but after I installed a new hard drive and restored everything, now my wireless adapater isn't even detected. It worked fine after I had reloaded everything. A week later, it was working sporadically. Sometimes it was there and other times it wasn't. Now its dead. Last few days its not working no matter how many reboots take place.

I noticed other reviewers (recently... so they had the laptop for over a year or more) mention their wireless has also gone bad. That is not good. I kind of expect a hard drive to fail due to moving parts but not the wireless card.

Making me rethink whether I want to replace it with another HP.

This review is for the TX1210US.

I just received mine today from Amazon. I have been using a Sony Vaio VGN-T350 which has a 10.1 display and weighs in at 3 pounds 1oz. This weight includes the battery. When I weighed this HP (including battery), it came in at 4.58 lbs (4 lbs, 9.4oz), not the 4.2 lbs indicated on Amazon's description.

HP indicates the min. weight for this "series" of laptops is 4.23 lbs. (thats with touchscreen but the 4 cell weightsaver battery). Costco listed the weight at 3.9lbs with the weightsaver battery (so I'm assuming this is without touchscreen display). I assume this min. weight is also be with smallest hard drive at 120GB (but HP now offers it with a free upgrade to 160GB). I double checked and Amazon shows the TX1205, TX1210, and TX1220 all at the same weight which can't be correct. They have different size hard drives which impacts weight as well the 1205 and 1210 do not have touchscreen and different wireless adpaters etc.

Now an additional 6 oz. may not seem like a lot to you if your current laptop weighs in a 6 or 7+ lbs, but it does when your current laptop weighs in at 3 lbs it sure does. I was willing to carry an additional 1 lbs. but now I'm going to have to carry an additional half pound. Not pleased with Amazon and HP with regard to providing weight specs. Since this laptop has a fixed config (you don't have options to choose from) they should be able to tell you specifically how much the unit weighs. People who buy these mobile lightweight laptops are specifically looking at weight as an important factor in selection. (Of course this unit is also not as expense as the $1900 I paid for the Sony but I had already factored that into my decision.)

Just wanted to let everyone to know what to expect.

Also note size: 8.8 x 12.05 x 1.52 inches is not entirely accurate.

its closer to: 9.5 x 12.05 x 1.52. The 6 cell battery protrudes in the back beyond the laptop itself by about 11/16 of an inch. (I assume the 4 cell weight-saver does not.) The image of the unit does not show this nor could I see this at the local Office Depot since they bolted the laptop to the shelf and I couldn't see the back of the unit.

Will update after I start using it. (Haven't even powered it on just yet.)

Will also try to take a couple of photos to share showing the battery protruding from the rear of the laptop.

Update: Starting testing the unit. the ability to twist the display and fold it down will be great for watching a movie on a plane. You can rotate between portrait and landscape modes which is nice if your reading a document on the plane. New to Vista so its a little different than XP.