Customer Reviews

HP TouchSmart TX2-1270US 12.1-Inch Laptop

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I wanted a laptop that would replace my four year old 17 inch Gateway. I liked my old laptop but wanted something smaller. I looked at netbooks but they didn't have enough power for my needs. I like an occasional game or two. I went to a computer store and played with their laptops for a while and liked the HP Touchsmart. The model that they had displayed was one with a 320 Gig hard drive and it had a 12.1 inch screen anp only weighed a little more than four pounds. It also was a tablet PC which was intriguing with 4 gigs of memory. The feature that I found desirable was the touchscreen. It fascinated me and made on screen selections so much easier. It also came with a remote and a stylus.I tried it and I liked it.

So when I arrived home I checked Amazon.com and HP's website. I discovered that there was a model of the TouchSmart with 500 gigs of storage. I was sold. Hp offered a lower price but Amazon had a [...] dollar rebate which brought the cost below what Hp offered. They both offered free shipping. I purchased from Amazon and received my new laptop in two days. I am very satisfied with its performance.

I had been looking for a laptop to replace my Dell 700M (junk, I know) and had heard good things about HP. I'm not exactly a computer expert but I'm not a novice either and decided to check this computer out after demoing one at a Staples.

First Impressions:

The overall appearance is a damn slick look, which is nice but doesn't really add to the function of the computer. The key board feels sturdy and the button layout is comfortable with the exception of the top row of F keys and the Escape button is downright minute. I was surprised to see a disk for Microsoft Office OneNote in the box but maybe I just didn't read the product review carefully. It feels heavy for its size but not cumbersome.

The Touch Screen:

The screen, as someone pointed out in another review, is not as crisp as the Xbrite screens due to the fact that when you use it as a tablet or just activate the media player your fingers won't stick to a glossy surface. The matte finish doesn't bother me but it could be an issue for people who like to watch a lot of movies on their laptop. (I actually just finished watching Dead Space on mine and hardly noticed the screen quality after a few minutes)

Touch Controls:

Like any new toy it will take a minute to get used to. HP has a tutorial right on the desktop after you complete the somewhat lengthy start up. The pinch and rotation controls take some practice to get just right but with time will be natural and quicker than clicking on it. The responsiveness to your fingers is pretty good but the packaged pen/pointer is where the touch controls really shine.

Using the pen you can precisely click on anything more quickly and accurately than it would to use a mouse. There is a button on the side of the pen that acts as right click when you have something selected. (Alternately if you push down on the pen for one second the right click menu pops up as well.) If you are like me and don't use the home keys when you type it is pretty convenient to hold the pen with your thumb when you need to type into a search engine or in a field. You have the option to write with the pen in the field which I will get into now.

Writing With The Pen:

The handwriting capture box that pops up gives you three ways to enter text. You can write it out all in one line, have a line of boxes similar to filling out a medical sheet where one letter goes in the box and an onscreen touch keyboard. The recognition is a little off right in the beginning. For instance I searched for VLC and it thought my V was an r. For someone that has very legible penmanship that was a little disheartening but you can actually go through and program your own handwriting into the system so it recognizes your style of letters and it hasn't been a problem since. As a bonus it can also recognize cursive, which is nice but typing is still miles ahead.

Drawing:

Another program that was included is Corel Painter 4. I'm not much of an artists but I decided to fool around with it and found everything to be very responsive. You do have to select the width of your line manually since it isn't pressure sensitive but it really isn't an issue for me.

Pros
Very accurate and streamlined touch for a good price.
Fast processor
Shiny exterior

Cons
Screen is a bit muddy looking because of the matte, try and find one in a store to check out.
Handwriting works but feels gimmicky because typing is faster.
Fingerprint security scanner is located awkwardly on the right side of the screen forcing you to turn the computer of your hand to swipe the length of your finger left to right.

Overall I am happy with the performance of this computer and would recommend it even without the tablet capabilities. I didn't go much into the specs because hardware is hardware and let's face it, you just want to know if the touch screen is awesome. For me, it is.

After some searching I found this to be the lowest cost tablet pc. The tablet was just something I was interested in playing with but not required for my use. I went right to Windows 7 and after some driver updates the multi touch interface works as expected and the rest of the machine seems to run well for some development work and office suite use.
As a portable it is heavy, hot and loud. The fan is probably the loudest I've had on a notebook and it rages up and down constantly. Very distracting while working and probably more so if brought into a meeting. I find the volume of noise from this computer to be it's primary fault by far. I don't think I would recommend this to anyone without explaining the significance of the fan noise.
The overall performance is good, and better than anything I currently have so I am happy with that. I'm sure for the some money I could have gotten a non-table that was light, warm and quiet. oh well.

This is to warn any potential buyers of the TX2 line of laptops. HP has severely limited the end-user options in the bios of this computer so much so that it only performs at 1.1GHz on battery power. You heard that correctly. You cannot play 720P video while on battery. You cannot get over 1.1GHz out of this computer on battery---at all. The bios has nothing configurable, and even with the proper settings maxed out in the OS, you will NEVER see anything higher than 1.1GHz.

This is highly frustrating. Do not purchase this tablet if you expect to have full processing power whenever you want it.

Bought this laptop for my daughter who is starting college. She likes the computer except that it runs so hot that you can't set it on your lap. Who wants a laptop that you can't comfortably put in your lap. Other than the heat issue it's a great laptop. Light weight and very portable.

Loved it! Small, fast, cool.

But then it got hot. Very hot. Ouch.
But then the battery failed at 1 year.
But then the motherboard failed at 13 months. Ouch.

The web is full of dead motherboard stories. Perhaps this is a..... trend???

I purchased this laptop due to its touchscreen. 1st mistake. Every time my client touches the screen it causes problems. Secondly this is the HOTTEST laptop I have ever seen. If on lap it would cause 3rd degree burns. I had to have a HVAC man come out to my home office to redirect AC vents to get extra air coming in to my 20 x 15 office. The laptop alone make the room to hot to tolerate. I thought Dell's ran HOT - I never imagined the heat that can come out of this little machine.

Not to get to into the tech specs but I have never seen such a lag in the touchscreen software. Horrible. Stay away!

If you uninstall everything on this machine, every last bit of software, including the OS, then install a decent OS and the software you actually want, it will run fine.

If you buy it as configured from HP, it simply will not work for very long.

I got this as a gift, and it ran for three months before Vista crashed permanently, so badly that it could not be recovered and I had to install all new OS & software from scratch. The hardware is very fast, but the 90+ background processes that HP installs to make it all touchsmart-y make it run like a TRS80.

Worse, the media software they install is like some sort of virus magnet. Despite three very well-respected security programs, I spend at least one day a week just letting the virus programs update and scan, and they always find a ton of malware. It always comes through the media software too.

If you're just looking for a piece of hardware that will work decently well and you plan to spend a couple days customizing your OS and software, then this will be fine for that purpose. If you want it to actually work out of the box...not so much.

Really bad product. The touchscreen and the fingerperint reader keep malfunctioning as "usb not recognized". Also occasionally it starts clicking all by itself and changing stuff.

Don't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

Also support from HP is non-existent, lots of bloatware etc. It's supposed to find its own drivers upgrades, but in 6 months found nothing.

Battery also crapped out in 2 1/2 months.

Only good thing: it was cheap.

This was the best value for money i found. Fast, responsive, huge storage (atleast for me) and the multi touch works great!