A Small Notebook, but what is is for? and why?

I prefer to use Apple Macintosh computers for my day-to-day use, and until a couple of months ago, on top of the old iMac and the PowerBook G4, we had a Windows XP desktop machine on lease. I had told my wife that when the lease ran out, I was going to replace it and the old iMac with a single newer iMac. I'm still not sure what happened, but my wife went on a trip to New York and came back this time with an HP Pavilion tx1210us.

Whilst she was there she had asked me what to get, and I had said to go and take a look at a MacBook, but she came back with this. Her reasoning: It is smaller and cheaper than a MacBook. She had compared it with the most expensive MacBook of course.

I had looked forward to a Windows free home, but it was not to be, and I was presented with the new notebook to get working for her when she got back. To give her dues it is small, and fairly light. However I don't like Vista, and she had never used it before, and I think it is slowly getting on her nerves, however that is not the Pavilion's fault.

The first thing that annoys me is the multitude of applications and extras that HP pre-installed on the machine. Everything from internet service provider shortcuts and diallers to some sort of HP Health Check application, which took too long to figure out to stop it popping up onto the screen every time anyone logged in. But that is enough of the software side of things, as Vista is probably reviewed to death in other places.

The Pavilion has a 12 inch screen that can be opened and rotated so that the machine takes on a tablet form. However, this model only has a touch screen as an option, as far as I can work out. So quite what people are going to use it for in its tablet form I don't know. Some of my colleagues and friends have suggested that maybe it was intended to be used that way when viewing multimedia. I don't agree though, because it doesn't make sense to me. For arguments sake, let's say you wanted to watch a DVD. If you were watching a DVD on a laptop computer, where would you put it? On a table, desk or your lap, right? In which case the traditional laptop format works best, as it holds the screen at the appropriate angle. In tablet form, you either have to hold it, or put it down. If you put it down, it'll lie flat, hardly the best way to provide a good viewing angle. Even flat on your lap, means you would have to sit through a DVD film, with you head angled down more than usual. No, it doesn't make sense. The tablet form only makes sense with the touch screen option, which makes the models without touch sensitivity in my mind, handicapped from the start.

Next there is the ventilation. If you take a look at my PowerBook G4, or later models, even MacBooks or iBooks, the vents for passing cooling air through the machine are at the sides. Why, does this make sense? Because the sides are never covered up and blocked, by placing the laptop on a soft surface... like a lap! The Pavilion has vents in the bottom, so as soon as you place it on your lap they get blocked, and very quickly the machine gets hot and the fans are going flat out trying to push through what air they can. I cannot understand why laptop manufacturers do this, so to all the LAPtop builders : "People like to use their laptops on their laps, so don't put vents in the bottom!"

By far the biggest annoyance with the machine is the trackpad. It is quite simply the worst I have come across. It is perfectly flush with the surrounding body of the machine, i.e. there is no lip around the outside for you to feel when you run your finger to the edge. The only way the pad is distinguished is with a grid of tiny indentations, which are easier to see, than feel. This means that a user is constantly required to look down and make sure his(her) finger is over the pad. Both of us frequently attempt to move the cursor, only to see nothing happen, because we're gliding our fingers on a non-trackpad part of the machine. To top that off, to the right of the main trackpad is a verticle scrolling pad, which is separated from the trackpad my a couple of millimetres of un-dimpled plastic.

Another minor irritant is a button between the trackpad and the space bar. It is quite small and unmarked, but it switches the trackpad on and off. Yes, I've managed to hit this inadvertently whilst typing. I think its because when I type my right thumb hovers just above it in the rest position. So it will be more or less of an annoyance depending on your typing style.

Apart from that the machine is pretty much packed with gadgets. It has built in flash card reader, finger print scanner, webcam, Lightscribe DVD writer, Bluetooth, and the usual other things, like USB ports, video out (VGA, S-Video) audio in/out, etc. As I have said, there is no touch screen, and despite marketed as the portable entertainment system, the infra red remote control is not supplied with this model either.


MAJOR UPDATE
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Wednesday 29th July 2009

The TX1210US died! It started behaving erratically, and being generally unreliable several months ago. The wi-fi connection would decide not to work, requiring multiple restarts to tease it back to life. Finally over the last couple of weeks, it began freezing at random times, and was difficult to restart. It now appears that the TX1000 series notebooks share some common components with other machines in HP's line-up. They are all using an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) that was found to have a design flaw. The GPU would get hot enough that the solder making the connections to the motherboard would soften and eventually break. Unfortunately the TX1000 series notebooks have been singled out by HP, by being excluded so far from any recalls, or free repair/replacement programmes.

There are forums dotted around all over the Internet, with customers in all countries where this model has shipped complaining of the same fault. Most have happened outside warranty, but those that failed within the warranty period have been repaired and in most cases failed again subsequently.

HP are only offering consumers a "paid for" repair process, which is not proving to be a long term fix either.

It can only be stressed therefore, that TX1000 series notebook computers from HP should not, in my opinion, be on anyone's shortlist and should be discounted as a possibility for purchase, until such time as HP have a programme in place to deal with this issue.

If you search the Internet for "TX1000 overheat" you will find lots of forums, blogs and reviews complaining about this problem and the way HP are dealing with it. Each report following by dozens of comments by people having the same problems.
Someone has set up a petition to ask HP to include the TX1000 series in a product recall
http://petitiononline.com/deadhptx/petition.html

Jasonshay2 on YouTube has done a video showing a possible fix. However, I can't see this being more than a temporary fix. There doesn't appear to be any feedback on how good the fix is longer term.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctHTF3oNdxI