Archive for March, 2009

After spedning the last four weeks with the HP2730p Elitebook, it was very hard to let go.

The 2730p is super light, powerful and yet kind on batteries. We got at least for hours of full-on use from each battery cycle. The portable expansion base (with a tiny 7mm thich DVD burner in it) made it all very convenient.

Take a look at our video review here: 

The 2730p ticked all the boxes for us. If you want to know more about the HP 2730p EliteBook, visit our website.

We recently took a look at the Panasonic Toughbook CF-19. What can we say? It’s tough!

Check out our video review here: 

For more information on the Toughbook CF-19 visit our website.

It is only a couple months since we blogged about the future of Tablet PCs and Multi-Touch screens. We predicted 12-18 months before Multi-Touch would hit the market… how wrong we were.

“Multi-Touch” in this context refers to the new generation of capacitive touch screens that can detect multiple points of contact at once. The more commonly found resistive touch screens can only determine one point of contact at a time.

Capacitive touch is the hardware enables those iPhone style functions like:

• Two fingered scrolling
• Pinch zooming
• Two finger tapping
• Swipe style gestures

Unlike resistive touch screens, capacitive touch screen only require a negligible contact pressure to function. That makes capacitive touch much easier to use for finger functions.

There are two Tablet PCs that currently include capacitive touch screens:

• The new HP Tx2
• Dell Latitude XT2

We’ll have more details and video reviews on both models in the near future. Both are now available.

Of course, iPhone style functions require software support and both HP and Dell have enabled this to a certain extent.

The upcoming Windows 7 will also enable much broader support for multi-touch.

Over the last year, TX2500 users from all over the world contacted us with their reviews. For the most part, users praised the Tx2000 series as a great Tablet.

However, on occasions we have heard complaints of excessive heat and fan noise.

Take for example some comments from our Tx2000 post on this blog:

Webmonkey: “Fan noise; seems to vary for no apparent reason, even when idle reading a webpage.”

MEDA CALDERON: “My problem is the fan noise….as i open the laptop the noise at the fan doesn’t stop until i put it off… What should I do?”

Joachim Schneider: “If you’re in a loud environment, it’s a great laptop. The build-in speakers sure can overcome the fan noise. But if you need it quiet, get something else.”

On the other hand, Tablet PC review reported that heat was a problem, but were less scathing about it:

Heat and Noise

The tx2500 does tend to get warm, especially when running benchmarks or working hard. I didn’t notice much heat when browsing the Web or going through emails, but the bottom does get a little warm. When the tablet is running multiple applications or benchmarks the fan kicks on and the heat comes blowing out the vent and it is hot to the touch. This is after a few hours of being on though. I didn’t notice any part of the tablet to be so warm it was uncomfortable though, except for the bottom under extreme working conditions.

I didn’t notice any noise from the tx2500 either. The only time the tablet was noisy was when I ran benchmarks and that is when the fan kicked on high. It was annoying and sounded like a hair dryer. Besides that the fan didn’t kick on much and even when it ran on a low setting it was quiet.

The heat generation on this unit is undoubtedly linked directly to the AMD Turion processor. Whilst it is a great mobile processor, it doesn’t compete with the power saving performance properties of Intel low voltage Centrino Core 2 Duo processors found in higher end Tablet PCs.

In this case, power consumption results in heat generation, and therefore fan noise.

Fortunately HP have published some advice for those who want to keep their TX tablets quiet.

According to HP:

The electrical components in a PC generate heat, and fans inside the PC help move the air to keep the components cooled to normal operating temperatures.

Inadequate cooling can cause excess heat which forces the fan to run constantly, can damage components, and limit the speed of the CPU. All of these problems with high power and high heat will cause applications to work slower than normal.

So, if you want to have a go at cleaning your HP Tx series to keep it running fast and quiet, check out this article on the HP website.