My First Post on My New Computer

For the past few weeks I have been enjoying my new toy. Almost two months ago I decided to bug Jim by buying an IPod Touch. He was busy saving money for one himself and still had a ways to go before he could purchase one. So I went out to Walmart and picked one up knowing full well that I would return it before the 15 day return limit ended. I just wanted to irritate him for a few days. Yes, I can be a jerk, but it was all in good fun, and besides he now has his precious “Touch.”

After playing with it for a week, I really came to appreciate it’s touch screen. The ability to navigate web pages with just a finger was incredibly cool. It was really, really fun… more fun, in fact, than irritating Jim. It was not, however fun enough for me to keep since I rarely listen to music on MP3 players. So after a week I returned the IPod Touch and got my money back.

My adventure with the Touch, however, made me think about what kind of computer I wanted to replace my big ol’ Dell Inspiron 9300, with a huge 17″ screen and 9 lb carrying weight. I began to investigate tablet PCs…. Lenovo, Dell and HP.  Dell’s new Tablet PC was well out of my price range (over $2,500.00). Lenora’s Tablet was better priced, but boring. I then spotted an HP Tablet at Staples which looked neat and was much more affordable. The Tablet at Staples was an older model however, and so I went online to see what I could find. What found was this:

HP Pavilion tx2000z with:

• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
• AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60 (2.0 GHz, 512KB+512KB L2 Cache )
• 12.1″ WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display(1280 x 800) with Integrated Touch-screen
• 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 6150
• HP Imprint Finish (Echo) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone!
• 802.11b/g WLAN
• 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
• 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• Corel(R) WordPerfect(R) Office X3

The price was right, especially with a $500 off coupon found on the internet, and so I ordered it at the end of March and got it by FedEx on Friday, April 4th. Since that time I have moved almost everything over from my old computer and have been “playing around” with it, trying to see what it can do, as well as its limitations.  So far I am finding it to be everything that I had hoped it would be. The touch screen is amazingly bright and responsive. In addition to using Your fingers to navigate the Net, there is a stylus you can use to write text, which can be exported into any program: word processors, browsers, etc. . . . You can also draw using the stylus and this proves to be as easy to do with the stylus on the computer’s touch screen as it is In the “real world with paper and pencil/pen.”

In fact, other than the above info on the tx2000z (which was copied and pasted using the stylus) this entire post was written by my hand on the computer screen.  In addition, the program that does all this learns your handwriting style as you use it, improving by leaps and bounds in very short order.  And this is true regardless of whether you print or use cursive or switch between the two even in the same sentence. Again, it is simply amazing.

I was a little leery about having to use Vista, but so far I have had no problems. It too is incredibly responsive (the 4 GB of RAM no doubt helps there, and I have had more than 10 applications running at one time and have not come close to using more than 60% of the System resources. If you are in the market for a tablet PC, I highly recommend this one. It is light, efficient, well-designed, and cute to boot.

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