Convertible capability: Five tablet PCs tested


Contents
Introduction
 Fujitsu Stylistic T4020C
 Lenovo ThinkPad X41
 Acer TravelMate C310
 Toshiba Portege M200
 Hewlett-Packard TC4200
 How we tested
 Specifications
 Editor's choice
 About RMIT
Hewlett-Packard TC4200
The HP TC4200 is a great-looking tablet which also appears and feels tough. It weighs 2.1kg but doesn't have an integrated optical drive. Your only option here is to attach a USB optical drive which is of course optional.

The HP featured an Intel Pentium M 1.73 processor with 512MB of RAM, 60GB HDD, and Intel 915 graphics. The 12.1-inch LCD is quite nice -- colours are vivid and the sharpness is very good. Like many of the other displays tested; speckles were prominent across the entire screen.

It has excellent wired and wireless network capabilities and has all the basic input and output connectors. There are three USB connectors, one located on the right, another on the left, and one on the rear of the tablet which is great for easy access to these ports. There's no FireWire or S-Video.

HP provides both a glide pad and trackball which is something you only really see with larger notebooks. The standard and function keys are all the same colour and are really small which can be annoying for someone with large fingers.

The HP has some handy shortcut buttons on the LCD like a Ctrl-Alt-Del button and a scrolling up/down and enter jog dial. Unfortunately there is no button to change the orientation from portrait to landscape -- you have to use the Q Menu (which is a piece of software that runs on the HP).

The base of this tablet is also quite slippery, it could be awkward to hold for a longer period. We would have liked to see a bit more done here in terms of comfort. The digital pen is small but does have an eraser on the end which is actually quite handy.

On the base of the tablet there is a connector for a second battery. You can use it as a travel battery to give you an additional four hours of battery life.

The standard battery completed the run-down test in four hours and 28 minutes which was a good result. We unfortunately were not able to run Winstone on the HP -- it constantly crashed the benchmark and we weren't able to rectify the problem.

Product TC4200
Price AU$3,599
Vendor Hewlett-Packard
Phone 1300 304 894
Web www.hp.com.au
 
Interoperability
Excellent wired and unwired connectivity.
Futureproofing ½
Max RAM 2GB, provision for second battery.
ROI
Good battery life. Unfortunately because Winstone crashed constantly, performance was not measurable. Average weight and comfort.
Service
Warranty: three-year parts and labour, on-site, and 12 months battery.
Rating
Hewlett-Packard TC4200
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Talkback 2 comments

    High res LCDs Craig Ringer -- 25/10/05 (in reply to #120122403)

    When it comes to high resolution (ie DPI, not total pixel dimensions) LCDs, I fail to see the problem. Just turn up the font size, or inform Windows that it has a high resolution display in the display control panel.

    This should be done automatically by any OEM with half a brain. I would think that enabling "large fonts" is simply not that big a deal.

    With that setting, you can get lots of screen "working area", plus readable, smooth, clean looking text.

    There are a few broken apps out there that can't cope with non-default font sizes (this appalls me) but they're not that common, really. The worst problem with Windows its self seems to be somewhat ugly quicklaunch icons and the XP Pro login screen background image being too small for the dialog. An OEM could trivially fix both of these.

    I'm one of the frustrated community of users who /want/ high res LCDs, because I like smooth readable text and the option to fit lots on the screen when I need to. It's frustrating to see reviews like this panning a laptop for having a good display.

    I'd be happy to hear from you if you have any particular views on this - craig@postnewspapers.com.au .

    Where's Gateway? Anonymous -- 03/11/05

    I was surprised to not see Gateway in the lineup. With the new 280e (Educational model) running with similar specs to the Fujitsu, but with a 14" screen...and at half the cost...were seriously looking at it for our students.

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