Features

Honestly speaking I find it futile to describe all the features in a lengthy paragraph format. The best way to look at the features is the spec sheet. Never the less, I will speak about the features that deserve a mention.

The laptop comes with two batteries, one four cell and the other a six cell. The four cell battery lasted us 2 hours 47 minutes whereas the six cell one lasted for three hours 58 minutes. The TX1016AU comes with a LightScribe DVD that along with the ability to burn DVDs lets you etch labels on the surface of DVDs and CDs. You need a special CD or DVD if you want to use the LightScribe feature and cost a bit more. Last when I found out, a LightScribe CD cost 24 rupees.

The TX1016AU comes with a small remote that fits into the Express Card slot and comes with in-built Altec Lansing Speakers. The speakers are good and definitely two notches above the rest, though there are better options with some laptops also coming with a small sub-woofer.

The tablet comes with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed that has tablet functionalities.

The TX1016AU comes with a Bluetooth PAN 2.0 module, 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi, Gigabit LAN, 1.3 MP webcam, a finger print reader and a 5-in-1 card reader. It’s a truly complete package but the only thing missing is a firewire port.

Performance

The laptop is equipped with a 2.0 GHz AMD Turion X2 processor and 2GB of 667MHz RAM. The motherboard is based on Nvidia’s C51M chipset and comes with Nvidia’s onboard 6150 graphics chip. If you compare it with a similarly clocked Intel Core 2 Duo chip its definitely slower though you will hardly notice the difference in normal daily applications. The onboard graphic chip, the 6150, obviously cannot offer you high-end gaming, as in the case of all onboard chips, but is more apt for running Vista comfortably. In fact the 6150 chip is the best onboard option available as compared to Intel’s GMA 950 and AMD’s Xpress 1150. Intel has come with its latest X3100 graphics chip in its recently launched Santa Rosa platform, but its performance is yet to be evaluated. If you are interested in numbers the PCMark score is 3276 which is good if not excellent. I have also included the score from Vista's own benchmarking tool—The Experience Index.

The laptop comes with two batteries, four cell and six cell. The four cell battery lasted us 2 hours 47 minutes whereas the six cell one lasted for three hours 58 minutes. The touchscreen layer on the LCD spoils the fun here. Due to that the contrast, brightness and clarity of the screen is effected.

Conclusion

At Rs. 75,000 the HP TX1016AU is one heck of a feature rich and powerful device. It has everything you can ever think, is good looking and is intelligently designed. But the touchscreen layer on top of the LCD spoils an almost perfect laptop. Due to that the contrast, brightness and clarity of the screen is effected. In an attempt to provide everything under the sun and not make it very expensive, HP has compromised on the tablet aspect by using a resistive digitizer instead of an active or inductive one (the resistive one sits on the top of the screen whereas the inductive one is below the screen) used by most other tablet PC manufacturers. But then mind you, such tablets come at a price and are easily Rs. one lakh and above.

In my opinion, I wouldn’t have minded giving up the tablet functionality for a better screen experience as the laptop is a brilliant multimedia device. In fact that would have also lowered the cost of the laptop. Anyway, the case is not as bad as it’s turning out to be. The screen is fine and readable but overall, it could have been much better.

Gaurav Seth