The first day at the HP press event “Connecting Your World” in Berlin I was misinformed that there is nothing to see regarding the TX2500 Puma Tablet PC, you know, one of the very few AMD platform based Tablet PCs. The second day I indeed had a short hands on. The Wacom digitizer is still that cheap-look-and-feel-pen, but writing with it is smooth. The finger touch alternative seems accurate, loading of apps feels snappy (no surprise if you look at the hardware), the screen still is a BrightView one – OK for most consumer, but not really nice for me. The performance rating was 4.0 with a 4 GB RAM 32-bit Vista SP1 and the following specs:
* CPU is an “AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-84” with 2.3 GHz speed (note that this CPU is NOT in the list the HP online shop already shows, link at the bottom)
* LCD 12.1 inch from AUO with WXGA resolution (1280×768) 1280×800 (see first comment from Corwin)
* ATI Radeon 3200 adapter
* WLAN Broadcom 4321AG with up to n speed
* Realtek 8168/8111 Gigabit Ethernet
* Toshiba MK2546 GSX ATA hard disk of 250 GB with 5.400 speed
* SATA DVD drive DL HLDS GSA – T30N
* Realtek HD Audio
* Authentec AES 1610 fingerprint device
* HP Webcam
* Weight 1.96 Kilo
Windows Vista, a look into the device manager of HP TX2500
Vista performance rating: 4.0
HP TX2500 keyboard
Downloads
Drivers for TX2500 (choose between various models)
Product Homepage (in US shop), on German website it is not yet listed
The resolution is 1280×800 (since it’s widescreen), not 1280×1024. Also, on 32bit Vista, it’s only using 3GB of ram. The Vista screenshot says 4GB because as of Service Pack 1, it adds physical (hard drive) memory to the ram in order to appear to be using all 4GB of ram, a pretty shady trick on Microsoft’s part.
Comment by Corwin Sage — June 20 2008 @ 0:50
Yor’re right, Corwin, thanks for the correction regarding the screen resolution.
Regarding the RAM, you’re not. SP1 for Windows Vista x86 comes with a small design change. Before that 32-bit Windows didn’t report the correct RAM size if above 3 GB. Say, you inserted 4 Gig, but System properties reported 3. That has changed. System properties do report 4 Gig if 4 are installed. Nevertheless normally 32-bit Windows cannot use more of 3 GB RAM. See details here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003. Note that some tools still report 3 GB (e.g. winver) while msinfo32 gives you a clearer picture.
One a sidenote, as RAM has become pretty cheap last year, there is a significantly growing install base of x64-bit Windows on which you can install AND use 4 Gig. And next generation chipsets (Intel Montevina) will officially support 8 GB of RAM. Not sure about AMD, from some specs it looks like 4 Gig max :( (http://www.fujitsu-siemens.de/home/products/notebooks/amilo_xa_3530.html, German)
Comment by tabletprofi — June 20 2008 @ 1:32
hi
where can i get the tx 2500 with 2.3 ghz CPU??
Comment by bernhard freilinger — July 22 2008 @ 20:32
Bernhard,
actually I still haven’t seen this Tablet being announced for Germany. Nevertheless it is available for 999 Euro in the German HP shop, shown as “on stock”: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/de/de/ho/WF06a/321957-321957-3329744-64354-64354-3717590.html
The only CPU listed there is the AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Prozessor ZM-82 with 2.2 GHz.
What you see on the photo above with the ZM-84 is a shot from the device manager of the prototype HP showed during the press event in Berlin in June.
But AMD currently lists only three available X2 Ultra CPUs, ZM-80 (2.1 GHz), ZM-82 (2.2 GHz) and ZM-86 (2.4 GHz). Seems that there won’t be a 2.3 GHz Turion Ultra. See http://tinyurl.com/5kzs5q (AMD page).
The only German shop with the TX 2500 is Cyberport (www.cyberport.de), also, only with the ZM-82. Seems you’ll have no choice, sorry.
Greetings Stefen
Comment by tabletprofi — August 14 2008 @ 10:21
[...] Treiber, Vista — tabletprofi @ 17:20 Das bereits im Juni auf einer Pressekonferenz vorgestellte TX2500-Tablet mit Dual-Touchscreen ist endlich in Deutschland erhältlich, allerdings nur in einer [...]
Pingback by HP TX2500 jetzt in Deutschland lieferbar - als TX2550eg « Tablet-Profi — August 31 2008 @ 17:20
Hello,
is there possiblity to downgrade Vista to XP on tx 2500? In my opinion it doesn’t work good on Vista. I am dreaming about xp on it… Please help.
Comment by AS — January 3 2009 @ 11:57
Yes, it is possible to install XP Tablet Edition. As this Tablet is considered a consumer device HP is not allowed licensewise by Microsoft to offer a downgrade CD/DVD. You have to get your own Tablet bits and license. Also, I cannot find a lot of HP software for XP for the Tx2500. Goto HP and download XP drivers into a folder for later installation. For default hardware like Intel WLAN etc. you’ll find drivers on Windows Update.
My recommendation: Backup all your data and settings to an external hard drive/another PC and try Windows 7 when it is out as a public beta (next week internal Beta, but perhaps also public).
Would be nice if you report your experiences here.
Comment by tabletprofi — January 4 2009 @ 9:15