The other bits
We've been fans of HP's 'invisible' trackpad for a while now and the Pavilion TX2520 is no different. The trackpad has a vent-like appearance, but it works really well. The underlying buttons provide the right amount of resistance, too. The keyboard is pretty good, as well.
The laptop does become rather toasty when under load, and the right-hand portion of the bottom can easily be felt through thick denim. We'd not recommend placing it on exposed skin for any length of time.
The screen's active digitiser, provided by WACOM, means the pen/stylus doesn't require power. HP provides four replaceable tips in the package and, thankfully, a cloth to clean the easily-marked finish. There's also a soft carrying case (not pictured) and a mini-remote-control unit that interfaces with the pre-installed QuickPlay application. It fits in the ExpressCard slot for easy storage.
Should software matters go awry, the laptop has a pre-installed image that restores it to factory-fresh specifications by pressing F11 during the POST sequence. No backup discs are provided, but a means by which to burn them on to CD is included in the Recovery Manager.
A cool thing is that HP bundles in an 8-cell battery within the box: perfect for business users.
We like the fact that the software is intuitive to use, and the help files are especially good.
Being the world-leader in notebook sales, HP adds in significant bloatware to Vista Home Premium SP1. The basic warranty is one year from the time of purchase, including 30-day software support and free telephone support (US customers only).
Summary
Priced at around £699 for this model, the HP Pavilion TX2520 is a solid, good-looking tablet notebook that's powered by the AMD Puma platform. It's rare for such a notebook to be equipped with a discrete graphics card, and we'll see what kind of job the Radeon HD 3200 graphics make of our tests.
