Hands-On with the HP Pavilion tx2500

You heard right, we just got our HP tx2500 Tablet PC in house today. It was dropped off by FedEx this morning and brought smiles to our faces. The new AMD Puma processor and ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics are the main updates to the tx2500, so we went ahead and ran some benchmarks to give you a feel for the performance this 12.1" tablet puts out.

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The configuration we have has a AMD Turion X2 2.4GHz processor, 3GB RAM, the ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, 160GB hard drive and runs Windows Vista Business. All of this is packed into the same design as its predecessor, the tx2000. The tx2500 still has the active digitizer/touchscreen display, mini-remote, Altec Lansing speakers, the Echo Imprint finish and a nice array of ports.

We had no problems getting the wPrime and HDTune benchmarks to run on the tx2500, but PCMark and 3DMark keep freezing at the application launch screens. We are currently working to remedy this problem. Our guess is the new Puma processor and new ATI integrated graphics are confusing the FutureMark benchmarks and preventing the benchmarks from running normally.

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After running Windows Update and installing an updated video driver, it seems PCMark and 3DMark still don't want to run properly. So, we are back to square one and going to run some more updates and change some settings, we will keep you posted with our results.

Overall the tx2500 surfs the Web with no problems, has a solid design and has a nice touchscreen display, but the colors are a little washed out. I still love watching movies and listening to music with this tablet though, especially when you think about all you get for the price. Stay tuned for our full review later this week, which will include more photos, benchmarks and tests.