Warning: This is not a Tablet PC...

Look carefully because this is not a TabletPC, but it fooled me:

I was down in Seattle this week attending a conference, and thought I'd check out Fry's to see if there were any good deals on tablet PCs.  After telling the sales associate that I was looking for a Tablet PC, he showed me this "swivel-display" model with a great 12.1" touchscreen, 2GB of RAM, a great 64-bit AMD dual-core processor, fingerprint reader and 120GB of disk.  This laptop was stacked, and though the stylus (the Tablet PC "pen") wasn't working well in the "well utilized" display model I thought I had found the dream Tablet PC.

(Incidentally, the specifications for this HP Pavillion TX1000 Series are here.)  

Unfortunately, after about 3hrs of setting up software and getting it ready for the next day of my conference I found out that this was not in fact a Tablet PC.  It fooled me ... how many laptops have a swivel screen that can change from landscape to portrait mode?  How many come with a stylus/pen for what I thought was obviously "digital ink" input?  How many claim that it can be "used with the included stylus (which stows on the notebook) to add handwritten notes to the screen, then convert to text."?

Though you can write to a certain extent via the touchscreen feature (which is optional), the problem is that you might as well be using a wooden stick for it's writing accuracy, and the lag precludes it from being an effective note taking tool.  The fault was really my own.  Upon review, nothing on the box or even the HP site claims that this is a Tablet PC, though some of the signage at the store claimed that it leveraged "Tablet PC features" (which now ships by default with Windows Vista I believe).

In my short time with this unit I quite liked it (other than not being able to use it as a tablet), but I'll say that two other things were of concern.  The bulky battery attached to the back and had a little more "play" than I'd like, and the SD card I bought to take advantage of Vista's Ready Boost features would stick out by almost a quarter inch, making it a little awkward when throwing your laptop in your bag.

The short of it was that I wasted a lot of time, but Fry's was fairly good to refund my money with few questions.  I can't even really blame the sales associate too much ... it was fairly obvious he had no idea really what a Tablet PC was and what the difference is between that and a "touchscreen laptop that leverages some Tablet PC features".

Live and learn ... maybe I'll spend more than 6min evaluating my next laptop/Tablet PC.  I'm told the Lenovo ThinkPad X Series is a great convertible Tablet PC, but I'm still wondering if the Motion is the best slate for my money...

UPDATE:  This review even calls it a Tablet PC, though cites "frustration" at it's inking ability ... (it's NOT a Tablet PC!).