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HP tm2 Capacitive Multi-Touch Tablet Looks Smart (Touch)

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hp-touchsmart-tm2-10-prHP is unveiling a new line of Touchsmart Tablet PCs that from what I’m reading is sleeker and offers more than the TX line of consumer focused Tablet PCs. Built similarly to the Envy line from a design standpoint, the tm2 has a capacitive touch screen, which means pen and touch. It runs an Intel Core 2 Duo chipset and optional discrete graphics processing with ATI Radeon. It also has a Macbook/Evny like unibutton touchpad. Look for more on this from the team on the ground when they catch up with it, and look for it to be available January 17th for $949.

As usual with HPs consumer line this comes loaded with lots of stuff (read CRAPWARE in some cases) but intriguingly according to the press release, the BumpTop application is included. (See the Press Release after the jump). Engadget has some video up of the tm2.

HP TouchSmart tm2

Building on HP TouchSmart software innovation, the thin, powerful HP TouchSmart tm2 updates the tx2 – the industry’s first convertible notebook PC with multitouch technology designed specifically for consumers.

With the convertible tm2, customers can choose the product configuration and input method that is most comfortable and natural, whether on a couch, in an airplane or while surfing the web. (3) As a traditional notebook, the tm2 offers a keyboard and touch-enabled display for input. Converted to a slate, the tm2 morphs into a sketchpad with digital pen, allowing artists to sketch on the go and students to take notes in class.

Feather-light capacitive multitouch display technology responds to the softest touch of a finger. The display also supports multitouch gestures such as zoom, scroll and rotate by allowing more than one finger to be accepted as input simultaneously. With the digital pen, handwriting appears on the display as digital ink, similar to writing on paper.

Featuring a sophisticated aluminum design with “Riptide” engraved illustration, the tm2 provides a full notebook experience with the latest low-voltage Intel® Coreâ„¢ 2 Duo processors and optional high multimedia performance ATI Mobility Radeonâ„¢ discrete graphics upgrades.(4) The tm2 also provides up to nine hours of battery life via the standard six-cell battery and includes a fingerprint reader as well as an advanced thermal design that helps keep the PC cool.(5)

New touch applications enhancing the tm2 experience include:

• BumpTop, a touch-enhanced 3-D interface for photos and documents that allows users to spatially organize and “toss” or share files and photos to social media sites or email.
• DigiFish Dolphin, an interactive 3-D screensaver that recreates an ocean environment to be experienced via touch or a mouse.
• Corel® Paint it! Touch, whichTM allows users to draw and paint or turn photos into paintings using fingertips.

The tm2 also features many of the same exclusive built-for-touch applications found on the recently introduced tx2 and HP TouchSmart PC, including exclusive touch-enabled games and Corel Painter Sketch Pad application for creating digital art.

The tm2 now offers a touch-enabled Netflix application, which delivers thousands of full-screen movies and TV episodes that are instantly streamed from Netflix over the Internet and can be watched any time at no additional cost by Netflix members with an unlimited subscription. Other recently introduced applications within the TouchSmart software include Hulu Desktop or Internet TV, Twitter and HP Music Store.(6)

As part of HP’s commitment to the environment and to eliminating all uses of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in its computing products by 2011,(7) the TouchSmart tm2 is BFR/PVC-free.

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. xmangerm

    01/06/2010 at 12:12 am

    Wow! I love my Tx2 1020 but this model takes the cake. I am very impressed with this statement “The tm2 also provides up to nine hours of battery life via the standard six-cell battery and includes a fingerprint reader as well as an advanced thermal design that helps keep the PC cool” because anyone that uses the Tx2 knows that it heats up (on high performance) to a point were you can feel uncomfortable if keep on the lap for extended periods of time. And the battery life of the Tx2 is only about a third. Nevertheless, I will holding on to my Tx2 for a while for it is a wonderful tablet even with its few shortcomings.

  2. AmbiDextrose

    01/06/2010 at 12:17 am

    The following (recent) announcement from WACOM seems to imply that THIS tablet is one of the first to use WACOM’s new ‘Feel IT’ technology which combines it’s EMR pen technology with multi-touch capacitive sensors:

    https://www.wacom-components.com/english/news/20100104.html

    If this is the case, we NEED someone to verify that the TM2 supports pressure sensitivity, if there’s an increase in (pen) pressure sensitivity (used to be 256 pressure levels), if tilt is finally supported and if this will require a new set of pens apart from those already available.

  3. GoodThings2Life

    01/06/2010 at 3:59 am

    Gizmodo is giving really good reviews to the BumpTop interface as well… definitely looks like a step in the right direction. If all the tablet vendors produce this kind of device this year, maybe Rob (and the rest of us) will really get his wish! :)

  4. Peninsider

    01/06/2010 at 4:53 pm

    It’s Wacom multi-touch and pen. Specs for the pen are what you expect from Wacom for Tablet PCs, i.e. better than N-trig.

  5. Nameless

    01/07/2010 at 12:27 am

    …Let me get this straight.

    There’s an Intel Core 2 Duo, Wacom pen + multi-touch, an LCD screen that’s supposed to have better viewing angles than the tx-series, DEDICATED ATI GRAPHICS OPTION (a Mobility HD Radeon 4550 if Engadget is right, which isn’t too shabby for a laptop/tablet of this size), and a price that starts at just under US$1,000 (though probably not with the ATI graphics)?

    Pinch me, I must be dreaming. This is practically the perfect Tablet PC for me already, like I’ve found a worthy alternative to the old Toshiba Tecra M4/M7 and Gateway E-295C/C-140X/C-141XL/C-142XL/etc. after all these years. It may not have a 14″ screen like those models, but it’s got plenty of power under the hood-and, most importantly for me, DEDICATED GRAPHICS as an option (which I wouldn’t expect out of any Tablet PC with a Core 2 Duo smaller than 14″)!

    2010 could very well be the year of the Tablet (PC), all right…

  6. Eric

    01/07/2010 at 10:17 am

    I’m about due for a new tablet from work, but they won’t buy the consumer models. When might the business line upgrades be announced???

    I really like the Wacom digitizer (cross penabled pen continuity), so this unit really is what I’ve been waiting for. Even if it only gets a true 6hrs, I can teach all my courses on a machine like that.

  7. double o don

    01/07/2010 at 9:05 pm

    I assume that this new unit’s screen is a 12.1″ in wide format?

  8. Michael

    01/08/2010 at 7:00 pm

    It looks like it has a bidirectional hinge…cool
    I want to replace my 2710p for university.

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