HP kicks off CES season with two (sort of) new laptops

HP isn't waiting until the streaming masses descend on Las Vegas for CES to unveil new additions to the company's laptop lineup. Thursday, HP announced the HP Pavilion tx2000 and a slightly revamped version of the HP Pavilion HDX. If those sound familiar, that's because the convertible tablet tx2000 is an update of the tx1000 we first saw last year at CES 2007, and the new HDX has some updated parts, but exactly the same name as the 2007 version of the HDX, itself released just this past July. Overall, there are a handful of minor tweaks, but nothing radically new.

We liked the original tx1000, as it was one of the few consumer-focused tablet PCs we'd ever seen (most tablets are aimed at industrial or medical workers). The new version looks nearly identical from the outside, and inside it offers AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core CPUs, 802.11n Wi-Fi and adds Wacom digitizer support to the finger-sensitive 12.1-inch touch screen, something missing from the previous tx1000 model.

We said the massive 20-inch HDX was a laptop in name only when we first saw it, and the same is true of the latest version. Despite some new hardware, HP isn't changing the name, but inside you'll find updated Intel Core 2 Duo processors and Nvidia's GeForce 8800M video card, along with HD DVD or Blu-ray optical drives (no combo drives yet). A previous update added a 1,920x1,200 display, which is an improvement over the original's 1,680x1,050 screen, and the four Altec Lansing speakers plus subwoofer remain the same.

The tx2000 starts at $1,299 and will be available online on January 8 and in retail outlets in March, while the updated HDX starts at $1,999 and should be available later in January.

We'll have more in-depth looks at both of these systems next week during CES.