The HP HDX: a laptop in name only
The HP Pavilion HDX is more like a semi-portable home theater system, than just a laptop.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Weighing an amazing 15.5 pounds and sporting a desktop-sized 20-inch LCD, the
We first got a glimpse of the massive HP Pavilion HDX system back at CES 2007 and have been eagerly waiting for a review unit ever since. Some system highlights include:
The HDX meets the specs for Intel's revamped Santa Rosa platform, so it has a Centrino Duo sticker. Our preproduction unit also had a top-of-the-line T7700 Core 2 Duo CPU, 3GB of RAM, and dual 100GB hard drives.
Taking the HDX for a test drive, we loved the removable remote control and the touch-sensitive capacitive media controls. The trickiest part was the giant hinge connecting the screen to the rest of the system. The hinge is attached to the middle of the lid, allowing you to angle the display slightly. When closing the lid, you have to make sure the rear of the screen is pushed all the way back against the hinge, or it'll hit up against the body of the system and potentially crack something. Opening the screen is equally tricky--if you lift from the top of the lid, as is common with laptops, the bottom of the screen will suddenly swing out when it has enough clearance, whacking against the bottom of the chassis. A little practice had us opening and closing the lid with ease, but those first few times were white-knuckle experiences.
The HDX probably won't ship until at least July, and it starts at $2,999. Fully loaded, it'll run closer to $4,500. If this oversized design looks slightly familiar, that's because you're probably thinking of the