Compaq Tablet PC tc1100

For use as a conventional notebook, the tablet can mount on a small bundled keyboard with an eraserhead pointing device. With keyboard the Tc1100 weighs 4 pounds, competitive with other lightweight notebooks. The layout is good enough to touch-type at a nice clip. Our only serious complaint is that there is no wrist rest; the mouse buttons line up with the edge of the keyboard.

For switching back to tablet use without detaching the keyboard, you can rotate the screen 180 degrees and lock it faceup, just like a convertible notebook. (The Tc1100 won't close clamshell style because of the tablet's thick glass face.) The tablet is easy to pop on and off the keyboard--just slide a couple of releases on the back to disengage its side slots from the keyboard tabs. The detached screen automatically shifts modes from landscape to portrait.

The Tc1100 has no FireWire or TV-out ports, so you likely won't use it to show off your camcorder shots to the grandparents. A more serious deficiency is the lack of an integrated optical bay; this absence is somewhat excused by a powered USB port provided for the optional $199 MultiBay. A lightweight modular USB housing, the MultiBay can hold an optical drive or a secondary hard drive. The Tc1100 played a DVD movie smoothly, with low-volume but good-quality sound. HP also sells a docking stand for the Tc1100 that features a built-in modular bay.

The Tc1100, which uses an ultra-low-voltage processor, should be able to handle most jobs. Helped by its 1-GHz/600-MHz Pentium M processor, the Tc1100 earned a WorldBench 5 score of 53.

In our battery tests, the Tc1100 lasted a moderately good 3.2 hours on one charge. An external built-in LED lets you check the battery's power level without turning on the unit, a nice convenience. The Tc1100 should be easy to upgrade. A base amount of RAM, 512MB in our test system, comes built in, leaving one memory slot open beneath a back panel held by two small screws. The 40GB hard drive is also removable.

There's only one serious complaint we can hurl at the Tc1100: The screen can be slow to respond to taps, a big negative for tablet users. We had to punch firmly, sometimes twice, to make some selections, including the on-screen icons HP provides instead of buttons for the three most important tablet functions (picture rotation, launching the Journal, and launching the on-screen keyboard).

Upshot: Capable of working either as a notebook or a tablet PC, the HP Compaq Tablet PC Tc1100 mostly succeeds as the ultimate convertible unit. However, those who expect to use the Tc1100 more as a tablet may be put off by its stubbornness at accepting screen taps. The $2577 price does not include productivity applications.

Carla Thornton