AJsarge Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 Hey all! About 2 weeks ago, my old HP Pavillion 2520tx tablet PC (I think, all it says is 2500tx on the machine itself) just up and died. Symptoms include: Frozen screen with very heavy shading of vertical red/black lines, squeal from speakers/headphones, and non-responsive controls. Power button off then on to a black screen, all LEDs and indicator lights constant on, HD/fans constant on. Power button off. Waited 3 hours, restart OK. 30 minutes later: crash to black screen, unresponsive controls, looping sound. All attempts afterwards result in above restart to black screen and LEDs/HD/fans constant on. Looking online, there's various solutions from a "Hard Restart" (failed), to pulling internal parts to troubleshoot (failed), to giving the keyboard CPR (Failed), and more. A lot of what I saw was people saying that it's a failure in the connection between the graphics card/processor to the motherboard, and the only permanent solution is to pull everything apart and re-solder the parts together. Any thoughts? I don't have any of the stuff or knowledge to do that, so I'd need serious help. Now to the fun part... I decided to replace it. Being that my job requires constant access to a library of 1.5gb worth of PDF files, and the uber slow Panasonic Toughbook assigned to us with all these files is used by the pilots for route tracking, I needed a replacement stat. Since the only problems I've ever had were stability on Win Vista after 2.5 years of school and work (running the HD at altitudes up to 8,500ft for hours at a time, with turbulence. I fixed that by wiping the computer and upgrading to Win 7) and this new issue, I decided on the new and improved version. Thus, the HP Elitebook 2760p. Ordering it on thursday, Newegg shipped everything to me by that Monday. It would have taken weeks to order direct from HP. Windows 7 Professional Intel i5 @ 2.6GHz Intel HD Graphics 3000 4GB DDR3 RAM 320GB HD @ 7200RPM Conforms with DoD MIL-STD-810G durability standards (Magnesium skeleton surrounded by plastic/rubberized skin) 12.1" Screen with Wacom Pen/Dual Touch digitizer (Rotates and folds to a tablet) Dual 6-cell Lithium ion Batteries for 5-10 hours of near constant use WiFi, Bluetooth, and wireless broadband (requires wireless data service) with modem and ethernet ports Fingerprint reader, SmartCard reader, or included face recognition as extra security options Spill resistant keyboard webcam, dual integrated microphones, integrated speakers combination headphone/microphone jack Future upgradeable with up to 16GB RAM and 500GB HD/160GB SSD. I'm loving it so far, as it's basically my old system with faster bits (the CPU is the same as my desktop, just not running as fast since there's no heatsink attached). Portability is great, being the same size as a school textbook. And the weight is heavy for its size, but still manageable (again, like an extra large textbook). The laptop, extra-slim battery, and docking station stack with little extra footprint. It does not include a built-in CD drive, but newegg included the dock, which has one as long as it is plugged into an AC outlet. As previously mentioned, it is both pen and touch-capable. Out of the box, touch calibration is spot on and pen is only off at the far corners (expected issue with the installed ). Multiple options for audio in/out, video out (1 VGA on laptop + 1 on dock), 1 SD Card slot, and multiple USB ports (Incl. 1 that's powered while in sleep mode). Starting tomorrow, I'll take it with me on a week-long trip and get a good feel for how it stands up against the old system. If I ever get that one fixed, it'll turn into the home computer and I'll be less tempted to take some old parts I have and make another desktop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Batwing~SPARTA~ Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 Very nice buy AJ, congrats! About the other failing laptop, problem is either RAM failing or MB failing. Probably it needs a MB replacement, but starting buying a RAM and see if that works is cheaper. If it doesnt, MB replacement will do the trick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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