Gadgetory

it's a dangerous world out there and sometimes you just don't want anyone else seeing what's up on your laptop screen HP has a clever solution to what we call visual hacking which really means someone peeking over at your screen and seeing what's on there it's an integrated privacy filter that HP calls sure view I've seen it before but this is the first time I've gotten a chance to review a laptop with it built in in this case it's the 12 inch HP EliteBook X 360 the filter sits dormant until you press the f2 button then if you're outside the immediate head-on field of view the image quickly fades to white and becomes unreadable it's a cool idea and mostly works but it's not perfect this doesn't do anything to help when someone is looking right over your shoulder and the screen only truly washed it out when you're pretty far off angle how effective it is depends on what you have on screen and how hidden you want it to be it's easy to make basic text unreadable but people may still be able to make up some details of a video you're viewing or perhaps some semi embarrassing photos from 2007 using the privacy filter also knocked about an hour off battery life which was only a bit over seven hours at best anyway beyond the shore view filter this is a pretty good crossover laptop which means it's a very secure business system but cool-looking enough for regular consumers think of it like a 12-inch MacBook but with better processors and a fingerprint reader and facial recognition login just remember to turn that privacy filter on before you start watching movies at work