This is part two of an extended, in-depth look at my experiences with the HP EliteBook 8740w mobile workstation.
So after a cool conference call with the HP side of the team today, I learned a few things about this shiny metal monster on my desk. First, I know I estimated a price of $6000 on my post yesterday, but here’s what I didn’t know: There is an 18% discount across the board for all HP mobile workstations, that shows up after items are added to the cart. An HP rep told me that, as this machine is configured, it would clock in at $5600—and after the discount, run closer to $4600. That’s a little more palatable than six grand, no matter what your budget. So, that’s good news if you’re in the market for these.
I also learned that HP gives all mobile workstations a three year in home warranty standard. If something done goofs, there’s no sending a machine back-and-forth shenanigans. There will be a tech at your home or office the next day. Make your own judgment about how cool that is.
Those were the two excellent tidbits. Some smaller, slightly-less-cool-but-still-neat things that I learned about the 8740w is that it is, as far as HP knows, the only mobile workstation on the market with the NVIDIA Quadro 5000m GPU in it. I also found out that the device is milspec, made of machine magnesium with a brushed aluminum exterior, is spillproof (liquid will run into a tray under the keyboard and out a hole in the bottom), has a drop sensor to lock HD heads upon acceleration, and the DreamColor display is 30bit color with a 170 degree field of color accuracy.
Whew.
So some questions were asked last night on the first post about software bundled with it; I tore into that a little more today. As told to me directly by an HP rep, the workstation guys and gals at HP know that the people buying these machines are savvy and don’t want crapware. The computers come with nothing loaded on them other than HP’s workstation-class hardware and software suite. The software is mostly power related, as well as enabling full functionality of the 2mp webcam, the fingerprint sensor, the media keys, and hardware and performance profiles for workstation-grade software. For example, if you’re running Premiere Pro and want to give more RAM to the app during rendering, you can dynamically allocate that.
There is also a really cool mini-Linux install on the machine that you can boot into in seconds from a power-down state. There are two quicklaunch keys on the bezel; one will launch into an extremely low-power mode that connects to Microsoft Outlook in an offline state, and lets you read and respond to emails (which will be sent the next time you boot into Windows.) This is if you’re in airplane mode and don’t want to blow through the battery in a full OS state. The other mode is, again, a light Linux install with a Firefox-compatible browser and a network connection—and that’s it. It boots in seconds up to a web browser and uses very little power if all you want to do is browse the web or check your webmail.
I took the 8740w to a coffee shop today to work. I got my copy of Adobe CS3 installed on it and spent two hours in InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, creating business cards and flyers for a friend. The 8740w was a dream to work on and at no point did I pine for my desktop computer. I wish I had CS5 so I could have had CUDA acceleration, but CS3 is all this po’ boy owns.
I just can’t stop talking about the DreamColor display. SIIIIGGGGHHHH it’s so dreaaaammmyyyyyy……
If you guys have any questions for HP or NVIDIA for this project, we have a direct pipeline to them, and they are all really cool. Let me know!
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