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    HP Compaq 6730b User Review

    Discussion in 'Notebook News and Reviews' started by sjordi, Nov 13, 2008.

  1. sjordi

    sjordi Notebook Geek NBR Reviewer

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    by Steve Jordi

    The HP Compaq 6730b is the "business" edition of the 6730 laptop line recently released by HP. Business means balanced mobility and power. There is a 6730w for "workstation replacement" and 6730s as an entry product.

    It's priced in the $1,000-$1,690 range, depending on the configuration. My model was bought in Switzerland and came only in two flavors: with a 15.4" WSXGA+ screen (1680x1050) or WXGA (1280x800). I picked the WSXGA+ since I have been working with this resolution for about six years now.

    HP Compaq 6730b review unit specifications:

    • Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 Processor (2.40GHz, 3MB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB)
    • Microsoft Genuine Windows Vista Business
    • 15.4-inch WSXGA+ anti-glare (1680 x 1050)
    • Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics (up to 384MB shared memory)
    • 2GB DDR2 800MHz RAM
    • 250GB 5400RPM Toshiba 2.5" HDD
    • Blu-Ray and DVD+/-RW Optical Drive
    • WiFi (draft n), Ethernet, Modem, and Bluetooth Connectivity
    • 6-Cell (55 WHr) Lithium-Ion Battery
    • 3-Year on-site Warranty
    • Dimensions: 14.02" x 10.46" x 1.32"
    • Weight: 5.95lbs

    [​IMG]

    Build and Design

    This is a "business" machine. The HP Business line, in my opinion, never really offered attractive models, and
    this one is no real surprise. It seems to have the same case as the nc8430 but they added that nice DuraFinish
    coat on the palm rest area. This adds up to the sexy look.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    The machine seems very solid, the finish is professional. The screen also seems solid even though I always open it carefully, as I would do on any laptop anyway. The deception comes from the CD/DVD tray which definitely feels like a cheap plastic toy. Don't know how long this will last before breaking.

    [​IMG]

    I also had difficulties to actually feel where the open button is located without really actually looking at it. Once I found it, I still have sometimes a hard time pressing it until the unit opens. Closing it also causes problems as I quite often had to try this four or five times before it locked into the unit. This may be related to that specific unit I have and not to a line-wide problem though. I found a way to close it immediately by just putting pressure with my fingers at the side near the back of the laptop.

    Screen

    It came with no dead pixels at all. This is good especially when you think about the 1680x1050 resolution. The screen is mate, and very clear. It's a real pleasure to work on it (I sometimes spend 14 hours in front of it without eye strain). Watching DVDs on-screen is also a pleasant experience. Probably not as much as the HP DV line dedicated to multimedia experiences in the family, but still, it's good.

    [​IMG]

    As always on a LCD screen I tweak it using Microsoft ClearType. As far as I know, it doesn't leak. I didn't notice any light smearing on the sides of the screen as you may have on other models. Of course, an LCD screen means that the brightness and quality of image varies a lot depending on the viewing angle. But once you adjust it to the picture quality you like, it's very nice.

    Testing the flexibility of the screen frame came as no surprise. You can see distortions in the lightness of the image but the global feeling is that it feels resistant. I tried to apply finger pressures on the back of the screen and I saw minimal artifacts on the LCD.

    There are two rubber pressure points on the keyboard that tend to actually touch the screen's surface when you close the laptop, so you sometimes see some marks left on the screen, but nothing bothering.

    Speakers and Multimedia

    This is the BIG surprise of the laptop. I never actually had such great speakers. These ones offer a wide range of frequency and the bass are excellent and deep. This is the first time I'm actually impressed by built-in speakers ... especially when you think the laptop is dedicated to business more than home entertainment.
    The speakers are located at the front of the case and close to the center of it. I always hook my laptop to external speakers since I dock it to the station, but I travel a lot too and the speaker quality is a plus when spending nights in hotels, watching movies on my laptop.

    [​IMG]

    If you're into video conferencing or blogging, you will enjoy having a built-in webcam at the top of the screen. From my experience, it's sufficient for video conferencing using Skype, but don't expect it to be of much help if you want something more solid. The resolution is VGA (640x480), period. Nothing more. And the quality is not tremendous. I managed to configure it for backlight compensation to improve the quality of the image while in a conference. But hey, you still can hook a better device. At least now, while traveling I don't need an extra toy in my laptop bag, no more cables running around and no need to sacrifice a USB port. It's very convenient to have it built in even though it comes as a standard in most today's laptops (and at better resolutions).

    One nice thing though are the microphones. Yes, with an "s". You have two microphones for stereo recording. They're located across the top of the screen on the left and right of the integrated webcam.

    [​IMG]

    CD/DVD Burner

    As said, the tray really looks cheap and it's doubtful that it will last on the long term. But at least the DVD/CD drive is handling most of today's formats and is dual layer (DVD+/–RW SuperMulti DL). Also, it embeds HP's LightScribe technology to burn grayscale images labels directly on the DVD (on LightScribe ready media of course). The provided LightScribe labeler software is a bit light, included with the Roxio suite and I would recommend you to upgrade it to the full version (it's only about $12.95 for the downloadable version). This way you will be able to write nearly anything, in any way that suits you instead of being stuck with some imposed non editable templates (circular titles only for example).

    On the user side, one might regret that the notebook doesn't come with at least one empty LightScribe CD/DVD as a demo. It's usually provided with DVD drives. So you will have to go to the local retail store to buy a media box. You won't be able to play with it and impress the friends and family right out of the box. Also if you want a Blue-Ray DVD, you'll have to get it as an option.

    Performance

    The laptop came with Microsoft Vista Business 32bit and immediately shows the Windows Experience Index score. The WEI reflects the poorest score of the various tests and the 6730b is at a low 3.4 mainly due to the video chip, but I wouldn't expect higher scores without a dedicated video chip anyway.

    Here are some video benchmarks with Aero enabled and with Aero disabled. Also each benchmark has been done under the "max power" profile (doesn't spare battery and doesn't reduce power consumption).

    Booting the unit "naked" is relatively fast, but as you stuff it with applications and services, it slows down. I'm new to Vista but even though I didn't install all of my compiler elements and tools yet, I have the feeling that it crawls more than my old nc8430 under XP Pro SP3. Mine boots in about 6 minutes and 50 seconds (with most of the useless services turned off). And clearly, 2GB of RAM is not enough. Opening just two applications, Outlook and Total Commander, already leads to ugly "Running low on memory. Close applications". So go ahead and buy an extra 1GB or 2GB, even if Vista 32bit can't deal with 4GB. It can use 3GB to 3.5GB. It looks like on mine, it uses 3GB for Windows and 700+MB for the video card.

    I'm not a game player so I can't help on this. Still I don't know about what you think regarding 16:10 screens for gaming either.

    As a test I tried editing the same movie on the nc8430 (dedicated video chip) and the 6730b with Cyberlink Power Director 7. I took a 39 minutes movie giving a 2.4GB VOB file:

    • the nc8430 took 29 minutes and 32 seconds
    • the 6730b took 15 minutes and 57 seconds

    Keep in mind that the video chips are different and that, processor-wise, the 6730b is more powerful. So it really was a surprise to see that this 6730b with such a poor video card was twice as fast! Probably thanks to the processor itself.

    Benchmarks

    Vista Windows Experience Index:

    Graphics 3.2 (with Aero ON)
    Gaming Graphics 3.4
    Hard Disk 5.3
    RAM 5.0
    Processor 5.3


    Now if you set the Intel video chip to best performance, you get:

    Graphics 3.4 (with Aero ON)
    Gaming Graphics 3.7
    Hard Disk 5.3
    RAM 5.0
    Processor 5.3


    SuperPI results:
    + 000h 00m 01s [ 16K]
    + 000h 00m 01s [ 32K]
    + 000h 00m 01s [ 64K]
    + 000h 00m 01s [ 128K]
    + 000h 00m 04s [ 256K]
    + 000h 00m 09s [ 512K]
    + 000h 00m 22s [ 1M]
    + 000h 00m 52s [ 2M]
    + 000h 01m 58s [ 4M]
    + 000h 04m 23s [ 8M]
    + 000h 09m 44s [ 16M]
    + 000h 22m 04s [ 32M]


    3DMark06 results:

    [​IMG]

    HDTune results:

    [​IMG]

    Heat and Noise

    As I said, the nc8430 upsets me especially because of the fan noise. What a relief with the 6730b. You barely hear the fan (when it actually goes off) and even at full throttle (while editing a movie or compiling a large C++ project), it's still more silent than the nc8430 when idle! This says it all.

    Again the nc8430 also had a Graphical Processor Unit (GPU) fan, an additional source for heat, but overall, the 6730b is a blessing. I was fearing that laptops would become more and more noisy with more and more powerful chips, but this looks to be wrong. Silent laptops still exist today. I'm very picky on noise problems, so I'm a happy user now.

    Heat doesn't seem to be a problem either, but it doesn't come as a surprise since the fan doesn't work most of the time (meaning it doesn't need to cool down the machine). And the Centrino 2 serie is known to consume even less power than any other chip designed for portable machines. The Hard Disk is very silent too. Which is good news. I first feared it was noisy during the Vista install, as it clicked sometimes, but once Vista was installed, no more worries. I defragmented it using Norton Defrag and I could barely tell whether it was running or not. The heat is dissipated through the exhaust grid on the left side of the case.

    Keyboard

    The keyboard is a bit massive and hard, and I have to say I definitely preferred the previous generation on the nx7000 and Omnibook line. This is kind of the same as the nc8430 and to me, it's not soft enough. It's a bit noisy, clinky if you work at night. But at least it's spill resistant. Overall it's still pleasant to type in long text documents. But at home, hooked to the docking station, I use a cordless Logitech keyboard/mouse for my everyday work.

    Now the cool part are the LED indicators and touch-sensitive buttons above the keyboard. They glow in different colors depending on their status.<o:p></o:p> You don't have buttons anymore, you just touch the surface with the tip of your fingers to switch them on and off. Touch the WiFi sign, slide your finger on the volume scale to increase or decrease it. This is geeky but pretty cool.

    [​IMG]

    What is very disarming though is the location of the usual navigation keys. I like them at the top right of the keyboard, on a two line position, Insert/Del, Home/End and PgUp/PdDn. Here is how these keys look on many notebook keyboards:

    [​IMG]

    On the 6730b they are partly on the top and most of them on the right side of the keyboard.

    [​IMG]

    After using it for three weeks I'm still not used to this. Navigating in Windows Explorer or in a utility like Total Commander, I'm used to press Home/Enter to move up one level in the directory hierarchy. This way I end up most of the time pressing DELETE/Enter. Not what I expected! Same when replying to emails. I often want to rearrange the lines where they were cut and use the END/DEL keys sequence to do this on each line. Here it's a nightmare. I end up using PageDown and END instead of what I want to achieve Also the buttons on the right side are HOME on top, then PageUp, PageDown and finally END at the bottom. Not feeling natural when you're used to a full keyboard.

    I don't know about you, but to me, the right most keys on a keyboard are the Enter and Backspace keys, so I expect them to intuitively be located there. So when I hit "enter", I end up on PageUp or PageDown. You can get used to this, but it's not natural. I know it's the trend today to rearrange keyboard navigation keys, including on desktop ones where the DEL key is now long (without reason), and PgUp and PgDn ones break any common sense. Also, a minor detail, but the "-" (dash) has a very small "-" sign. Localization problem: this won't matter on a US keyboard, but on others, when you look at your keyboard you may end up mixing it with the period "." next to it, typing something like "www-hp-com" instead of the usual "." separator. Note that the traditional PrtScr, ScrollLock and Pause buttons are no longer accessible with the alt key combination but with the FN function key instead. One last regret is the size of the function keys (F1 to F12). They're a bit on the small size compared to normal keyboards.

    [​IMG]

    Touchpad

    As mentioned the 6730b comes only with a touchpad. It is offering two bulk rubber buttons on the front. The buttons might have been a little bit less bulky but they feel ok. Note that the fingerprint reader is located between those two buttons. I'm not a touchpad fan to say the truth, but I always enjoyed the scrolling area to easily navigate into PDF documents by just sliding down my finger on that touchpad. My regret is that the 6730b doesn't come with a pointstick (that small rubber joystick between the FGV keys). I love this and feel ways more accurate with this.

    [​IMG]

    Input and Output Ports

    If docked, the 6730b offers an HDMI output port. You get four USB 2.0 ports, which is nice (the nc8430 had only three), a FireWire port, a serial port, microphone and speaker jacks (on the front), SVideo out, VGA out. The usual phone and Ethernet RJ11 and RJ45 jacks are available. No video input though. On the bottom, you have the connectors for the docking station as well as the one to clip the external 8-cell or 12-cell batteries. The laptop comes with an ExpressCard/54 and a welcome 6-in-1 media reader. The good surprise is that the SD card reader is compatible with SDHC standards (that was not the case of the nc8430) that is pretty common on today digital cameras and video cameras.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    Wireless

    The onboard WiFi is an Intel 802.11a/b/g draft-n card and performs very well. Compared to the IntelPro/Set from my nc8430 I just miss the nice configuration utility that is not really present on this laptop. You have to go through Vista or HP WiFi Assistant to configure your networks. Maybe it also offers this feature, but I miss the IntelPro/Set ability to backup profiles and save them on disk in case you had to reformat and reinstall your laptop or just wanted to get rid off one-time hotel connections. I still have to investigate this.

    Battery

    My battery first test surprised me. It lasted 5h40 with default settings. Add to it my 8-cell additional one and you get a solid 12 to 14 hours of operation. I spend a lot of time in international flights, so flying Europe to the US West coast will be a pleasure now. No need for extra cables (when on-seat plugs are offered).

    Operating System and Software

    The 6730b came with built-in Vista Business 32-bit installed. You have to run through the configuration the first time you turn it on. There is no OS activation since the built-in one seems to be preregistered. For those of you who hate Vista (like me now), you also get a full Windows XP Pro SP2 CD in the package. But that means also starting from ground and getting the required drivers from the Internet since there is no official "downgrade" process to follow.

    HP offers most of its useful software to manage the WiFi connection, the 3D DriveGuard accelerometer (to park the Hard Disk in case of a shock) and the entire Security Suite to manage the disk encryption, the fingerprint registration, etc. With that suite, you also can entirely configure the BIOS from within Windows without needing to reboot ... a nice feature.

    As for third party software, you get some bloatware but since it's a business laptop, you get less of them than in home entertainment units. It comes with a 60-day trial Microsoft Office 2007 installed that insists about activating it. Also at first boot, you have to accept or refuse to install McAfee virus suite. If you refuse, it will fully uninstall and you won't be allowed to setup it later.

    My problem with this is that the software should be there if you need it, but should be up to you to decided whether you want to install it or not. Having it pre-installed means that, should you be unhappy with it, you have to uninstall them. And as you know, uninstall is never clean. Applications leave crumbs everywhere, mix up some important DLLs (version problems), and doesn't really clean the registry.

    Especially incredibly invasive products like McAfee. Also, removing McAfee, Office 2007, PDFComplete and AOL Toolbar needed several reboots. Something you might not enjoy. Removing Office 2007 crashed the Windows Explorer twice too. That says a lot about how "clean" the system will be once the software is gone.

    Finally, to my disappointment, there is no rescue disc. You have two additional partitions on the hard disk: one used for emergency boot and another one with drivers and software/bloatware. In case your system fully fails on you, you still can reboot and press F11 to start the factory reset process. But if you hoped to reclaim that data you won't find any utility to create emergency DVDs or to release those two partitions (which add two more drive letters to your explorer, D and E). On the nc8430, you had a utility to burn three DVDs with all the emergency system files and drivers required in case you needed to reinstall everything, freeing up then the partitions. It would have been nice to have such a tool. Even as a download from HP's web site.

    Conclusion

    As a volcanologist, I have my laptop on my backpack all the time. I also work in a lot of different countries ... developing countries where power lines are a joke, surge protection in nonexistent, dust is everywhere, and extreme humidity is not controlled. For more than 15 years I have been loyal to HP because it's the only brand that never failed on any occasion. It is reliable, professional, resistant. That said, let's come back to this 6730b unit.

    I would definitely recommend this laptop for any business user or developer. What counts is the "humpf" in the guts and the 6730b delivers. It's sturdy and if you're off to business trips, it won't fail on you, being carried around. Watching movies is a pleasure and the technology is definitely falling in the HP "balanced mobility" tag. The battery lasts almost 6 hours and that makes it a good reason to buy this machine if you're hitting the road. Especially if you add the external 8-cell battery (to buy as an option).

    Also for business professionals, it's nice to rely on the built in security options in case your machine gets stolen or if you forget it behind you at an airport. It's more likely to happen than a home multimedia HP DV line laptop which doesn't require to encrypt sensitive data.

    For gamers, I would suggest a workstation replacement or a multimedia notebook with a dedicated video chip (at least 256MB or 512MB if possible) rather than a business notebook with integrated graphics. For video editing addicts I've mixed feelings. Here too a dedicated chip should make a difference, but as stated, my experience has shown that the 6730b is twice as fast as the nc8430 in rendering a 2.8GB movie.

    What I would change to this machine to make it the perfect one?

    1. Add a dedicated video chip for gamers (but this would increase heat and lower the battery life). And is this the purpose on a business machine?
    2. Add a pointstick to the keyboard
    3. And most important, position those navigation keys somehwere else, at the top, just like on a desktop keyboard.

    Pros:

    • Sturdy Finish
    • Touch-sensitive control buttons
    • Built-in webcam
    • Lightscribe
    • SDHC compatible reader
    • Security suite and hardware
    • Excellent speakers
    • Good connectivity and port selection
    • Stereo microphones
    • Very silent

    Cons:

    • Keyboard navigation keys
    • Some bloatware
    • VGA webcam
    • No recovery DVD
    • Cheap feeling DVD drive
    • No pointstick
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 12, 2015
  2. niki_b

    niki_b Notebook Enthusiast

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    Great job! Well done! Appricates ;)
    Great addition to the review's basket. :)
     
  3. boypogi

    boypogi Man Beast

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    1500 3d mark score for the igp??
     
  4. menos

    menos Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    Actually, this was the keyboard re-arrangement which eventually made me a ThinkPad user...
     
  5. booboo12

    booboo12 Notebook Prophet

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    Good review, I actually like the looks of HP's business systems a bit more than the new Latitude's.

    The performance (or lack there of) under Vista was quite surprising though. On my machine with no optimizations, 2 GB of RAM, and integrated graphics, memory usage is about 45% to 50% of my RAM right now with Firefox (10+ tabs) Word, Excel, and Access 07 running. Not to mention security software and my RSS reader running in the background.

    Keep in mind that for the first week or two, Vista may feel slightly unresponsive at times. This is because Vista "learns" what programs you use most often, indexes your files for Start Menu Search, etc. After that, it should run fine.


    The lack of the ability to create a recovery disk is quite surprising. Heck, the fact that they didn't even give you a clean Vista DVD is surprising. It appears that you have to request them from HP? http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...=3687777&prodTypeId=321957&objectID=c01604120

    Why install a "recovery manager" if you cannot use all of it's functionality to recover the machine using all of the options made available?
     
  6. Xirurg

    Xirurg ORLY???

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    great review,thx,enjoyed it :)
     
  7. sheltem

    sheltem Notebook Consultant

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    5.9 pounds is pretty good for a 15.4" widescreen laptop. It matches the Dell XPS 1530 in weight.
     
  8. Teraforce

    Teraforce Flying through life

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    Good review!

    The DVD drive on my nw8440 (workstation nc8430) feels very cheap, too. It's actually my second one; my first one died in just under 2 years, and that was with very little use. My second one feels much cheaper than the first one, so we'll see how long it'll last...

    Just curious, does the new "HP Durafinish" feel different from the one used on previous HP Comapqs? It does look a bit different (it looks like it has an Imprint pattern). Also, do the LEDs above the keyboard stay lit at all times when the machine is on, and if so, can you disable them? I know on the previous 6710b, they would only light up when you actually touched them (assuming the 6710b was like the 8510w).

    I do wish that HP didn't "sell out" on the keyboard layout. That was a dumb move on HP's part IMO. Plus, the keycaps are closer together now, compared to my nw8440. Whenever I type on a freshman's 8510w here on campus (with the closer keycaps), I make many more typing mistakes than on my nw8440.

    Overall, though, this does seem like a solid business notebook. Anyone who is considering a business notebook should take a look at the HP Compaq/EliteBook line, especially if they want something besides a Thinkpad or a Latitude.
     
  9. AdiQue

    AdiQue Notebook Enthusiast

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    First, let me refer to some of the above posters' opinions:

    - much more than that actually; by far.

    - Oh yes, I fully subscribe to that point of view!


    ^^ That's one thing; the second came to my mind after having browsed your article and that was to liken the yours to the review I find the most thorough, informative and simply the best I have read here on NBR Forum so far!

    Needless to say, we all owe you one. No, not a pint of beer - rep plus one! ;]


    PS How did I manage to find the link to that article (and I did it in no time)? Simply by searching for a word, that no other forum member has ever used so far which I somehow remembered and associated with the reviewer's nationality - as a side note - being same as mine.

    Have fun and look up for it yourself! :D (Hint: belletristic)
     
  10. jetstar

    jetstar Notebook Deity

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    Nice review Steve! Very nicely written!
     
  11. Red_Dragon

    Red_Dragon Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    ....great review you put nothing about the LCD in pros/cons............
     
  12. darkmax

    darkmax Notebook Enthusiast

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    Good review, but the photos aren't that good. You say there's a serial port or a 6-in-1 media reader... but there's no photos of the sides and the back. Too bad.
     
  13. CeeNote

    CeeNote Notebook Virtuoso

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    Great review! ;)
     
  14. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Thanks for the excellent review.

    About the keyboard, the keys are probably alittle too wobbly on my 8510p which i believe shares the same keyboard. Other than that quite like it and have gotten used to typing on it. (incidentally i just typed ''typing'' wrong 5 times in a roll LOL). Unfortunately the point stick is only available on the high end models 85xx. As for the pg up and pg dn, end, home, keys, HP went with the same set up as their consumer notebooks, I moved from a compaq consumer notebook (identical key placements but craptacular keyboard) so I was used to the set up. But I can definitely see how someone would find such set up annoying. The latitudes and Thnkpads retains the ''old'' set up.

    Good to see that its 5.9lbs. Considering the weight of the new 85xx series went up. The stereo mics looks interesting too. Just a quick question that came into my head half a second ago. Does the keyboard flex at the top right corner? That seems to be a special feature of 15.4'' HP business notebooks that have been running through a few generations as Teraforce knows. :p

    Johnny T
     
  15. sjordi

    sjordi Notebook Geek NBR Reviewer

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    Thanks to all for the comments.
    Do not hesitate to ask me for more specific questions.

    Teraforce, to answer your question, yes the LEDs are always on. But it's not bothering me at all.

    Regarding Vista performances, I will UPgrade to XP over the week-end I guess. First by Ghosting my current config in case I have to reverse back. We'll see if XP behaves better with this machine.

    I recently got a 500Gb hard disk and it took 11h40min to format it under Vista. I reformatted it on my nc8430 under XP and well, it was under 2 hours.
    Strange.
     
  16. Ackeron

    Ackeron Notebook Deity NBR Reviewer

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    Nice review. I too loathed the keyboard arrangement on my 8510p when it first arrived, but you do get used to it...eventually :p
     
  17. Teraforce

    Teraforce Flying through life

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    I guess if you're used to a consumer notebook, you won't have an issue with the keyboard layout. However, because I was used to a desktop keyboard before my notebook, I found that my nw8440's keyboard layout is very good, much better than what's found on HP's current business notebooks. Then again, you can always adjust to it.... but I'd rather have a layout that more closely matches a standard desktop keyboard instead of a layout that preserve's the notebook's lines. Form follows function with keyboards IMO, and I applaud Dell and Lenovo for keeping the older layout.

    Regarding the pointstick: I really hope that HP has improved the cap that they use on the pointstick. Not only do they wear out way too quickly, but it is virtually impossible to find a replacement cap! (HP doesn't really sell replacement caps). I'm lucky to have an on-site help desk at school, which has spare pointstick caps. I'm on my 4th one in 2 years.

    Lol :p
    To be honest, though, although the keyboard does flex more on the right (It's more like whole right edge on my nw8440, not just the top right corner), the flex is very, very minor. You have to put some pretty firm pressure on the keyboard to even notice it. I really don't notice it all that much when I type, and I'm a pretty heavy typist.

    That said, I'm just as curious as Johnny T is about the keyboard flex on the 6730b. Does it flex at all in any areas, even with firm pressure?
     
  18. WiseDuck

    WiseDuck Notebook Consultant

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    Wait, wait, wait. Why move to XP? Because of the sluggish Vista performance?

    I'm not sure I read this right, but your computer boots in SIX minutes and 50 seconds? You sure that one is alright?

    Vista runs fine with 2gb ram, it runs fine with that amount of ram on ANY computer out there. And I run far farrr more programs than just those two you started before you got the "not enough memory" warning, and I have NEVER seen that warning even after opening well over 10 programs, 20 tabs in FF and starting 10 Reason Pianos inside Reason.

    Something must be wrong with it.

    Fresh install, NOW. :p
     
  19. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    I prefer the Thinkpad point stick caps, I have ordered a set of 4 on ebay...I am going to try it on my 8510p....... :D As for the keyboard, I used both my Logitech WAVE and my 8510p keyboard on a daily basis, thats something that takes time to get used to. :p I think I have adjusted pretty well.
     
  20. MrJacky

    MrJacky Notebook Guru

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    It's actually Blu-ray, not Blue-ray. You may want to correct that in your review.

    You can try searching for the HP Recovery Disc Creator to create the recovery discs.
     
  21. sjordi

    sjordi Notebook Geek NBR Reviewer

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    A fresh Vista out of the box install didn't help.
    Copying a 9Gb file from my external USB2 disk to my local hard disk (with all the fine tuning done for Vista - like disabling the compression estimate, installin SP1) still took a solid 2 hours instead of 7 minutes on XP.
    Formatting an external 500Gb USB2 hard disk took, under Vista, 11h40m instead of 2h50m under XP.

    Switched to XP overnight. Still installing my apps now, but boy if this is a difference! Wow.
     
  22. WiseDuck

    WiseDuck Notebook Consultant

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    Yep, something's wrong with the computer alright. Copying 9gb on mine takes a few minutes at most on mine. But hey, if it's XP you want, stick with it.
     
  23. Strat0

    Strat0 Newbie

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    I have a HP 6530b laptop, which is basically the same as the 6730b except the screen is a 14,1".

    I had huge problems with pre-installed Windows Vista : some services (SQL Server 2005 and VmWare Server) didn't start automatically. I had to start them manually and sometimes it didn't even work.

    So I used the Win XP Pro CD that came with the laptop, and installed it.

    Now everything works smoothly, except for the fingerprint : once I have installed HP ProtectTools Security Suite (which includes the HP fingerprints sensor software) and recorded my fingerprints, every time I start the computer, it hangs on login screen. The only ways I can stop it is by brutally restarting the computer or (very) quickly entering the login password instead of trying to use my fingerprints. Otherwise it will hang for hours...

    I tried to uninstall and reinstall the security suite a couple of time. I tried to update every single thing possible on this computer (including the bios) and... no it refuses to work.

    I believe both my problems with Vista and with the fingerprint sensor on XP are linked to the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 1.2 from Authentec, which seems to modify deeply the core of the computer.

    So sjordi if you have any tips about that...
     
  24. sjordi

    sjordi Notebook Geek NBR Reviewer

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    Very interresting. That's also one reason I switched back to XP. My Vista out of the box laptop was not able to let me install "Act!2008", which uses SQL Server 2005. Even started, no way at all to connect to any databases.
    Even uninstalling and reinstalling didn't help.

    Also had problems with VMWare...


    Me too. After realizing that I had to switch the HD Sata mode to IDE before being able to reinstall XP. Blue screens otherwise.


    I have reinstalled almost everything. Still my development compilers and tools and then I'll ghost my machine.
    Only after that will I install the ProtectTools. I will let you know how it goes.
     
  25. daxxx88

    daxxx88 Notebook Guru

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    a great review, i have just a few comments

    quote1:
    "Booting the unit "naked" is relatively fast, but as you stuff it with applications and services, it slows down. I'm new to Vista but even though I didn't install all of my compiler elements and tools yet, I have the feeling that it crawls more than my old nc8430 under XP Pro SP3. Mine boots in about 6 minutes and 50 seconds (with most of the useless services turned off). And clearly, 2GB of RAM is not enough. Opening just two applications, Outlook and Total Commander, already leads to ugly "Running low on memory. Close applications". So go ahead and buy an extra 1GB or 2GB, even if Vista 32bit can't deal with 4GB. It can use 3GB to 3.5GB. It looks like on mine, it uses 3GB for Windows and 700+MB for the video card."

    i don't know how yours is so slow, but mine boots up in less than a minute, and it has a lot of stuff on it..
    also, "running low on memory" never showed to me, even when i have a lot of applications opened; 2gb sounds enough for me, at least for now while i'm on VB32b

    quote2:
    "I also had difficulties to actually feel where the open button is located without really actually looking at it. Once I found it, I still have sometimes a hard time pressing it until the unit opens. Closing it also causes problems as I quite often had to try this four or five times before it locked into the unit. This may be related to that specific unit I have and not to a line-wide problem though. I found a way to close it immediately by just putting pressure with my fingers at the side near the back of the laptop."

    i don't have problems with opening/closing the lid, so it's probably related to your specific unit :/

    but i have a few problems with it:
    -sometimes my touchbuttons go insane :) when i press wireless or any other button, infocenter opens, and the button on the far left doesn't react at all; i fix this with a restart or reinstall of the QLB drivers
    -now i can't perform a defragmentation of C: (with diskeeper) because it says that chkdsk is scheduled and it has to be done during the next reboot. i do a reboot, but nothing happens, it just goes straight to the windows! i manually schedule it in disk properties, but nothing happens again. i even tried with scheduling it thru command prompt, but with no results :(
    do you have any idea how could i solve it?

    tnx

    congrats once more on a great review ;)
     
  26. Strat0

    Strat0 Newbie

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    I had this problem too with Vista. I discovered it was because I had disabled the UAC. Once I reenabled it, the "quick buttons" worked without much trouble.

    Otherwise, I just discovered the microphone embedded in the screen is not working under XP. I'm sure it was with Vista. I'm currently investigating on this.
     
  27. flipp0

    flipp0 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I got my 6730b yesterday, the same model as in the review (2.4ghz). However, the battery life is poor. I only get 1 hour and 40 minutes in full performance mode (I was expecting about 3 hours). Its very sad, since one of the main reasons to go for this laptop was the battery life. :/ I wonder if the battery is faulty...
     
  28. gandhi2

    gandhi2 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Anybody knows if it is possible to turn these lights off? There are so many of them...

    Hm, this is my first time on Vista and everything feels slow; defrag, uninstalling of preinstalled bloat, boot-time is way slower than on my 3 year old nx6310 running winxp.