HP Compaq 8710w User Review

by Christopher Chua

The HP Compaq 8710w is HP's top of the line premium mobile workstation featuring some of the highest specifications currently available in the market, including options for a full-HD screen, Penryn processors and the most powerful professional graphics card solution for notebooks.

Reasons for Buying

After owning an 8510w, I realized that a 15.4" notebook, while striking a good balance, isn't exactly a true desktop replacement. I wanted a true desktop replacement machine that has excellent graphics capability, a large and beautiful screen, fast processor and comfortable keyboard.

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I seriously considered Dell's XPS M1730, which is a popular option, but I decided that I value an understated, professional look as well as docking station support more than the SLI graphics capabilities and dual drive configuration that the XPS offers. It is also a much lighter and portable notebook than the XPS and I like being able to take the notebook with me on the occasional trip. The Precision M6300 was not an option for me as for approximately the same price, it offered less features and has an arguably less desirable design carried over from the previous generation Inspiron notebooks.

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Specifications

The 8710w is configurable with a host of processors, hard disk, RAM, optical drives (DVD/BluRay) and graphics card (Quadro FX 1600M/3600M). A BluRay drive is an additional $500 option and the Quadro FX 3600M graphics card adds approximately $600 to the configuration depending on the region. In Asia-Pacific markets, the T9500 option costs an additional $400.

I try to strike a balance by selecting a configuration that best optimizes the price-performance ratio, resulting in the following specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 Processor (Penryn)
• Genuine Microsoft Windows Vista Business (Office 07 Ready)
• 17" WUXGA Wide-Viewing Angle Display (1920x1200)
• 512MB Dedicated Nvidia Quadro FX 3600M GPU
• 2GB DDR2 667MHz RAM (+2GB self upgrade)
• 200GB Hitachi 7K200 Hard Disk
• DVD+/-RW LightScribe Optical Drive
• Intel 802.11a/b/g/n Wifi Module
• Intel Gigabit PRO 1000 NIC
• Bluetooth 2.0+ Module
• Dual pointing Devices Keyboard
• Fingerprint Reader Module
• 8-cell Battery
• 135W Hardware Kit
• 3-Year Global Next Business Day Parts and Labor OnSite Warranty (3/3/3)

The exact model number for a configurable 8710w is KM173PA (HP IDS PEN 8710w).

A configuration with the 3600M graphics card requires the 135W power adapter. Due to the higher power requirements, HP also includes a 180W docking station power supply with the notebook as standard. This is very thoughtful of HP (otherwise customers will have the nasty surprise of realizing the laptop won't have sufficient power from the standard 120W adapter used to power the docking station).

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The 180W power supply for the docking station. The 135W power supply included is the same size as the 120W power supply provided with non-3600M 8710w's.

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If an inadequate power supply is used, you will get this warning upon powering up the notebook.

Build and Design

As a business class notebook and commanding a hefty premium for it, the 8710w should meet buyers' expectations for perfect build quality and construction. In this regard, it certainly has not failed to disappoint. The laptop has a magnesium alloy internal chassis encased in durable hard plastic. HP uses a special form of finishing dubbed "DuraFinish" that is similar to its Imprint technology, albeit without the gloss. This ensures that the finishing is durable to minor scratches and scuff marks. I can attest to this durability in my older nc6400 notebook which has maintained its new look after more than a year of regular use and abuse. As a result, the finishing on this laptop is certainly one of the best in the industry. No more peeling paint!

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The 8710w has the typical understated and professional look for a business laptop and this is one of the reasons I chose this over other competing consumer desktop replacement notebooks. However, in Australia, this notebook is virtually unknown, as HP is not a popular brand among enthusiasts who cannot comprehend paying a premium for HP's business notebooks over a Dell or Asus equivalent.

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The notebook's assembly is also really good, with no flex exhibited in any part of the chassis. The unit I received actually has such excellent build precision that every part of the notebook, including the stickers on the bottom, are aligned properly.

There is no distortion to the screen when pressure is applied to the back of the LCD panel, no less due to the thick screen housing. The hinge is also very strong and sturdy, but from my experience with the nc6400, this may loosen after some time, but can be tightened easily.

This notebook features HP's 3D DriveGuard hard disk protection system, which is common to all HP's business notebooks and upcoming consumer models. This is essentially an accelerometer that detects when the laptop is falling so it can stop hard disk activity to prevent data loss or corruption. However, HP still does not include any useful utility to tune the settings of the accelerometer unlike Lenovo and Toshiba. The feature is also unsupported in Linux, which is another disappointment.

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With a dimension of 27x53x20cm, the 8710w is one of the smaller and slimmer 17" notebook in the market. However, the 3.5kg weight is still a little prohibitive if you intend to carry this on long journeys. The weight difference between this and a regular 14"/15" notebook is definitely noticeable, but I do not intend to use it on the plane or on anemic lecture foldaway desks, hence I find the dimensions to be fine for a notebook of this size.

Screen and Speakers

My 8710w has a WUXGA display that is manufactured by AU Optronics. HP sources WUXGA displays from a variety of manufacturers, including LG Philips and Samsung.

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The display is absolutely stunning, with almost no backlight bleeding or dead pixels. While being much brighter than the previous generation's screens, HP could still improve on the brightness by increasing it a notch or two. Having said that, the display is very clear and crisp and at full brightness, is very usable for graphics work. The matte coating is very even and it does not exhibit any graininess. The color reproduction is excellent for a notebook, but nowhere near that of a high quality external LCD.

The screen backlight is very uniform for a CCFL display. The horizontal and vertical viewing angles are very good too.

HP's ambient light sensor technology is virtually useless as it is too sensitive to shadows and causes constant flicker when your hands are close to the top of the keyboard.

Another annoyance is that the HP software does not save your brightness settings nor change the corresponding brightness option under Vista's power profile settings when you adjust your brightness, so it always takes on the value in Vista's power profile upon a reboot.

The speakers are very good for a non-multimedia oriented notebook. It does not sound tinny like many conventional notebooks and while still lacking good bass, it is loud enough for general usage.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the 8710w follows the design and finishing of HP's business notebooks. It now has a DuraKeys finishing which is a coating applied to the keys to make them more durable to wear. I cannot ascertain at this point if the keys will be susceptible to the "glossy" problem after extended use. The number pad is a very nice addition, especially for working on spreadsheets.

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The keyboard feels really solid, with no flex when normal pressure is applied. There is a little flex when pressure is applied at the number pad portion as it sits directly above the optical drive.

I personally like HP's business notebook keyboards. They are very quiet to type on and have good travel. HP has made the keys flatter than before but it doesn't feel much different from the older keyboards (pre-2007 models).

The pointstick is very well executed. The rubber tips are now softer and more flexible than previous incarnations and actually works pretty well, although it still does not match those found on the Thinkpads.

HP maintains the excellent 3-button touchpad from the previous generation. It is still as smooth and responsive as ever, with quiet and comfortable rubber buttons.

HP now implements touch-sensitive buttons on its switch cover for volume, info, presentation, calculator and wireless keys. HP claims they are less susceptible to wear than physical buttons, but I don't buy that argument at all. If anything, I've seen a couple of the newer notebooks with broken touch-sensitive controls but have yet to see any of the older ones breaking down, but that is only from my personal experience. I find usability to be poor as a slight brush would activate the controls, especially the volume slider. Fortunately, the power button remains a physical button!

Ports, Wireless and Battery

The 8710w has 6 USB ports, an HDMI port, a VGA port, 1 Firewire port, single audio and microphone jack, a SmartCard reader, a PC Card slot and a microphone on the top of the LCD bezel.

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Left:

• Power jack
• HDMI Port
• VGA
• 2 USB ports
• Firewire
• SmartCard reader
• PC Card Slot

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Right:

• 4 USB ports
• Audio and microphone jack
• Optical drive
• Ethernet and 56K Modem

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Front:

• Speakers
• 5-in-1 Card Reader (SD/MMC/Memory Stick (Pro)/xD)

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Rear:

• Battery and Vent

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Bottom:

• Hard Disk
• Docking station connector
• Travel battery connector
• RAM slot (1 accessible from bottom, another under the keyboard)
• Fan

The Bluetooth module syncs very well with my mobile phone. I was able to transfer files and use Nokia's PC Suite and Windows Mobile Device Center for synchronization with Windows Mobile devices.

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The integrated microphone is well-placed and do not suffer from hard disk noise as it is located on the LCD bezel.

The Intel wireless card works as expected, without any connection issues. I do not have a draft-n router to test, so it was only tested on a 802.11g WPA2-secured network.

Battery life is above average for a mobile workstation notebook. On Balanced profile, the notebook lasts up to 2 hours 30 minutes performing light to moderate tasks running Office, Eclipse, Photoshop and Internet Explorer. It lasts 3 hours on the Power Saving profile doing similar tasks. The notebook comes with a standard 8-cell battery. An additional travel battery may be attached to the bottom of the notebook to provide additional battery runtime without having to turn off the device to swap out batteries.

Performance and Bechmarks

The benchmarks were performed on a fresh install of Vista Business x64 SP1 with Nvidia 175.12 video drivers.

The 8710w tested has the latest Intel Penryn T9300 2.5GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and at the time of writing, one of the fastest 7200rpm hard disk available.

wPrime v1.62 32M

31.995 seconds

PCMark05

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HDTune

The Hitachi 7K200 drive shipped with this computer has performance that is on par with other 7K200 benchmarks. It is also very quiet and stays relatively cool.

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Windows Vista Experience Index

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Gaming Performance

3Dmark06

The Quadro FX 3600M is equivalent to a Geforce 8800 GTS graphics card. The 3DMark06 scores at standard clock rates are consistent with that of a regular 8800GTS card.

The graphics performance is truly impressive, only lacking SLI capabilities.

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GPU-Z confirms that the card specifications are close to that of the 8800M GTS.

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Bioshock

Bioshock is rendered beautifully and remains very playable on the 3600M card at 1680x1050 resolution with full details.

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• Min FPS: 26
• Max FPS: 40
• Average FPS: 30

Unreal Tournament 3

The laptop is more than capable of handling UT3, one of the newer games that could benefit from a powerful multi-core processor and graphics card. At a resolution of 1680x1050 and all details maxed out, the game is rendered beautifully and is very playable.

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Team Deathmatch (Shangri-La)

• Min FPS: 41
• Average FPS: 60
• Max FPS: 65

Team Deathmatch (Sentinel)

• Min FPS: 41
• Average FPS: 55
• Max FPS: 60

Performance in various settings, from gaming to heavy multitasking and running multiple VMs, prove to be above average and clearly this laptop performs at a level comparable to that of a desktop workstation.

Operating System and Software

The 8710w, like all HP's business notebooks, offer 3 operating system options, i.e. Windows Vista Business, Windows XP Professional and FreeDOS (no operating system option). The system is certified for Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, so the major components are expected to be supported under Linux. The following devices either lack support under Linux or are in development:

• Hard Drive accelerometer
• Authentec Fingerprint reader
• Brightness keys not working in desktop environment (Nvidia driver bug)

My system went into production on the 20^th of April, but I'm surprised that SP1 was not preloaded! Nevertheless, upon boot-up, you get to select to go either 32-bit or 64-bit with Vista. The initial boot up takes more than an hour, with all the horrible HP recovery partitioning and software installation taking place.

Once booted, the system has minimal bloatware. The only software pre-installed is meant to allow the computer to be ready-to-use upon first boot for time-critical business users (I suspect most corporate deployments would end up using their own images rather than HP's build anyway). Among the included software suite are:

• Norton Internet Security 2008
• HP ProtectTools Suite (BIOS Configuration and Embedded Security/Encryption tools)
• PDFComplete
• WinDVD
• Sonic MyDVD
• HP Backup and Recovery Manager
• Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business Trial

The system either comes with a set of recovery DVDs to perform a clean install of Windows Vista/XP or the option to create a recovery DVD using the HP utility. The HP utility allows the creation of either a DVD image or direct burning to media. It also allows you to choose between a Dual Layer DVD, Single Layer DVD or set of CD-Rs. The difference between the recovery DVDs created with the utility and those provided by HP are that the HP discs are actually plain Vista/XP downgrade discs with no bloatware (but OEM pre-activated) while the ones you create are a direct factory image of your hard disk upon first boot, which means recovery from these set of DVDs will result in restoring your laptop to the state when it was first booted up, including your user account and regional settings, with all bloatware intact.

Heat and Noise

The laptop stays cool throughout normal use, with temperatures going up only during heavy usage, but the cooling system is very effective in bringing down the temperatures immediately.

It is very quiet, with almost no noticeable fan noise during light to moderate use and this is an improvement over the loud fan noise problems encountered in the nc8430/nx8420 models.

The fans do ramp up to a noticeable level when I'm working on virtual machines as it increases the CPU load significantly.

Usage	GPU (°C)	CPU (°C)	HDD (°C)
Normal - Idle/Light	45-48	35-40	32
Moderate	55-61	40-42	40
Heavy Use / Benchmarking	73-78	70-75	42

Customer Support

HP offers a standard 3 year Global Next Business Day Onsite warranty with this notebook, with dedicated HP Business Support facilities, including an industry-leading 24/7 online resource tool to lodge and manage warranty claims. From my experience, HP Business support has been very professional in their conduct and does not waste my time by going through scripts during a support call.

Conclusion

The 8710w has all the qualities that make it one of the best desktop replacement workstation notebooks in the market. It is the perfect professional mobile workstation for those who demand top performance and reliability, coupled with business class support.

Pros:

• Excellent overall performance
• Excellent HD display
• Excellent build quality and build precision
• Wide array of I/O ports
• Very powerful workstation graphics card

Cons:

• Expensive at RRP
• Annoying touch-sensitive controls

 

great review. Also good to know that it can handle graphic intesive games like UT3

 

nice review. expensive but powerful. i like it!!!

 

Very good review!

I'm surprised that the notebook doesn't run louder and hotter with that nVidia 8800GTS-based GPU in there. It's good to hear that it's quieter than the 15.4" 8510/8400 series.

I agree with you that HP's business line is rather underrated. I have seen several others people here in the US (besides all my classmates) that have HP Compaq business notebooks (usually business professionals) however, so it appears that they are more popular here than they are in Australia at least. I still don't see them as often as Dell Latitudes or Thinkpads, though (not counting the HP Compaqs that all my classmates have, of course).

 

You said you have a wuxga(1920x1200) screen, but the bioshock resolution slider is all the way right and shows 1680x1050 resolution. Is there any driver problems?

 

I thought that the 3600M is a quadro 8800M GTX.

 

Wow that screen looks nice. Good review too!

 

Excellent review!!

Man , this laptop is amazing and if I had the money I'd get it. Unfortunately I'll have to settle for the 8710p (which in, in my case, saves me 800 euros) which is also a nice machine.

Still though... maybe I should wait for a pricedrop lol

 

wow! feel the power!

 

Great review man Always good to see the HP business line get some love.

 

Nice review

I'm pretty sure you can run UT3 on native resolution [WUXGA: 1920x1200] though.

 

Me too, quite a bit disappointing.
But nice machine anyhow, the best built 17'' on the market.

 

Nice review but what do you mean by " Wide-Viewing Angle Display", is it an IPS screen?

 

Ditto. It is, might be a GPU-Z slip-up.
Now, you mentioned "fans" , whereas I only see 1 fan in the picture.
That would justify for the higher temps, 2 fans should be able to lower the temps significantly.
All in all, this is an awesome laptop, I am a big fan of Hp bussiness class , I still use my 2.5 year old nx9420 , and this baby`s surely been through a lot.
The price is actually pretty decent too, not much more expensive that similar configs.
Great review!

 

That's nearly the same design as the nx9420 actually, save for the fact that the finger print reader is in the lower right hand corner instead of between the touchpad buttons, and the HDMI connector instead of the S-Video, as well as the (annoying IMO from the DV2000 i played with) touch buttons. Cool, but annoying.

 

The touchbuttons are one the coolest I`ve ever used for a laptop,they don`t squeek, they`re easy to push and I like the wedge-shape that makes it easy to push the bottom of the buttons just as pulling them in a way
So if this one has the same type, it`s got my vote.
Btw @MGS2392 , my config on the NX is identical to yours. How old is it ? A testament to HP bussiness class laptops, I presume

 

It's around 2 years old. It's starting to age though. WASD getting worn out especially (the business of gaming ), the hinges are getting squeeky, and the speaker grills falling out individually. But I still love the little thing (except for the batteries, which I had terrible, terrible luck with).

 

And, they moved the modem port so the GPU heatsink could be made longer. 2 more USB ports.

This is the third generation with this design, I wonder if they will change it this summer with the new models.
I like the design in general, but they could reduce the amount of dust collecting pits between different parts of the chassis around the keyboard, and the touchpad could get a little bigger.

After 16 months I opened my nx9420, the GPU HS was full with dust and I couldn't see through it!
I cleaned both heatsinks, used AS5 thermal paste, and now I can play HL2 with the fan keeping the lowest speed (GPU set to low).

Descriptions how to take it apart is available at hp.com, another good move from HP.
Service guides for nx9420, nw9440, 8710p & 8710w.

Get a Torx T8 and clean up!

HP parts like case parts and keyboard are pretty cheap if you want to replace them. Motherboards, graphics cards and displays are expensive.
My battery still shows 0 % wear in NHC.

Good to see that the 8710w works with XP64 (5.2), besides Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Linux.
That other operating system that I can't mention here would probably work too, at least it does with my nx9420.

 

Great review. I've always loved the look and design of HP's business class.

 

Mine is in 99% perfect shape.just minor scratches on the lid, apart from that...even though it ran really hot all the time. after 2.5 years it`s kicking, and being used for projects and school stuff.
I bet the 8710w is in the same class, as I said, HP assembles terrific laptops.

 

eleron911: cleaning the heatsinks, changing thermal paste, and undervolt the CPU in NHC really helps keeping it cooler.
My fan ramped up all the time before I cleaned the heatsinks.

I undervolted the T2300 from 1.2625 V to 1.0 V, which resulted in a 65 W kill-a-watt power draw with GPU at max, Orthos running on one core, and RTHDRIBL on the other and GPU.
I would have done the same with an 8710w.

 

One thing I did notice is the 8710p/w did run much quieter than previous generation models. It is in fact silent during normal usage, which is why I won't mess with the thermal paste or underclock it yet. The Penryn processors also help bring temperatures down a little.

As for gathering dust, I do have to clean out my fans every 3 months or so as my room gathers quite a bit of dust, being on the top floor with windows constantly open (I can't stand a stuffy room).

 

Agreed, I meant changing the termal paste later on.
The Penryn is a cool running CPU, the dektop counterparts uses much less power than the Conroe, much less than the 65 W TDP. In fact, it's closer to half of it.

You say silent, do you mean that the fan doesn't start at all when doing light work?

 

Hehe, I know this poem.
I also undervolted , cleaned the inside for dust and all the thing required to keep it cool.
The only real game that pushed it`s limits was NFS Carbon, the fan was spinning like crazy. What bothered me is that HP used a slightly underclocked version of the X1600 .Now it`s cool, you can`t hear the fan pretty much ever,and after 2.5 years of abusive usage the thing still packs 2h of battery on full brightness and RMClock + xp power management, and about 3ish at low brightness.And it costed like 900$ bucks then,probably the best deal I ever made.

I wonder if the 8710w has the same issue of a somewhat crippled GPU, since GPU-Z reported the 3600M as a 8800M GTS?!

 

Edit: I realize I don't know the stock speeds.
Mine have three settings (GPU/RAM): 209/135, 390/250, and 425/375. What speed does your have since you say it's underclocked?
I can easily overclock it to 567/471 at least, don't know the upper limit but I think I am close to it.

It is not crippled AFAIK, but the only thing the Nvidia specs tells me is that it have the correct memory bandwidth 51 GB/s so I'm not sure.
I don't know if the 3600M is supposed to have 64 shaders.
After all, it is not a 8800 GTX and nobody said it was. Crixx said:

The specs, including the frequencies, are identical to a 8800 GTS, so I guess it's only the firmware that is different.

 

I don`t have it on me right now,my gf is using it for some projects but I`ll post the clocks as soon as I get ahold of it.Stock clocks are 470/470 for the regular version, mine are something like 425/370-400~ish.
I haven`t tried OCing it, the laptop ran too hot for my liking anyway.Besides,I couldn`t check the temp on the gpu, AFIK there is no temp sensor for the GPU...

Everyone assumed it to be 8800M GTX based, but it might indeed be an 8800M GTS. So maybe it`s not the fastest quadro yet...

 

I have two temps in Speedfan that ramps up quickly when starting RTHDRIBL, but only if the clock speeds are set to max.

Second temp, chip ADM1032, sensor Remote Temp

8:th temp, chip ACPI, sensor Temp3

 

Well, either way, the HP 8710w would not dissapoint , I would trust HP`s bussiness class over any other,except maybe Lenovo`s...

 

I also thought the FX 3600m was based on the 8800M GTX too. When I checked at notebookcheck.com they said it was based on the GTX. Man I'm so confused now.

 

great review! i have an 8710w and it's brilliant!

I would like to check what make of screen i have, how do I go about doing that!

 

I just received mine 8 days ago and will be using it for my business machine for contract and consulting for solidsolutionscorp.com. It's great so far. Previously, I've had a Gateway M630 and it's still a good machine, but have been having some graphics problems with the machine and had to break down and get another one.

The HP is awesome on the battery usage. I couldn't believe how long it lasts for a machine of this class with the small battery. I decided to go with the HP due to the recent release of the M3600 card due to my CAD usage. Although, the screen is very nice, with the high resolution, the viewing angle is not that great. I think the 1680 x 1200 glossy screen on my previous one may have a little better viewing angle.

One thing I have noticed, and not sure if there's an adjustment yet, is the volume control sensitivity. It seems it goes much too far each time it's touched. If it was half as sensitive, you could be more precise on the volume adjustment.

The External Lacie 500 GB hard drive I have is louder than this laptop is most of the time. The one drawback that I have is that if you're trying to work with the laptop in your lap, you are going to cover up the vent on the far left side of the bottom where the GPU gets the cooling air from. I know that wouldn't be good.

My configuration is almost identical, although I opted fort the DOS and least memory and hard drive and am upgrading them. I could get them for less and better memory. I got 4GB of PC6400 5ms access. I am putting a 250GB Seagate Momentus drive in to replace the 120GB 5400 drive in the machine. I tried to order this with the 160BG 7200 RPM drive, but the lady helping me got the wrong one and I ended up with the 5400 RPM 120 GB drive.

The customer support at HP has been fantastic, and worked out the drive problem and just credited me back for the wrong drive.

I was surprised as stated previously, that in the box was the power suppl needed to go with the docking station when I get that. From my history with anything HP, if there is a problem, they take care of it very quickly, I expect the same with this latest laptop. The last reason I got this is because it's the only laptop that I've seen that has the add-on external battery. This thing should last at least 4-5 hours with the external 12 cell battery. That blows away my last laptop that would only last an hour pushing it with a brand new battery.

 

Lets make a compromise, it is something between them like the 3d mark'05 results show.

 

Great to know there's others who appreciate a well-built HP business notebook. You really have to be owning one to understand why the build and performance is great compared to the more glamorous competition out there.

 

Okay, I just received mine and I am installing software as we speak. The machine has same specs as the initial review machine except this one is with T9500. I will post my 3d mark results once I get them.

Anyway, there is few things I can already say. First is how lightweight and slim the notebook feels after my old P4 based notebook. I'm really amazed with that. I would have expected it to require more heavier heat-sinks, but I guess not.
This is also thus far quite noiseless compared to my old notebook's constant fan blow. If it stays like that for the next 3 years, then I'm more than happy.

There is one thing I'm wondering. That is those leds right at the "bottom" left corner. It is exactly the place where at least I keep my left wrist and I wonder, how rugged those LEDs really are? I mean they look like something that might losen over time and get broken after that. Also, it is little bit hard to see the HD LED behing my hand.

Oh, and one more thing. This computer is one of those who see 3GB memory with 32bit OS (not 3.5GB).

 

Funny, one of the shipped documents give this warning:

"Do not move the computer while writing to a Blu-ray disc"

How am I supposed to take that warning, do I have a drive that can actually write Blu-ray discs?

 

Finally some results. These were achieved with the pre-installed Windows XP and default drivers.

 

I don't think you should worry about the LEDs, I haven't noticed any problems after 18 months with my nx9420. It's not actually the LEDs you see, it's just transparent plastic pieces that transport the light from the LED's on the motherboard in the bottom of the laptop, just in front of the smart card reader that sits on the left side. I saw it when I opened the laptop.

They're placed there so you can see them even when the lid is closed, but Power and WLAN LEDs are also placed above the keyboard. The battery charge and HDD have only one LED each, I have to lift my arm to check the latter sometimes. I think the reason why they put it there only is that some people find the blinking HDD LED a bit annoying.

 

No problem with my LEDs either--daily usage of my 8510p since September 2007.

 

Yea, but lets return to the wear matter after the machine is something like 3 years old. If the plastic cover is removed, how long it takes for your sleeve to start making contact with the actual led? Well in either case, it is just something I was wondering but I don't think it is a work-stopping problem even if it happens.

Anyway, with my old Dell the leds are positioned to the display's hinge and they do show when the lid is closed. They also show when you type something.

 

The plastic cover is durable and won't break. Even if it does, it doesn't leave the LEDs exposed as they are still under the top cover and are embedded quite deep.

 

Damn flash-card reader doesn't support CompactFlash

 

True, the distance between the cover and the LEDs are like half an inch.

 

CF Adapter.

 

Yea, I know. But for me a integrated CF adapater would have been so great thing. That is because I sometimes have to work with embedded PC stuff and when those machiens support bootable flash-cards, they normally are CF. I mean machines like this. On the other hand, personally I have never needed a flash reader for my cell phone/camera flash cards because those are inside the devices and the devices are USB/BT connectable.

 

I've never seen a CF reader on any modern notebook...

 

And I haven't seen any reader on any notebook before this, but that doesn't proof anything because I really haven't seen even those modern notebooks lately

Edit: Google found very easily one that atleast says so in the specs, but this link is a Google translation from German to English.

 

Thanks for the info! I would have never thought those as "buttons" otherwise. I also find especially the calculator button very handy add-on to the normal sound/wlan buttons.

 

Costcentral.com | $17,352.39

wattt?

 

The laptop looks hot !! Its a shame they are priced so high (relative to the dells) in the US ($2700+).
With 17" thinkpads coming out, we should see some serious competition in the 17" workstation arena.

I dont think its an IPS screen. Are there any laptop IPS displays being manufactured now ?
The WUXGA screens tend to be very nice. My dell WUXGA screen is awesome too (though not as good as my thinkpad IPS UXGA).

 

Haha, that's really funny. I wonder what happens if someone puts in an order at that price. I know they will contact you if they mispriced too low, but do they contact you if they mispriced them too high?

I got it for around $2500, which I think is a fair price outside the US. The includes all applicable enterprise discounts. The RRP is crazy, so is Dell's Precision pricing outside the US. Everything's overpriced here.

It's not an IPS panel, but it's still an excellent screen in itself. I hope the next generation LED displays mean this could get brighter.

After comparing a T61 to an HP 8510w, I can confidently say HP's build precision and overall finishing is actually better than Lenovo's Thinkpads. Thinkpads have good build quality, but HP's business notebooks can match them, so there's nothing that legendary about Thinkpad's build quality next to a solid HP. What HP lacks is an enthusiast base that go to great lengths to evangelise the product (like they do on NBR) as they sell primarily to enterprise customers who don't really care about what they use as long as it works. HP also rarely advertises their enterprise notebooks unlike Dell or Lenovo and advertising is important as we have seen here as it gets your product known and gets the word out there that you can build business notebooks that are nothing like your crappy consumer range. I do like Thinkpad's trackpoint and hope that other manufacturers can match the quality of those.