HP Compaq EliteBook 6930p User Review

by Christopher Chua

The HP Compaq EliteBook 6930p is HP’s latest 14" thin and light business notebook. It is part of HP's premium EliteBook range of business notebooks that emphasizes mobility, performance and durability.

The EliteBook range is mainly distinguished from HP's regular business notebooks by offering a unique aircraft-grade aluminum shell bonded with a magnesium alloy casing, resulting in a housing that is both rigid and durable. The anodized aluminum finishing means paint chips and scratches will be old news, even though HP’s previous dust-coated 6910p and nc6400’s have proven very durable too.

The 6930p is a direct replacement for the 6910p series notebook. It maintains the same size, weight and dimensions as its predecessor, but otherwise offers a complete refresh internally and externally. The 6930p, being the best-seller among the models in the EliteBook range, is offered in a variety of configurations and my particular unit is configured with the following specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 Processor (2.53GHz, 6MB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB)
• 2GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM
• 160GB Seagate 7200.2 HDD
• WXGA+ 1440x900 matte display
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD3450 256MB
• Integrated 2 megapixels webcam
• Keyboard light (HP Nightlight)
• Intel 5300 ABGN wireless
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Dual pointing devices with keyboard
• 6-cell battery
• UpgradeBay DVD+/-RW with Lightscribe
• Integrated Fingerprint reader
• Firewire 1394a
• HP 3D Driveguard HDD Protection
• VGA Connector
• Three USB Ports
• 3/3/3 Warranty
• MSRP: $2600

Build and Design

The first thing you'll notice about the 6930p is how good it looks, especially for a corporate notebook, which has traditionally been the last bastion of boring and staid designs. Despite the aluminum finishing, it has not lost its professional luster either. The EliteBook range has certainly redefined the stereotypical look of professional workstations.

The notebook is very well-assembled, like the previous nc6400 and 6910p I've used. It feels very sturdy and solid, but HP should definitely work on improving the weight as it is technically not the lightest 14" around these days. There are no creaks in the casing and it does not flex at all due to the strong aluminum finishing unlike carbon-fiber reinforced plastic used in many rival products. The battery does not wobble and fits snugly. There are no loose fitting parts at all. This is simply one of the most solidly constructed mainstream notebooks in the market.

The 6930p appears thicker than the nc6400 due to thicker rubber feet as can be seen in the picture below, but both chassis have similar dimensions otherwise.

The metal hinges have been redesigned and they are now extremely tight. They are in fact the tightest I've ever felt on a business notebook and I’ve tried just about every other major brand (Thinkpads, Latitudes, Tecras). The screen housing is equally rigid and does not flex nor distort the screen in any way. The screen bezel is attached firmly to the screen with no gaps that allow dust to build up.

The EliteBook range features HP's 3D DriveGuard hard disk protection system which is essentially an accelerometer embedded on the system board coupled with a hard disk enclosure design that prevents damage to the hard disk in a fall.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The 6910p has an awesome keyboard, with no flex, quiet keys and adequate travel. It is one of the most ergonomically-comfortable keyboards. HP maintained the same keyboard design and construction in the 6930p. Although the keys are now less clicky than before, I find them as comfortable to use as its predecessor. Many have criticized HP’s placement of the Home, Page Up, Page Down and End keys, but I do not find this to be a serious issue at all. In fact, I believe the proper placement of FN and CTRL keys are more important and HP has certainly designed this correctly.

The pointstick is responsive and it works, but it still pales in comparison to those found on Thinkpads mainly because the rubber caps are not as comfortable to use. HP changed the color of the rubber caps from blue to black, making them less distinctive than before. The Synaptics touchpad is very responsive and has excellent texture for comfortable usage. The rubber mouse buttons are a nice touch as they feel much better ergonomically than regular hard plastic buttons.

There are touch sensitive buttons along the top of the keyboard for HP Info centre, Wireless, Presentation, Mute and Volume buttons. Unlike the ones on the previous models, they are always lit which can get a little distracting in the dark.

A new feature adopted from the 2710p tablet PC is the HP NightLight feature, which is similar to Thinkpad's ThinkLight feature. However, HP's NightLight is neatly tucked into the screen bezel when not in use and a simple push of the button pops the bright white LED light out of the bezel to provide adequate keyboard lighting in the dark. The Nightlight is dimmer than the ThinkLight and as a result keyboard illumination is not as good in the dark.

Display

The nc6400 and 6910p's displays suffered from a slight shimmering issue, but I'm glad to report that this is no longer the case with the 6930p. The matte AUO WXGA+ display is very bright, very clear and has no visible light leakage. Viewing angles are also excellent for a screen of this size. Colors are vivid and it is very bright and evenly-lit despite being a CCFL-backlit display. I really love this beautiful screen.

While I don't recommend the nc6400 nor the 6910p for graphics work, the 6930p certainly has a screen and graphics card good enough to handle graphics tasks on the go.

Speakers

The stereo speakers are located on the front of the notebook and like its predecessors, are not symmetrically placed but this has not proven to be an issue in regular usage. They are also loud and clear. Bass is poor as expected as in the majority of business notebooks, so it is not an issue here.

Webcam and Microphones

HP offers an optional 2.0 mega pixel web cam with this notebook. It is a standard web cam which works well for video conferencing and is noisy in low light conditions.

The business card reader application bundled with the notebook is really cool and actually works, yielding almost accurate results when tested on a standard US/Australian business card (missing a space in job title "SoftwareDeveloper"). The concept is simple and the genius is in the OCR of the software. The application does not work on non-HP devices as it requires a matching camera hardware ID.

There are two microphones, which are located along the antenna cover strips. The placement isn’t that great since they are not facing you when the screen is opened and can be slightly less sensitive.

Performance and Benchmarks

The 6930p is powered by Intel's latest Montevina platform and the T9400 is one of the new 45nm Penryn CPUs with a 1066MHz FSB.

Unfortunately, HP has decided to stick to the older DDR2 for its RAM, hence effectively limiting the capabilities of the platform when other vendors have switched to DDR3 implementations. However, corporate IT departments may appreciate this as DDR3 modules are still more expensive and there should be more spare DDR2 modules available for easy upgrade in most IT departments.

wPrime Benchmark
wPrime is a multi-threaded CPU test that provides a more accurate benchmark for dual-core CPUs. Version 2.0 of the benchmark application is used.

The Seagate 7200rpm drive may not be the latest generation, but it performs adequately as the HDTune v2.55 benchmarks show.

PCMark05 Score:

The ATI HD3450 graphics card in the 6930p is a pretty capable card, getting a pretty decent benchmark score on the stock HP drivers (ATI v8.479.1). Judging from benchmarks alone, this card is much faster (approximately 5-6 times) than the X1300 found on the nc6400 and it supports DirectX 10.1. The benchmarks are conducted in 1280x800 resolution. As this is a mainstream balanced notebook, HP should offer a hybrid graphics solution to provide more flexibility and improve battery life in situations when a discrete graphics card isn’t required.

Operating System and Software

HP delivered this notebook with Windows XP SP2 pre-installed (not even SP3!), with a Vista Business COA but no Recovery DVDs nor an option to create one unlike their previous models where they ship with both. It looks like whoever prepared the build image for Windows XP simply forgot to install this as there was no recovery partition on it either. HP has since advised customers to request the DVDs from their technical support, so they are aware of this issue.

There is no bloatware installed, not even a Norton Security Suite. This is pretty much as basic as it gets and it certainly shows when the notebook performs as well as a clean install would on first boot. If you so desire, there is an HP Software Setup utility for you to begin loading bloatware (and some useful apps like Live Messenger, PDF reader and WMP11) on it to your heart’s content.

The HP ProtectTools security suite is as good as before, offering a comprehensive set of security solution that other vendors rarely offer for free, namely disk encryption, device access restrictions and biometric identification all using the TPM hardware. There is also a useful BIOS configuration utility that allows one to configure the BIOS settings from Windows. This is definitely one of the most mature enterprise hardware management tools bundled in corporate grade notebooks.

Battery and Power

The 6930p uses the same 6-cell battery as that found on the nc6400 and 6910p. Although the batteries look similar, there is a 2-3mm difference in width which means you can't use the nc6400 or 6910p's battery in the 6930p. The standard 6-cell battery lasts about 3.5 hours on light to moderate loads using the Portable/Laptop power profile under Windows XP. HP still uses the same proprietary secondary battery connector, so all previous travel and extended batteries which attaches to the bottom of the notebook will still work. HP offers an optional 8-cell travel battery and 12-cell extended life battery.

The included 90W adaptor (65W for Intel integrated graphics models) is the same HP standard AC adaptor. HP is one of the better vendors when it comes to proprietary connectors as they strive to maintain consistency across product life cycles, hence the power connector, docking station connector and battery connectors remain unchanged. There is no need to buy new accessories when you upgrade as they remain compatible.

Ports and Features

The 6930p includes an array of I/O ports. There are three USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire 1394a port, standard modem and Gigabit Ethernet. The only video out connector is a VGA port. It should be about time HP introduces digital video interfaces on its smaller business notebooks.

HP has finally upgraded the PC slot cards in the 6910p with an ExpressCard 54 slot which was one of my criticisms since the nc6400 days. The integrated memory card reader on the front only reads SD and MMC cards, but it accepts SDHC cards just fine.

Like its predecessors, the extended battery and docking station connector resides on the bottom of the notebook. There are two RAM slots one easily accessible on the bottom and the other underneath the keyboard which requires the removal of the keyboard in order to access it. If a single RAM module is configured during purchase, it will be installed in the slot underneath the keyboard, so there is little need to open up the notebook. Similarly, one can easily upgrade the hard disk, also accessible from the bottom.

HP changed the interface for the modular bay device from the MultiBay II found in the nc6400 and 6910p series to the UpgradeBay, which is essentially a SATA interface. Previous MultiBay devices are no longer compatible and the new bay only supports either a SATA hard disk drive or an optical drive. The new interface supports RAID configurations.

The UpgradeBay is also more difficult to remove than the MultiBay which has a spring loaded mechanism. It requires you to remove a spring loaded screw which holds the device in place and push on a little tab with a pointed device like a screwdriver as it is not spring loaded. It looks like it isn’t designed to allow for hotswapping.

Heat and Noise

After using a Macbook, you'll realize how quiet notebooks can get. The 6930p is certainly not in the extremely quiet category. Under light to moderate use, it is silent, but the fans are still spinning. The fans tend to rev up on higher loads and they are clearly audible. The vents are located on the underside and left side of the notebook.

The notebook is cool to the touch and does not get excessively hot under high loads. Similar to its predecessors, the fans stop spinning or slow down considerably once it is run on battery, hence making the notebook very silent again.

Warranty and Support

All HP EliteBooks have a 3-year global warranty as standard. This particular configuration has onsite coverage as standard. From my experience, HP’s business notebook support is excellent. They respond to an issue within the specified timeframe and provide an excellent online utility which allow customers to submit and track support cases 24/7 remotely. The online ITRC utility is by far the most efficient way to submit and document support cases as it avoids miscommunication over the phone when dealing with overseas support techs. The support reps that I’ve dealt with are very professional in their conduct and seem knowledgeable about their products.

Conclusion

The Elitebook 6930p is a very capable, no-nonsense business notebook. HP has listened to feedback from its nc6400 and 6910p notebooks and addressed the problems in the 6930p. HP’s Elitebook are excellent well-designed business machine considering it includes HP’s excellent 3-year global onsite warranty services as well as build quality, unique materials and a balanced feature set that meet the needs of most corporate users. The 6930p deserves to be on the list for those considering a balanced notebook that means business as it is really that good.

Pros:

• Solid and durable scratch-resistant construction
• Attractive professional design
• Gorgeous display
• Excellent keyboard
• Cool and relatively quiet
• Excellent card reader software
• Comprehensive built-in security solutions

Cons:

• Annoying bright lights on touch sensitive buttons
• Analog video connector in 2008
• UpgradeBay not modular enough
• No hybrid graphics option
• Dim keyboard light

 

looks like a winner

 

Thanks for the review.

any plan on trying out the 12 cell and see if we can get 24 hrs??

 

nice review, thanks.

 

Good review. Looks like T400's good some competition...

 

hmm maybe im not scanning this review properly (great review by the way) what was the price of this same unit?

 

Msrp: $2600

 

hmmm thanks i noticed that it just seemed to well rounded

 

very nice review!

You had a macbook,right?can you take couple of pictures of them together?

 

About time someone posted a 6930p review!

Overall, very nice! I'm surprised that they haven't fixed the asymmetrical speaker issue, but oh well. Also, I find that the consumer-ish keyboard layout is a problem for me, as I very frequently use the home, end, pg up, and pg dn keys. Other than those issues, it seems like HP Business notebooks just keep getting better and better!

With all the quality issues that the new Thinkpads and Latitude E series notebooks are suffering from, it's nice to know that HP is going the opposite way by improving the build quality from their previous notebooks. HP really needs to get the word out on these EliteBooks however; it seems like people have heard of Lenovo Thinkpads and Dell Latitudes, but not HP EliteBook. After all, this is HP's golden opportunity to seize some market share in the business notebook sector!

 

Can someone please explain why any plan on trying out the 12 cell and see if we can get 24 hrs??[/QUOTE]
He needs a specific configuration to do that:

- 80 GB SSD
- Illumi-Lite LED display
- Intel IGP with latest drivers
- Use latest BIOS
- Windows e XPerience

Otherwise it will be 12 - 17 hours, depending on hardware.

This makes me wonder, are there two different Illumi-Lite? One LED and one CCFL?
I can only see one Illumi-Lite at hp.com.


Chrixx: Are you sure it's CCFL?

 

Nice review.

I bought a 6930p a week ago with similar configuration as the reviewer. It died after 4 days. It would turn off the screen or spit garbage on it, and then it would not boot up until around 5 minutes had passed. I did the DOA process and I am supposed to recieve replacement on Wednesday. Too bad I really liked it, its hard now to work back to my old laptop.

Also the Core 2 DUO CPU whine is present. You can notice it only when your environment is absolutely silent. It is not in annoying levels for me.

 

I would have to agree with Kerl here. I received one of the first ones available through a reseller by the name of Colamco (great company btw) and mine would creak terribly around the plastic parts, especially the screen. Also, it had terrible CPU and AC Adapter Whine that were almost constantly happening that tended to cause me headaches. Finally, my optical drive would roar like an industrial shredder whenever I put a disc in and shake the entire notebook enough to be very noticable. I tried different methods to check and try to fix the problems but nothing quite worked for me.

Also, unlike other people's experiences that I have read about, the tech support for HP for the business side was just as bad as the consumer side. Although I will say that it only took about 30 minutes versus 3 hours to get them to acknowledge that the product was defective, the problem came when they would not take it back. So, I had a retailer that doesn't do refunds and HP (although less than 7 days after purchase and well within the 21 days they state for all their notebook) who kept sending me back and forth between their tech support and customer service. As I said in the beginning, Colamco is a great retailer and were nice enough to work with me to send the DOA unit back to their supplier with an RMA to get a refund. They were also by far more understanding and willing to bend over backwards to help me. I can't commend the company enough. But that's not the point. The point is HP has let me down personally twice now.

So, I have switched to a CTO Sony SR290 unit. Hopefully this one will work out for me.

BBGus

 

True the HP support has to take some lessons from Dell, here (Greece) it takes less than 5 minutes to talk to Dell representative, while with HP I needed like 15 minutes. And somehow Dell always answers, while HP doesn't.

Also HP seems to have very lax rules for its employees ( I called in 10 am and a polite lady told me that support staff was not yet at office!. Support centre hours are 9am-5pm).

Anyway that happened only the first day I called them, the other day everything was fine (apart from the 15 minutes lost in the call centre). They were kind enough to let me know that I should not activate my 3 years next business day on site Carepack if I wanted a replacement, cause they would have to send a technician to repair the machine on site (sounds a bit weird though), and that I should DOA it in case the HP recovery did not solve the problem. But they told me the DOA process had to go through the retailer.

I went to my retailer and he did the process without asking any questions. He was also bounced a couple of times between tech support and customer service but in the 4rth bounce the process was completed.

 

I agree with BBGus. I had 5 exchanges and most of them suffered from QC issues. It seems like its a hit or miss for the 6930p and I'm surprised Chrixx had no issues with it. A point worth mentioning is that the lid locking mechanism doesn't work as nicely as other notebooks I've used. It requires quite a hefty push for the pegs to lock in place.

Also, he mentioned that that were no gaps around the LCD frame which is not true for my case. I'll attached some pictures at a later time. There are both light leaks and gaps on the left side of the LCD frame and I've had dust build up under it. I have to say compared to the 15.4 inch 8530W/P, the casing is way more solid and wobbling the LCD would not produce ripple effects as seen on the 8530.

 

Tech support issues? Thats why we use ITRC!

 

I'm surprised to see the screen described as having excellent viewing angles. Even looking at the pictures of the screen given in the review, notice how only the non-angled view has blacks in it. In every other view the blacks have dissappeared and we can see a siginificant amount of brighteneing and loss of contrast in comparison.
That's usable but certainly not "exellent".

 

What's ITRC?

 

I'm looking for a new hp and will watch for more reviews from others before snatching up one of these. It looks smooth and the features are nice but I'm taking it slow before plunging in... I'm glad I found a valuable review on this one.

 

ITRC is HP's online business support website. It works 24hrs a day, you can submit cases there.

 

Are they better than other's tech support? What's so special about them?

 

They just work, everytime, none of the crap you get over the phone. You will not be in direct contact with HP but with an outsourced tech support company.

 

Good to know. Thanks!

 

There is an 18% ecoupon on HP.com for US customers. This configuration is priced at only $1,632. Select small and medium business for this special pricing, and select the HP EliteBook 6930p and configure PC.

 

NBR forgot to state that the price I quoted in the review is in Australian dollars, which translates to about US$1,683 at today's crappy rates.

 

How is Linux compatibility on this laptop? Has anyone loaded up Ubuntu, OpenSUSE or Fedora?

I like the fact that there are dual pointing devices. All of the Laptops I have owned as my primary work machine over the past several years have had dual-pointing devices.

It is too bad they are still using the old chipset. I'd like to see DDR3. Also, no option for a backlit keyboard?

 

I am working almost exclusively with Fedora 10. Few things that dont work out of the box for me:

a) Updated bios needs to have the "Fan always on while on AC" disabled or Fedora wont boot.
b) Brightness up/down buttons dont work (auto brighntess works). Workaround: Gnome brightness applet. I am sure the keys can also be fixed.
c) My ATI model requires lots of hacking to get 3d graphics support so I stick with the default driver which is good enough for my workloads.
d) I read the MMC/SD reader is not working without additional driver but I haven't tested it yet.

Some posts in the internet seem to indicate that Ubuntu 8.10 might work better.

 

Wonder does the 6930p come with a weight-saver module so that you can remove the optical drive to lighten weight of the laptop?


I'm currently stuck with two choices (I don't have customization ability in my country, only those ready-made combos):

US$1500 - P8400 + 2GB RAM + 160GB 5400rpm + X4500 + WXGA CCFL
US$1750 - P8 600 + 2GB RAM + 160GB 5400rpm + X4500 + Illumi-Lite LED + vPro enabled

Would the extra money paid for the latter be worth?

 

In my experience Ubuntu is quite compatible with a wide range of laptops. Discrete graphics cards are often problematic. The integrated Intel graphics cards have worked very well for me, and are more suited since I prefer battery-life and a cool laptop over 3D performance.

 

I mentioned in my other post that the latch doesn't seem to close properly all the time. I took the issue to HP and their labs confirmed that this is due to a improper assembly on the lower casing's locking assembly, and the locking pegs above the LCD being too short. They have fixed the issue and the newer batch of 6930p I received no longer exihibit the problem where the latch either pops off by itself or cannot be closed properly. It is also documented on their forum.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1289564

(Note: I've found that their servers for the forums don't work all the time, so visit at another time if the page keeps loading without completing)

I recommend anyone having this issue to have their parts replaced at the HP service center.

 

can anyone comment on which LCD panels are used for the WXGA+ 1440, or the Illumilite LED backlit?

I had a compac nc6400 and the display is gross.. but I enjoyed the higher resolution on a small screen.

 

I got your PM. Check your inbox for the reply.

 

Is this problem with the whining still existent. Is there a workaround in the meantime? Maybe someone could comment on the 1280 x 800 display like the brightness and contrast!

Thanks!

 

Yes the CPU whine is still there. HP has not issued a fix.

 

Hi!

Great review! I'm thinking of buying such a laptop, but I'm not quite satisfied with the hardware, therefore I wonder if you know something about:

§ Is it possible to buy it with the P8400 and then upgrade to P9500 or P9600?
§ Can I change the ATI Mobility Radeon 3450 128mb to a ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 256MB (By replacing it my self)?

I'm going to work a great deal in GIS-software, and think I need this. Also, I'll be working with a HD monitor, so the 3470-GPU would suite me better.

No, I don't want the T400,

 

1. Yes, both CPU use the same socket type.
2. No, the GPU on the 6930p is soldered to the mainboard. The 8530p/w however has a MXM port.

 

Thanks for quick and great answer! I can live with the weaker GPU, I guess. Is the HDD easy to change to a Intel X25 SSD? Plug'n'play?

 

Yes. The computer features a SATA port.

 

I know these guys come in different versions... does the product featured here: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1529389

come with svideo out? My 6910P had svideo out, as do the 8510P's...???

 

No the 8510p has HDMI out and VGA out. No s video for the 8510p. 6910p had VGA and S vid. 6930p only has VGA unfortunately.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/321957-321957-64295-3740645-89315-3688868.html