HP EliteBook 8440w Review

Mine will be up for sale as soon as my TM2 arrives (and if I'm satisfied with it)
P8600, ATI HD3450, 4GB DDR2, original 160GB HDD w/ XP installed, might be willing to include one of my Hitachi 7k500 500GB HDD w/ Win7 Pro installed. Also have the secondary 8 cell battery and Upgrade Bay for secondary HDD. less than 3 months old, like new condition

 

I don't know if this holds true for Canada, but in the US the W comes with 3yr on-site, the P is mail-in. One other small difference is the wireless card. Put all that together and I think the W is a much better value.

 

Agree - in the US (factoring in the 3yr on-site) the W is clearly the better value. Unfortunately in 'Canadia' the W (along with the P) is mail-in (3/3/0) only. That said, the W still remains a compelling package vs the P. In absence of the aforementioned warranty upgrade.. is the discrete graphics controller + 9-cell battery + different wireless card + gunmetal grey color worth the extra $145 + tax for the W?... yeah, probably. And then of course there's the matter of bragging rights in acquiring the top model...

 

It's weird though... on the HP Canada site it does say 3/3/0, but I have seen a few Canadian places list it as 3/3/3. For example, this .pdf file given out to resellers lists all the "w" models as having a 3/3/3 warranty.

http://www.hp.com/canada/promotions/commercial/psg/Feb-2010-promo.pdf

When you look at it that way, obviously $145 is nothing for wifi card, battery, processor, etc but originally I was looking at the cheaper FN092UT model... when you calculate the difference between those, assuming US price model difference, it's more like $220 USD for a slightly better processor, better resolution screen and 9 instead of 6 cell. Stuff I'm willing to give up... unfortunately, not available in Canada for a reasonable price... too bad. I guess I'll just have to suck it up and get the FN093UT

 

Is there any video review of this laptop yet?

Thanks!

 

Is there any one who ordered from their website who has received their laptop yet?

 

Unfortunately, no video reviews for the 8440w yet, but there is one for the similar 8440p.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfZidSCotTw

 

The resolution 1600 x 900 seems quiet high on a 14'. Icons and text seem very small as we can see here : http://www.chipchick.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/elitebook.jpg

I am hesitating between FN093UT (1600 x 900) and FN092UT (1366 x 768).

Does anyone get a FN092UT in order to compare?

What do you recommend?

 

How is your vision? What applications are you using? People with good vision can handle the 1600x900. Also, certain applications benefit from having a larger area to work with. If you find it too small, you can always scale Windows, but some programs have compatibility issues (don't scale properly) - which can be annoying.

 

I don't have a so good vision. I will mainly use the laptop for web browsing, office applications, a bit of video editing.

For instance, I currently have a 8530w with 1680 x 1050 resolution and text size seems sometimes small. I guess I wouldn't be able to read if I had the one with 1900 x 1200 screen resolution.

So in any case, you would advise me to buy the FN093UT with the highest resolution?

 

I love it, I wish I could afford it though

 

There's a point i don't understand. When people ask if a certain resolution will be to small why doesn't anybody point out that this is usually the max resolution possible. not the only one.
I have max 1400x1050 on my current Asus (good old 15") and I can reduce that to any increment below (800x600 if i want to).
Can't we do that in current laptop screen.
My understanding is that if I go for 1600x900, I could just set the graphic display to something below that (let's say 1366x768)... no need for text scalling or other things...
Am I missing something?

 

For most notebook screens, setting a resolution below native will end up with a fuzzier and less sharp image, due to pixel scaling (unless you do an exact divisor of your native, you'll end up with something like a pixel and some fraction to represent a pixel, and thus the edges of things will be slightly blurred). I think with text scaling, it's a little easier to make sure the lines don't get fuzzy. I'm not entirely certain, as I've pretty much always run at native unless something else was needed (like certain old games fixed at 640x480...).

 

Fonts, icons and window decorations can be resized on all modern operating systems, while maintaining the very high native screen resolution - it will just make big fonts/icons look sharper!

I really don't understand why anyone would want a lower resolution than the max available. There are literally no downsides.

 

And if all we had to deal with were operating systems, then we'd have no problems. The issue is when you get to programs. Not all programs scale well, and the OS has very little control over how any specific program presents its visual output to your screen. Let's say, for example, that program XYZ outputs text in a window in a fixed font size and will not let you resize that size. While you may be able to resize XYZ's window all you like, if XYZ does not give you the ability to resize the text within its window, you'll be stuck with whatever size text it lets you see. Now, since font size is scaled to pixels, by using a lower resolution on the same size screen, you get "bigger" pixels, and thus bigger text. The problem is, as I said, that running non-native resolutions means that each "pixel" is actually a pixel and a fraction, and thus you'll end up with fuzzy outlines as your video driver tries to use the pixels it actually has to simulate the pixels you want it to show.

Also, for extremely graphically demanding applications (such as gaming), reducing your resolution reduces the workload on your graphics processor. As can be shown in numerous gaming benchmarks, running a game at, say, 1920x1080 vs 1600x900 will often lose you 5-10 FPS, due to the fact that the higher resolution screen has more to render, and thus suffers an according processing hit.

 

I have never seen this behaviour.. all programs I've used either use the system font settings or are adjustable. Have any examples of programs exhibiting this behaviour?

..but you have the option of running the game at a higher resolution if you want (or if the game isn't as demanding / you have a good graphics card), or switching it to a lower resolution if you must.

But if you are looking at a high resolution photo, using photoshop, AutoCAD etc, or doing literally anything else then higher resolution is better.

I'd argue that the a small amount of "pixel blurring" caused by running a demanding game at a non-native resolution is a very small price to pay.

 

Speaking of resolutions and performance, I've found that having a high-dpi display (1920x1200 at 15.4") actually can make things better: because the pixels are so tiny, I mostly don't need antialiasing -- and can in fact run games such as HL2DM at native resolution.
In addition, for the few times I do have to reduce resolution, the panel scaling acts as a sort of free (though low-quality) antialiasing.
My current laptop is the first system I've ever been able to use all day long, with next to no eyestrain.
The only other downside: some software does break badly with Windows Vista / Windows 7 DPI scaling -- Microsoft's own software tends to behave very well, though.

 

For myself, no. I run in 1920x1200 native on a 17" screen, so I've never really had a problem. I think most of the programs I've heard of with issues are largely legacy programs from the XP or earlier era, although perhaps DanaGoyette can mention some, seeing as they mentioned that some software breaks badly with Vista/7 DPI scaling.

Oh, there's one possibility I can think of. What about movie/video players? I don't know that you'll be able to easily or effectively scale the content of a video file without an editor.

I suspect you'll still suffer a performance hit, because even though you're scaling it to a lower resolution, your graphics drivers still have to calculate what needs to be shown for each pixel that actually exists on your screen. The issue is simply that you have to calculate what needs to be shown on (1920x1080 - 1600x900) 633600 more pixels (44% more pixels on the 1920x1080 compared to the 1600x900). So even though there's less to calculate in the first place, it still has to be extrapolated to the pixels that actually exist to be shown, so you'll still suffer some sort of hit, I think.

And while I'll agree that higher resolutions are often better, it's not always the case. If, for example, you're dealing with animation, going to a higher resolution may mean the difference between a fluid animation, or a jerky one.

Also, it's really (as this whole argument is, really) a matter of personal preference. For a lot of the people that would care about the FPS difference in the first place, many of them also would be unwilling to deal with the pixel blurring of a non-native resolution.

 

Does anyone know if the 8440w touchpad support multi-touch gestures such as two finger scroll and two finger right click? It is a Synaptic pad, so I'd imagine this is supported, but I'd like to make sure.

 

Hi undoIT, did you check that thread? http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=471346
That might work with the elitebook series

 

Thanks antsiou. I don't see any 8440 listed there, but they are using Synaptics pads so it should work. Next question is whether the multi-touch works in Linux?

 

Can someone also tell what is the make and model number of the hd+ screen?

or just add on with their own thoughts about how their 8440w's have fared so far?