From Apple to an HP Elite 8570w Mobile Workstation custom ordered

I have only used Apple computers until OSX 10.7 and the Retina made me realize that Apple no longer served content creators.

I had already bought an HP Z800 desktop and despite it being slower than my MacPro early 2009 it was far more reliable when batch render 1,000 frame animations using Maya 2012 and Harmony 9.2-10.

So I called HP sales and configured an 8570w Ivybridge with 2.7ghz Quad core, 32GB of RAM, Quadro K2000M GPU, 500GB 7,200 drive, Blue Ray R/W and a 1920X1080 anti-glare screen but not camera as in all my years having this option with apple I have never used it once. And I work in the nude..joke.

I was told it would take 3 weeks to configure.
Later I found out the sales guy sold me a docking station which was old tech at full price of the new 2012 and I returned it. Dealing with returns is like going back to 1983 and you can imagine they have mountains of paperwork handled by clerks using rubber stamps and quill pens. Apple Customer Care wins out.

The 8570w arrived in just over a week! Two weeks earlier than I expected and it is a beauty of a beast. A real tank but it holds a lot of hardware. Sadly the battery was dead. I called up Elitebook support and a next day delivery of a new battery arrived. The standard battery lasted me nearly 3.5 to 4 hours after a full charge, installing and downloading software and a trial render using Maya and Harmony.

The screen is beatiful and having 1920X1080 on a 15 inch screen is great considering the Retina form Apple does not look as good when it dumps its 1490 pixel retina for 1920 and with only 1GB of VRAM.

Then I checked out the WiFi and it is the first Windows computer to accept the Apple WiFi password and so I avoided a tedious long string of WEP numbers.

I then attached a G-drive with USB 2.0 and it worked fine. Then I tried to attach a Lacie V2 Quadro 3.0 drive to the USB 3.o ports and it kept mounting and unmounting until I gave up. I tried an internal drive dock that had USB 3.0 and all seemed well until I tried to transfer a lot of heavy files and I got a Blue Screen Dump. I rebooted and tried again transferring files in folders a few at a time and no problems. I could mount and unmount and play QT files and open heavy Adobe PS files and all was fine. So I think it was the LaCie which worked with the eSATA porter that is part of the USB 2.0 ports.

I read that the new MacBook Pros, Samsung laptops and others have had problems mounting USB 3.0 so maybe this is not just an HP problem.

The one thing I do miss leaving Apple is it after sales support and the wow factor you get when you open the box. With HP it's just a work beast built like a tank and able to survive war zones or corporate espionage.

I am though so far pleased with my purchase that came in at around $2,700. The RAM hardly cost anything and having 2GB of VRAM with a good number of cores means it is future proofed somewhat. i like the modular approach to HP hardware: even the CPU can be swapped out unlike Apple's welding and gluing.

But I would like to know if there are other HP Elitebook owners with USB 3.0 issues or other problems. With Apple there's no shortage of shared info.

 

8560w here:
no Problems with my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB with USB3 or with my Transcend 16GB TS16GJF700 USB stick
do a lot of dealing with .iso-files, backups, VMs running from the disk, so a bit more than just saving the odd file on there

enjoy your 8570w!

 

How is the trackpad and keyboard? I have a Thinkpad T510 and hate the trackpad with those bumps on it.