*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 1*

Remember, June 21st was the D-day I hope HP will keep his promise as they did with the backlit keyboard launch

 

I finished my benchmarks comparing 720qm to 820qm, Let me know if there are any other benchmarks you want to see. These systems are currently identical other than CPU. I'll be shipping the first system out soon.

 

That's pretty frig'n perfect. I was wondering this very thing; whether to splurge for the 820 for the nominal cost was worth it. I thought actually it would buy over 10% increase but I see in all but one case not even that. Though in the larger spectrum of things I might have been knickle&diming not going for the $150 upgrade, I guess I'll stick with what I ordered.

Much thanx for the time and all those numbers. It answered exactly what I wanted to know. rep for you!

 

The gains are fairly modest for sure(5%-8%). I did not find it worth paying for, but only b/c I set a $2k wall I didn't want to cross (I was going to get the 820 on the 8540w, downgrading to the 720 was part of switching over to 8740w).

Anyway, I just looked at how much the upgrade would have cost me on my original order. The increase to my purchase price would have been about 5.7%. Since the CPU effects your entire machine, I think it is reasonable to look at the markup in relation to the entire cost. From this perspective, the upgrade cost is nearly identical to the performance increase. Especially b/c we all max out our CPUs 24/7, right? Also, the more you spend on other upgrades, the more cost-efficient the upgrade becomes!

 

When is the Quadro Fermi coming on the 8740w?

 

@m8o: How were you able to order the DC2? I don't see it on the drop-down menu doing a CTO trial order. Did you call in?

So Monday through Thursday, HP is having a four-day conference of some sort in Las Vegas. Maybe the DC2 display will be announced then??? After all, Monday is 6/21. Grr...I've been waiting for four months now...Let's see this thing already lol....

 

For the Quadro Fermi, I ask to nvivia and they said that the mobile version of the Fermi don't available before the deskstop version it will be the FX 4900 and FX 5900. And these GPU should come on september. On the other hand a seller of HP said that maybe availible at the same time of the dreamcolor the next week. We will see if it is come very soon or in a long time.

 

Easier said than done Aikimox I've tried a lot of things, and I can't deterministically reproduce the crashes outside of sleep+resume -- they just happen out of the blue. Also, my hunch is that the root cause is common to both issues -- if we fix one, we fix both. My current theory is that the system gets confused about how hot the temperature actually is, and turns on the fan. In some cases (typical sleep/resume) it's only a little confused, and it turns on the fan at mid-level. But other times it gets majorly confused, cranks up the fan to full blast, and crashes soon after since the fan isn't reducing what it thinks the temperature is.

If we can identify the patch/update/change/whatever that first triggers the fan issue to start showing up, then that should be a solid lead for HP to track the problem down. This is just my working theory at this point -- I'm certainly open to any other ideas/suggestions.

If disabling sleep were to somehow make the problem go away, that'd be an interesting datapoint, but unless that bit of knowledge by itself is enough for HP to fix the problem, it wouldn't be a viable workaround for me. I'd still end up returning the system since the fast power-on of resuming from sleep is important to me.

 

I remember a problem I have with an older HP notebook:

waking from sleep does not work at all, black screen, full fan speed only. The problem is the ethernet port, if power saving of the ethernet port is off all works but if it is on it seems it could not recover from sleep. But I am not sure if this helps but it could be again some third party device of the 8740w which causes the problem...

 

Thanks. I also heard that Nvidia will announced Quadro Fermi on july 12th.. I was hoping to be able to order one of the 8740w or 8540w with a quadro fermi before the end of july.

 

Just to provide some evidence to my paranoia over the "power saving" or "clock boosting" features of the i7s:

How to kill the desktop i7-980x (the $1000 CPU...) FAST

Basically, if you disable 5 of the 6 cores, and disable HyperThreading, be prepared to kill your CPU FAST!

From my experience at work on embedded systems, I am not surprised of this problem. Dynamic power/speed adjustment is hard to do.

Now I am NOT saying that this is the problem that you guys are seeing. But I am just suggesting that these "cool" new features may not be the best thing to have enabled for the long (or some cases short) run...

 

@ Kartik,
Could you try this?

That's exactly my point.
The rule of thumb with all power saving features - Keep them disabled! No system can be 100% stable with all of them enabled. In many IT departments that I worked for, power saving modes are disabled within windows policy restrictions! So, users don't even see those options on their own laptops, lol
If you need a fast resume - get an SSD or at least a hybrid drive (ex. Momentus XT).

 

I tried to disable the Turbo Mode earlier but could only find a temporary way to do this with the i7 turbo tool. If you (or others) can list all of the different things that would make sense to disable, and how and where to disable them, I can take a look.

 

I am very surprised by the release date of fermi quadro for desktop. The quadro version of the 470 GTX is already available it is the Tesla c2050 ( Tesla C2050 / C2070 GPU Computing Processor) and the c2070 (GTX 480) is annonced for the Q3 2010 (I believe september) but not for retail sale only in Tesla system (still more expensive!). I'm also interrested by the fermi. How do you know that the release date is the 12th july? For ending I give you the answer of nvidia:
"Currently there have been no announcements on the Quadro line of Fermi mobile GPU’s. Keep checking back on our site for further announcements on Quadro Fermi Mobile. Our current Quadro lineup can be viewed here NVIDIA Quadro FX - Mobile Solutions. Currently we do not have any Quadro mobile cards with the model number FX 5900M.
Note: The mobile GPU’s are usually closely behind the desktop since the desktop Quadro Fermi GPU’s also have not been announced or released it could be several months before notebooks using the Fermi based Quadro mobile are available for purchase."

 

I mean, disable the power saving for Ethernet controller (Device Manager -> network adapters -> Your card -> Properties -> Advanced/Power management, turn off (if there are any) power saving options.

 

LoL... it went like this...

o- On 4/19 I decided I'd splurge for the 8740w deciding since I needed a laptop to do PP of RAWs of my digital photography and DC2 was nothing short of revolutionary and the absolute best display ever to be put in a laptop, but found I couldn't make use of the 18% coupon (that's been on their website for months now) during check-out ... so called in on 4/20. DC2 was available for order on that date. The date is important here.

o- I was randomly routed to a salesman that talked me into buying that day and gave me I think it was 24% off.
edit: actually, he didn't talk me into it, I wa going to buy that day anyway. But if he wanted to feel that by giving me that discount he'd talk me into buying that day, I was willing to play along.

o- I mentioned that I got a great discount here but not what it was, and a few people IM'ed me. They were working with a sales agent who refused to move on the price previously. I shared what the guy gave me and his contact info.

o- They called my sales man too, and ordered machines w/the DC2 display. Others started asking them who they dealt with too, and more and more people ended-up calling and using Eric (but didn't get DC2).

o- Perhaps those orders just after me ordering with DC2 were the straw that broke the camel's back, perhaps pure coiincidence, but by the next day after those orders, DC2 was removed from the CTO page.

It is now two days shy of 2 months later. ...lol.

 

Ugh I am so annoyed at HP right now. My package hasn't moved from ANCHORAGE, Alaska for the past 2 days because of a US customs issue. Fedex claims HP didn't file their paperwork correctly. Keep in mind my estimated delivery date was 6/16, so it's already late.

I did some research into the issue and apparently there's a long slickdeals.net forum thread about this same problem dating back to 2008. Apparently HP's Shanghai warehouse routinely screws up the paperwork, resulting in unnecessary delays of laptop shipments.

 

I saw this rumor VR-Zone Mobile - Nvidia: Mainstream Fermi in "mid-part of the year" at vr-zone. The CFO mentioned at some conference about the newer core GF104 (which should be cooler) will be Quadro and Tesla. Then on the same page, there's a link that vr-zone picked up about another rumor from xbitlab (and a few other site) that mentioned July 12th as the day they will announce the new GF104 core.

Ofcourse then it will be mostly desktop quadro first, but I'm hoping the mobile version will come out right after that.

I'm really hoping by the end of July (or August realistically) somebody (HP or Dell or Lenovo, preferably HP) will include the Fermi quadro as an option. Some on the website mentioned September.

 

Ok -- I tried that, didn't seem to have any effect. I still got a higher fan level when resuming from sleep.

 

Another observation -- sometimes when shutting down, or going into an unsuccessful sleep mode, the charging light will blink amber until it crashes. According to the service manual, Blinking amber occurs when a battery that is the only available power source has reached a low level. But I see this happening even when the system is plugged in, and even when the battery is full. There must be some other undocumented situation that causes this to happen.

 

I have the blinking amber charging light sometimes, too, before the power off after writing all data to the hard disk during going to sleep with my 8730w (OS is XP, though) It is blinking 3 seconds or so and then it finally shuts off, battery and power supply connected, never noticed this during normal shut down but this is because I never use it and only hibernation

It happens sometimes, but not very often, I guess 30 times it goes to sleep without blinking and then once with this blinking

however, it does wake up without a problem

 

Just heard back from HP support. My case is being escalated, and I should hear back within a few days from the next level folks. They may want me to ship back my unit as well.

 

FYI: Ever since I went down to 4GB RAM on 2D in my new system (and stopped Sleep/Wake testing) I've only had one crash. I'm convinced there is some issue with RAM in slots 3 and 4 that is in addition to to exacerbates the root cause of crashes. I'll reinstall the other RAM when I get caught up on my work and can afford the risk of more down time.

EDIT: guess what happened mere minutes after posting this?

 

Ermmm....you won the national lottery?

 

No, even better, the Yahoo/MSN/eBay International Lottery!

 

Sweet, didn't know they had a lottery.

I just remembered why I have a hate/love relationship with technology.

I'm waiting for DC2 to get the 8740w. I'm also waiting for G3 X25-M SSDs. And I also want Sandy Bridge... but that'd probably make it a 8750w.

So what to do...

 

Sorry to side track, but newer tech doesn't always means better. I'd actually get some good G2 or even G1 X25s if I can. The newer gen SSDs will have lower retention time (number of rewrites) in addition, the page size is doubled from 128 to 256 (8KB page size) which means that more cells are rewritten more often...

While we are on the subject, don't use SSDs for long term storage either, since as the transistor size gets smaller and smaller, the amount of time that data can be retained in a cell w/o having the drive powered, gets shorter.

Some articles that are worth reading:
[Feature] SSDs Challenge HDDs, but Quality a Problem [Part 3] -- Nikkei Electronics Asia -- June 2009 - Tech-On!
Is NAND flash about to hit a dead end? - Feature - Techworld.com
Successor to Post Flash Memory Approaching Volume Production -- Nikkei Electronics Asia --May 2010 - Tech-On!

TBH, I am really really upset with the "disposable" trend of the current consumer market (made massively popular by Apple...). A lot of newer products are not built to last, but to only give great first impression now.

 

Personally I'm OK with that trend so long as HP continues to send me an upgraded replacement for my 8740w every week.

 

@kartik_subbarao
In case if it's possible to get that info from your unit, could you please note the ID of system board that you have right now. I guess that it has part number 595700-001.

It'd be interesting to compare it with want HP will return to you back. Does the fix will require the change of the motherboard, or may be BUIS or something else?

Thanks

 

Here are pics of my 8740w s

new in front


new on left






lots of keys





from above






removing reg keyboard from new...note 2 RAM in slots 1 and 4 (there are 2 more in 2 and 3 on bottom of laptop)



things are getting messy


backlit keyboard is on top...note white color to reflect light and extra connector for power (copper ribbon right of center)



xtra connector goes here (see red pen)...this is inside old unit, note the RAM schematic which is hidden if you have RAM in slot 4



and here we have the backlit keyboard installed in the new laptop...it wasn't set quite right...fixed it later

 

Very nice pics!
Now, if only those beasts could stop crashing....

 

Got a reply from Greg yesterday..Just confirmation of the good news that DC2 will be available on 21st June(early next week). They have completed their certification process. No specifics yet on the panel.

 

Good news! So Monday may mark the return of IPS to laptops? <drool>

And yes, "newer does not always mean better" is right! Look at what happened with Lenovo ThinkPads as of the T61/p models. People are installing keyboards from 2005 and 06 to replace brand new ones even on the high-end W workstation models because the new ones can't hold a candle to the older, *better* ones.

I'm also (kinda) waiting for the latest Gen. Intel SSD's. I have an 80GB Intel X18-M G1 right now, and if the price is right, and after (extremely) heavy use, it continues to work like a champ! Once the G3's hit the market, and depending on their price/features ratio, I might just jump on a couple of 160GB G2's for a lot less and be happy!

Do we know what, besides capacity probably, will be new about the Gen. 3 Intel SSD's? Any compelling reasons to wait? (I've gotten good at waiting for this DC2 panel...)

The 8740w will/would be my first ever NON-ThinkPad laptop. Yikes...

 

Well, I'm here with some bad news - my laptop top crashed for the first time a little while ago. I wasn't doing anything but browsing morning news. I had no warning whatsoever either - the fan did not come on or anything. Afterwards I checked the event log and, no surprise, no related events. So, for a while I was thinking there was perhaps just a bad batch of these laptops and I managed to get a good one. At this point I don't know if there are ANY non-crashing versions out there. Crap.

 

Ahhh, so close, yet so far away....

My laptop arrived at my local FedEx this morning. It's only a few miles from where I live but it's not available for pickup yet.

I hope they shipped out all the bad ones before mine. :laugh:

 

@knight427
Thank you for the set of nice pictures.

@Tyraxus
That's really bad news. I hoped that at least some 8740w laptops will work flawlessly. It looks like it's not the case. Who from participants of thread is still running this laptop without any crash? Looks like there is no one left...

Computers should never crash! It's extremely important. Especially professional computers. My old DELL I8100 I'm typing this post on (and I've bought it in 2001) has never crashed, ever... And, BTW, talking about "the newer is always better", it has the best keyboard that I have to see yet on any new laptop. The only thing that kills it is not the CPU speed as you may expect, it's an artificial limit on installed memory, created by Intel's chipset. Running VM's I need more memory, but I can't install any new chip (while there is plenty physically compatible to choose from). Thank you Intel for intentionally killing good products.

What is the point of buying an expensive workstation (it has a price x5 times more then common laptops on the market) if you can loose your daily work (or even more) at any time while it's crashing unexpectedly... It's not a professional station, even if HP ads it as "Aircraft-inspired construction designed for a business rugged lifestyle for those needing maximum reliability and durability."

I'm glad that I found this very long (and interesting to read and watch) thread before buying 8740w. I'll be more cautious now.

 

I agree. These machines are beautiful (much more than a Pavilion).

It's a shame to find those crashes in a workstation computer of this range. But, I said this before, nowadays it's almost impossible to find any sophisticated computer product without a minor glitch. And I mean 'sophisticated', because if you buy a mainstream product, like a TN panel or a cheap netbook, it's very likely it will be in good condition. In fact, my 2 IPS NEC monitors ('pro-grade' devices, not mainstream) have had faults too in the past (repaired by the service center). The question is you invest a lot of money in a top-class product and you cannot (and shouldn't) expect any fault when you buy it. What's the reason? Well, I think it's cost saving mainly, and this affects quality control processes, because these processes cost money (quite) to manufacturers. Companies want to save a lot of money on manufacturing and earn another lot of money selling their products. Of course, this is BAD and UNACCEPTABLE for the end-user (you pay a high quantity to get a premium product in PERFECT condition) but, sadly, this is the market trend and we, the users, cannot change this trend.

So fingers crossed with the DreamColor 2 panel. Bear in mind this is a very exclusive product and I hope HP have done a comprehensive testing to avoid unpleasant surprises for the user.

@Knight427:
Are the letters of the keys of the backlit keyboard transparent to illuminate themselves?

 

Too bad, indeed. There's one more faults free system out there, AFAIK.

 

Hmm, I can't seem to be able to find the motherboard ID. There's a serial number and a "universal unique ID", but nothing that looks like a motherboard ID. Doing some searching, it looks like many HP motherboards are custom made and HP makes its own BIOS.

 

My initial impression was that the letters were identical between the two. But upon closer inspection I can see some subtle differences.

Here is the backlit keyboard through a cheap jeweler's loupe. It was hard to get a decent shot, so I did not try it on the regular keyboard.


Here is macro shot of the backlit keyboard with the camera lens propping up the camera (small point-n-shoot). You can kind of see that the letters are just slightly depressed and painted white, but not too thick so light can get through (back light is off in the shot).


Here is an identical shot of the regular keyboard. You can see that the letters have a slightly raised film over them. I could just barely feel the raise with my fingers before I looked very close, now I can feel it more easily since I know it's there.


So, there is some difference in the lettering, but i did not notice it until your question prompted me to look very close.

 

Do you think the raised film on the non-backlit keyboard is the "durakey finish"?

 

Possibly, that was the first thing I thought of when I noticed it. But that implies that the backlit keyboard has no durakey finish. While the backlight will ensure I can always see the keys, I am wondering if the paint in the depressions might start to wear away over time. I guess I'll make sure to complain about any wear I see before my 3yr warranty is up.

 

@knight427:

Thank you for your replies and nice photos

And a last question about the backlit keyboard: Are the letters visible in complete darkness? (i.e. with the screen turned off and without ambient light). I know it doesn't make sense, I'm just curious.

 

NO! Please don't think that!!!

The backlit keys are MUCH better, if those pictures are correct!!

Read here: Key printing Method

From the picture, the non-backlit keys uses the CHEAP
Pad Printing keys:

The Backlit keys looks like a variant (maybe cheaper):
Double shot injection molded

Which make sense, since to get back light to shine through, you can't have keys that have letters printed on them.

I am actually pretty surprised and happy that the backlit keys are using that kind of caps. Now I REALLY want my 8740w

 

Maybe it is better to have waited this long for, hopefully, a very well tested product that went through QA, was rejected in March, and, apparently, has successfully gone through QA the second time around.

 

Looks like shortly after its release for 8740w that screen will be available everywhere. Maybe, it's just a marketing move and no extreme testing was ever done.
Just a thought of course, but it's totally in sync. with LG and their planned release of notebook IPS panels, IIRC.

 

It doesn't have to be double shot injection molded. It could be just clear plastic with the black painted on.

 

I've been thinking that, too. HP will likely be joined very shortly by other manufacturers but what about the other specs of this specific panel? Naturally, DreamColor is HP marketing terminology, just as Flexview was for the IBM ThinkPad's. What about the billion colors, high color gamut, high contrast ratio, etc.? Will all these specs simply become a commodity?

 

Yes, of course! That's the whole point behind backlighting, right?

 

I think so. It's not like HP is doing things from scratch. They just implement the new standard. Their DC1 panels were just regular RGB LED screens (TN, 8-bit per color) AFAIK.
I do not expect miracles here. But the good thing is that they are going to be the first or one of the first to implement the new IPS panels in laptops.