*HP EliteBook 8760w Owners Lounge*

Just placed my order. These are the key configuration items:

- 8760w Mobile Workstation Quad Core
- FreeDOS
- i7-2920XM
- 17.3 LED FHD UWVA anti-glare DreamColor w/camera (1920x1080)
- integrated 720p HD webcam
- NVIDIA 5010M with 4GB GDDR5 video memory
- Blu-ray R/RE DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL drive
- dualpoint (touchpad + pointstick)
- backlit keyboard
- Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300

Using HP's online chat I got a 28% discount which brought the sticker price of $6486.- down to $4668.69.

The estimated ship date is 9-Jun-2011.

Will post more info when I get my new "toy".


cheers,
Werner

 

Info: The Maintenance and Service Guide can be found under:
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02847569/c02847569.pdf

 

Are the internal drive interfaces really only SATA II (vs III) or am I misreading something?

ANSWER: YES

(answering my own q)

 

Anyone know which of the dock options is the one that supports the most external monitors?

 

Planning to toss FreeDOS and use your own copy of Windows? Cause that price tag is insane...

 

Thanks CyberBeach - I've been wondering about this as well (SATA II vs. III).
This means that the 8760w can't take full advantage of the new generation SSD's.

 

Just curious where you found this answer. I've been comparing the 8760w with the Dell M6600, which does have two SATA III ports. But both systems use the QM67 chip set. Why would HP not use the two SATA III ports provided by the QM67?

 

@trenobus, I am probably in the same situation as you. I was originally planning on purchasing an HP Elitebook 8760w but when their availability was delayed by a month or so, I started to look at the Dell Precision M6600. To my surprise, I think I actually prefer the Dell!

I have had many HP laptops over the years, both professionally and personally, and all of them have been good, reliable computers. Nothing "fancy" for the most part -- although some have been "monsters" in their day -- but I've never had any real problems with them. So obviously, I was looking at HP for my next one.

But when the new, Sandy Bridge-based HP portable workstations were delayed, I started to look at the Dells. With just a couple of exception, the Dells seem to have everything the HPs have and more. Advantages of the Dells over the HPs include:

(1) Bluetooth 3.0 on the Dells vs. 2.1+EDR on the HPs
(2) Optimus is supported with the Nvidia cards on the Dells but not on the HPs
(3) SATA-3 is supported on the Dells but not on the HPs
(4) The Dells are slightly smaller and lighter than the corresponding HPs.

Except for the Optimus support, most people probably don't think most of the Dell advantages are that significant but still. As for the advantages of the HP over the Dells, the only things I could find are:

(1) A slightly larger extended battery available with the HP (100Wh) than with the Dells (97Wh).
(2) An additional battery slice is available with the HP (100Wh) while one is not currently available with the Dell yet.

Basically, the possible advantages of the HP over the Dell comes down to potential battery life but I am thinking that the use of Optimus with the Dell may partially ameliorate this advantage.

The only reason I have not pulled the trigger on the Dell yet is because of my fears about the build quality. To anyone who has had both a Dell Precision workstation-class laptop and an HP Elitebook workstation laptop, how would you compare the quality of each and what would you get now and why?

 

Don't forget that the Dell M6600 offers AMD M8900 which is much better than HP's AMD option. If your workstation requirements don't include CUDA, it puts the Dell at a significant advantage.

 

@knight427, that is another advantage for the Dell but I would go for the Nvidia 3000M on the Dell because of Optimus. I need a laptop that can last on a four or more hour flight. Hopefully, Optimus would help.

 

@WLT, yes I was originally lusting after the 8760w and waiting and waiting and waiting for it. My current HP notebook had some problems when I first got it in early 2004, but HP made it right, even upgrading some components. (My suspicion is that it was actually a stealth recall.) So they've done alright by me.

But thanks mostly to Tomcom's information in the M6600 owners' lounge, I've pulled the trigger on the M6600. I hope I don't really have to wait 5-6 weeks for it, but I've already waited almost a year longer than when I started feeling "the need for speed" (and memory).

I am still curious about the supposed lack of SATA III on the 8760w.

 

We will know for sure if SATA-3 is offered or not only when one of us receives the first production unit. But people have so far found web sites and PDF documents indicating that only SATA-2 is available. It doesn't look good.

 

Does anyone know if the Dell M6600 offers SATA-III?

I find this a rather significant omission from these Elitebooks if true.

 

And what is it about discount using the online chat? How does it work? Is it given just to anybody who uses it?

 

My main OS is Linux and I will install Debian Squeeze on the 8760w.

 

I configured the 8760w and saved it in a shopping cart. Then I opened an online chat and asked if they could match the 28% discount I was reading about on the Internet. The person told me that they could do this and changed the price in the saved shopping cart. I had also the advanced docking station and the five year warranty in the shopping cart, but I did not get a discount on these two items (they were apparently already discounted). Anyway, when I checked out with my saved shopping cart I had the 28% on the 8760w which was a saving of $1.8k.
Just wonder what the HP chat person would have done had I asked for a 35% discount....

 

What about any hardware issues with say the fingerprint reader? do you think Gentoo would be a better bet instead, cos Siorah uses it and he can probably give you the mods necessary for it to work fully...

You should have asked for a larger discount...although would they have given it to you?...

 

The spec sheet for the HP Elitebook 8760 shows that drives provided or offered as options are all Sata II 3gb/s drives, including the description for the drive bay.

That is not 100% authoritative since it is possible that HP only offers SATA II drives and yet the mobo will accept SATA III drives.

So as you say, we shall see...

 

A few messages in this (and similar) discussion threads focus on single points when arguing the pros and cons of one notebook versus the other. However, my new HP 8760w is going to cost me eventually $7k. This is a huge investment for me, and I had long “discussions with myself” if and what to buy. I thought that others might be in a similar position and may want to know why I eventually decided to purchase the 8760w. My apologies if you find this posting way to long.....


Where I'm Coming From

My main computer is a Lenovo ThinkPad T60p, which is now almost five years old. It is using an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (dual core, 2MHz, 4MiB cache, no hyper-threading). The T60p has 4GiB memory installed, but the system can only use 3GiB (due to limitations of the PCI bus address space on that system). An ATI FireGL V5250M (400MHz, 256MiB DDR) is used as graphic card. I have two Corsair SSDs installed (256GB, 220MB/sec read, 200MB/sec write), with the second disk replacing the optical drive in the optical drive bay. I also have a docking station which is connected to an external display, to the network, to USB disks, etc. I have Ubuntu 10.10 installed. Very often I run virtual machines with whatever OS I need to work with.


What I Like About The T60p

The T60p has served me well now for almost five years. The build quality is excellent and the available documentation is great. Especially the HW Maintenance Manual; it lists each and every part that goes into the notebook with its part number and instructions how to take it apart and how to put it back together. All parts are available from third party resellers on the Internet for a reasonable price. I had to replace the keyboard, the systemboard and just recently the fan unit. I simply ordered the replacement parts and followed the instructions. This is not something that one has to do very often (most don't have to do this at all), but it is certainly reassuring to know that any repair can be done - as long as one does not have two left hands


Why I Am Looking For A New Notebook

Since I am running virtual machines quite often on the system, I need lots of memory. The limit of 3GiB with the T60p is no longer sufficient. Installing Windows 2008 with less than 1GiB is no fun and even Linux requires nowadays at least 512MiB if you need more than a headless server.


What I Am Looking For

Linux Compatibility! Since I will run Linux on the notebook, I have to make sure Linux runs on it. All three contenders (W520, M6600, 8760w) have some Linux certifications, but the 8760w is the only one that is offered with FreeDOS as an OS. I am okay with getting a notebook which has Windows pre-installed (actually, I may have to purchase a Windows license anyway – depending on the projects that may be coming up). However, if I can't order a notebook without Windows, I have to assume that the configuration includes some devices which are not (yet?) supported by Linux. I had my fair share of problems working with unsupported devices and I prefer not to! To be able to order the 8760w with FreeDOS is a big plus for me.

More Memory! I was only looking for notebooks with four memory slots and which could be upgraded to 32GiB. However, I will not upgrade to 32GiB right away. These 8GiB modules cost $600.- a piece, whereas you can get a 4GiB module for 1/10 of this. I will upgrade to 16Gib (4x4GiB) immediately. Upgrading to 32GiB may be an option in a couple of years when the price for these modules is less insane.

GPU Computing! Although I don't have any project that requires this, I find this new technology exciting and I would like to learn about it and experiment with it. All three (Intel, AMD/ATI, NVIDIA) support OpenCL.

Fast CPU! Linux is excellent in utilizing CPUs concurrently. Therefore I was only looking into quad core CPUs with hyper-threading. This means the OS can run 8 processes in parallel. In addition, I was also looking into a large on-chip cache which is necessary to keep the cores busy.

Bright Display! I like the display of the T60p. It has no faulty pixels and it is bright enough to use indoors. However, after experiencing a Samsung TV with LED backlight, I would like to have this technology in my notebook too. Watching movies on such a display is a completely different experience.

Two Hard Drives! Replacing the optical drive with a second hard disk in my T60p is okay, but I prefer a notebook which has two disk bays.


How I Compared W520, M6600, 8760w

Based on my very positive experiences with the T60p, I would have gone with the W520. And if the W520 had “system compatibility” with the T60p, I would have selected the W520 months ago. With “system compatibility” meaning that I could continue using the AC/DC power supply units and the docking station.

For a long time I was looking into the M6600 since it has pretty much everything I like to have: memory, cpu, gpu, disk drives, etc. I also like the simplistic design of the M6600. Drawbacks in my opinion are the lack of an IPS display and that I can't order it with FreeDOS or Linux. Another minus is that I could not find a maintenance manual like there is for the W520 and the 8760w (with detailed instructions and part numbers for ordering).

Like the W520 and the M6600, I found that the 8760w has also everything I like to have. And reading reviews on the Internet, the DreamColor display seems to be outstanding. The only question mark is SATA II/III for the internal disks. I could not find any conclusive and authoritative information if the 8760w supports SATA III disks or only SATA II. I would certainly like to have SATA III, but then, I have two very fast SSDs which I will definitely continue to use and which are both SATA II disks (they were way too expensive to be replaced with SATA III disks any time soon). I.e., even if the 8760w supports only SATA II, I would be okay anyway.


Other Aspects

CPU and GPU! I replaced quite a few components in my notebooks so far, but I never upgraded the CPU or the GPU. Either they were soldered in, or the newer types were not compatible, or not supported by the BIOS. And those newer types that were supported and compatible provided only marginal enhancements – not worth the expense and effort. Therefore I prefer to configure my notebook with the top-end CPU/GPU right from the get-go and be done with it. By the time new CPUs/GPUs come to the market with real tangible major enhancements, it is time to get a new notebook anyway.

Graphic Cards! In the early days, when I got my T60p, I had a lot of problems with ATI drivers for the FireGL under Linux. That's why I went with NVIDIA this time.

Service Access Cover! I like the way the M6600 and the 8760w place most components behind a service access cover (my T60p has about two dozen screws in the bottom panel).

HP! I had a lot of hesitations to buy from HP. I once owned a DV9000t and was not impressed – to say the least. It had thermal problems and I sent it back to HP. It took them four months to fix it (in the meantime I bought the T60p) and just recently I found out that HP designed only one heat pipe into the DV9000t, leaving the GPU without cooling! But then, I read there is a huge difference between HP's consumer product and their business lines.

Please remember: all of the above is just my opinion!

 

I think Aikimox on this forum pointed this out...but the 8760w has only one cooling fan for both CPU and GPU...

Problem????

 

Yes, it has only one fan. However, as shown in the "Maintenance and Service Guide", it has two independent heatpipes, one for the processor and one for the graphics board.

 

oh...well anyway Aiki was a little miffed that there was only a single fan which was why he went back to the mothership but I didn't know about two heatsinks...

 

You might have to use one of the Linuxes from the spec sheet for that. (SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0).
I remember when I got my 8730w few years ago, Linux was an important requirement for me too (and one of the reasons for not choosing the M6400 of the time as it had a strange chipset configuration which I feared could affect compatibility). I put OpenSUSE on it and the first months of usage weren't exactly rosy (audio was quite a problem to get right). After some linux upgrades appeared in the next months, everything was OK, but again, not using one of the certified distros gave me some initial headaches.
Keep us updated, I'm really curious to see how Linux works on the system.

I really find it surprising that indeed they don't mention linux at all in their compatibility listings. It has the option of an IPS display but I think it can't be ordered yet.

That will surely arrive soon, usually thy don't post those immediately but I'm pretty sure it'll be online. They had it for the previous models: Documentation

If previous experience is useful, I can say that indeed I had no compatibility problems on the 8730w with nVidia under Linux.
There are some threads concerning 8740w thermal problems, you might want to check them. I found my 8730w to be very reliable and I had absolutely no thermal problems even in the case of continuous, long intense usage (rendering, simulations). But that is with a dual core and a 2700M card. A quad core with a recent card and lots of memory might be another story

Dragos

 

I have a request in with HP to clarify this. But it occurred to me: if you consider the 230W Advanced docking station has both an internal drive and an eSata port; including the two internal drive bays, the laptop eSata port and the optical bay, we have a total of 6 Sata connections available. This would map to the 6 available ports on the Platform Controller Host, and would imply that ports 0 and 1 which are SATA III must be in use, and reasonably for the two primary bays.

That is unless the 230W has some sort of port multiplication going on. I remain hopeful!

In addition if you look at max IOPS in SATA III drives such as the Vertex 3, we will just barely max out the bandwidth of SATA II when pushing random 4k read/writes at max IOPS on those drives. So unless it's stream-rate intensive performance you're after, you should still see a big bump in performance on SATA III SSDs.

My 2c.

 

I'm no SSD expert but AnandTech repeately mentions that you should just get the Vertex 2 if you don't have Sata III.

 

Oh to have silly money to test this sort of thing out .

 

Agreed - we are very fortunate to be worrying about this kind of stuff.

 

The 8740w also has 2 heatsinks but the bottleneck is the fan. I went through many modding attempts on the 8740w to reduce the load heat/temps (adding copper plates to the heatsinks, increasing the pipes surface area with thermal glue, using the best TIM, improving the fan controls, etc), - both the M6500 and W70xx have by far superior cooling using dedicated fans for the CPU and GPU. Plus, they never get as loud as the Elitebook under load.

Those are just my 2 cents. Many people never even need to worry about the temps and never stress their systems (gaming, benchmarking, etc). But just for comparison, My M18x has 3 fans and it's far more quiet under full load than my Elitebook was. If I needed a business class notebook right now, I'd have no choice but to grab a M6600 as the only remaining 17" mobile workstation with good cooling and IPS.

 

@Aiki...And M6600 doesn't even have IPS at the moment so that's out...did they finally ship you the English KB you calmly asked for from AW?

 

Yes it does - offers SATA 3 SSDs for both primary and secondary drives - 128GB and 256GB.

 

Not sure of the brand of the SSDs - I think I read where someone said they're Crucial

 

Just MO, but people are placing far more emphasis on printed specs than is appropriate. Look instead at the horrendous quality problems the previous models from HP especially have had and think hard before buying a new workstation of the 8xx0w vintage. Even the 8740w and 8540w with DC2 had a return rate over 50% and the average DC2 screen required 3+ Replacements before people gave up. Look at customer satisfaction, not printed specs. Even an iPS display is not worth suffering unlimited quality problems to have, nor is it worth paying 25% more for an HP just because it has a few specs that make it look a bit better than the competition from Dell and Lenovo. Read back to the posts on this forum and you'll see the words to the wise.

 

I'm more inclined to wonder about where your figures are obtained. Users in this forum are clearly a minority of the 8XXX users across the world.

 

That does sound pretty catastrophic . If true, one would have to wonder why HP wouldn't just pack it in .

 

No response from HP yet, but a little digging turned this up in the 8460p owners thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/hp-business-class-notebooks/65221d1305388049-hp-elitebook-8460p-owners-lounge-8460p_sata.jpg

From post #312 by Bear. Looks like we get SATA III!

 

IPS will be added along with the 5010M (no ETA yet but rumors are pointing towards end of June).

Yes, got the English KB, loving the machine. I can even tolerate the glossy screen but will upgrade to RGB LED Matte anyway.

 

Probably end july with all of the delays that have been there...

 

@Robbilau: according to the german Product Manager for PSG Laptops 8560p/w and 8760w has 2 internal SATA III ports, the eSATA port is SATA II.

So I´ll either use my Crucial C300 128GB or use a new 240 Sandforce 22xx.

 

I ordered my 8760w on 24-May-11. The estimated ship/deliver dates were 9-Jun-11/14-Jun-11. Today (9-Jun-11) ,I got the dreadful email from HP:

We regret to inform you that your order xxxxxxxx has encountered a delay due to a temporary material shortage. We are working to fulfill your order as soon as possible and we will contact you again within 5 days if your order has not shipped.


Compare this to Apple. On 27-May-11 I ordered an iPad2 for my wife. The expected ship date was originally 13-Jun-11 with an estimated delivery of 17-Jun-11. Last night I got the email that the iPad has shipped with an estimated delivery date of 15-Jun-11.

Talk about "meeting customer's expectations...." Apple knows about it. HP? Not!

 

I got it too! :-( oh well

 

@hbootz - thanks for the confirmation, that breaks the Dell vs HP tie for me .

 

OK, next niggly question...I see no solid confirmation that the FirePro m5950 supports 10-bit output. Can anyone confirm this? I'll be using the machine for Photoshop, not CAD so I don't need Quadro muscle. However only the Quadro makes reference to 10-bit support.

 

i ordered mine on 5-24-11. it was supposed to have shipped on 6-9-11, but not only did i not get an email saying it was delayed, but the order number was canceled and a new order number was generated.

they didn't even email to let me know. had to call in and all of this was told to me over the phone. estimated ship date is now june 27th.

is there anything that can be done to expedite this? this is ridiculous.

 

Just got the new estimated ship date: 21-Jun-2011.
Let's see how that's going to work.
If this get canceled again, I will probably cancel the order and reconsider Dell or Lenovo.

 

I'd imagine the FirePro does support 10-bit, since even my laptop offers that option (though with no display to match). One caveat: enabling 10-bit seems to disable aero; killing some ATI process brings it back.

 

Thanks, @DanaGoyette.

Looks like we can't get the DreamColor+FirePro combo in South Africa after all, and no custom build option either. Warranty is restricted to the SA/EU model part number, so buying one from the US is out. Quadro 3000m it is.

 

They keep pushing back shipment dates. Now 27 june for an order 23 May, and they admit they have not a clue on this, whenever it leaves Shanghai. . .

My bet is mid July . ..

 

Smartbuy or CTO?

 

the order of our 8760 has also been pushed back to july 12th

 

Another delay. Just got the email from HP that the order is now scheduled to ship on 27-Jun-2011. I called them and they granted me a 10% discount to compensate for the delay. This additional discount would bring my total discount to 38% (28% + 10%) and my $7k best-of-the-best laptop would cost me only $4.5k (though this is still a big investment for me). Anyway, that price is hard to beat.

Now let's wait until next Monday....