*HP EliteBook 8760w Owners Lounge*

Anybody know if the AMD M8900 will be compatible with this if bought aftermarket?

Not thrilled with graphics cards price with the nvidia 5010.

 

I'm betting it won't be. At least with my laptop, there were 4 possible heatsinks -- one for each combination of {dual,quad} core CPU and {ATI, NVIDIA} GPU. I'd also imagine they may do something with the video BIOS.

You're probably better off getting the GPU and display you really want, and a "close enough" CPU.

 

The cheapest I can get the HP 8760 with a dream color and the nvidia 5010 is $3400 + tax (after a 28 = 30% discount from HP).

Frustrating that the Dell m6600 with the m8900 and IPS display (when it comes out) won't be much more than 2199 for basically the same amount of GPU horsepower.

 

I'm also on the fence between the 8760w with 5010M/DreamColor, and the M6600 with what they offer now - the 4000M, and no IPS...

The M6600 strong selling point is Optimus (battery life, and multi-monitor support), plus the 1600 MHz RAM, plus the SSD minicard with the OS and 2x 750GB 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 (while still keeping the optical drive).

But delivery time is also and important factor - can anyone who ordered their 8760w with 5010M confirm their delivery time, please?

The thing is that perhaps it's not Dell's delay, but nVidia is not quite ready with their 5010M implementation - so even though HP is offering it now, it doesn't mean they will deliver it much sooner?

 

Today I got another email from HP. The estimated shipping date is now 30-Jun-2011. I called HP and they could not tell me what particular part is holding up the production.

The history for the estimated shipping date so far is:
- on 24-May-2011 (my order date): 9-Jun-2011
- on 9-Jun-2011: 27-Jun-2011
- on 27-Jun-2011: 30-Jun-2011

 

I'd say it's the 5010M that might be holding up the production of your unit; had a chat with Dell representative today and he said they are not offering theirs yet because the in-depth QA tests prove some additional fine-tuning of the BIOS needs to be done. He even went so far as saying that HP, on the other hand, is going to use their customers as Beta-testers

Of course I'm only speculating here (the guy was obviously advocating for Dell) - so I'll repeat my question:

- has anyone actually gotten their 8760w with the Quadro 5010M yet?

 

my order with the 5010m has been put back to july 12th atm.

its the 5010M thats the holdup.

Sio

 

It shipped!!!!

The shipment notice does not specify an expected delivery date nor a tracking number, but the original delivery date was five days past the shipping date. Assuming this is still the case, I should be receiving my 8760w next Tuesday/Wednesday.

 

great, you should be the first to get one (and we hope to see a few photos soon )

 

Yep - looking forward to a review (of the Quadro 5010M in particular).

 

Now I got the FedEx tracking number.
It is still in Shanghai.
Expected delivery date is Thursday, 7-Jul-2011.

 

This is amazing . . .

I have been quoted 3 July ship . . . A Sunday? They are working Sunday's in Shanghai, this is good . . .

 

mine too has been shipped today, very randomly. in china there is no... closed for business like in the west. only the banks shut on sunday. everything else is open.

 

OK,
How did you know it shipped? On their on-line account management, my account says nothing except non shipped. This might not mean anything. Also, they promised an email with the new delivery date, of course, that never showed up either.

So, what was your method to find it shipped?

Ron

 

OK,
I called in. This customer service guy today had a clear solid multi-generational American accent; he was dumber than a post. Said he did not think it shipped, said he would find out what was up, said he would send an email, said he had know idea why the last guy said he would send an email but actually did not.

I think I prefer the Indian style customer service people. Hard to understand as they barely speak English, but their inherent IQ is higher, may actually try to do something if they can. This guy working the phone today had this job because he was too dumb to get through the application process at McDonald's.

 

i know because i was emailed with a tracking number.

 

So how long have you guys been waiting for yours to ship? I placed my order on May 26th and every week it gets delayed another week. Actually this week it got delayed 2 weeks. The current estimate for shipping mine is now July 18th. that's getting pretty close to 2 months for this thing. I'm getting extremely frustrated as my current laptop is on it's last legs and I've got work to do.

Is this on par with everyone else's experience or have I ordered an impossible configuration? My sales rep says it's due to "factory issues beyond his control".

Thanks, Matt

 

Matt, I don't have an 8760w on order, but an 8560w. I have a very similar situation. I too ordered on 5/26 with an original ship of Jun-11. Then it was pushed to June-30. Every day after that, the site updated the estimated delivery to the current day but no ship date. As I write this, I recieved a notice that the new estimated ship date is Jul-16.

Now I need to figure out how to cancel my order. I will just get the Lenovo W520. I can have it tomorrow.

 

This is part of my problem. Trying to find another equivalent workstation to order instead. IBM doesn't seem to have any 17" options. The Dell M6600 seems to be backordered into oblivion too. I don't want to jump out of this line only to find myself stuck at the end of a longer one.

I need (not really a function of want) 17" display, SSD, 16 GB Ram, Core 2, and NVIDIA. Limits my options.

But two months just... well sucks.

Matt

 

well, i have a tracking number, but it's been in shanghai now for 4 days.

i think there is something going on we're not being told about.

last time i ordered from hp they were quite informative, this time it's just 'uh dunno' sigh

 

Ya at one point I was told the factory shutdown for a whole week for an unknown reason.

The latest was just "factory issues" and he doesn't know anymore than that. Offshore support for an offshore factory in different countries. No wonder there's no good information.

Is it wrong to long for the days when stuff was just made in Mexico? I really long for the days when HP's high end stuff came out of CA.

Matt

 

Oops... wrong thread

 

OK,
I am actually now getting emails, a big improvement. So, they sent me a tracking number FEDEX saying it was in Shanghai, I put that number in the FEDEX system and it says it is in their system in Shanghai, that it will be delivered on the12th. Based on what someone else said above, it could "be stuck" in Shanghai, but I doubt FEDEX would let its tracking system be used to hide stuff stuck in the factory, if FEDEX gives you a delivery date, it is on FEDEX's crediblity. However, who knows, HP is a huge company, maybe they can push this.

I guess on the weekend I can see if it left Shanghai.

Certainly, HP has lost all credibility on ship dates, if they actually had any. The technololgy game of promise and ship late may still work for them, but outside of office tek, it works in almost no other industry anymore ... them days is mostly gone.

We will see.

Big question is if it will be DOA?

 

I believe big manufacturers can count as a shipping origin point for outfits like Fedex and UPS. So issuing a number at an origin point puts it into the tracking system.

So not beyond possibility there is a sticker with your name on it and no laptop yet.

But hey, if it arrives in the states and is DOA at least its here and subject to repair by a stateside tech right?

Matt

 

I just unpacked my 8760w. I intend to post more detailed information, but that will take some time. However, these are my first impressions:

The packaging is unbelievably poor. I was expecting the laptop to be protected in styrofoam or something like this, but it is just hanging between two cardboard sides in a not very robust package. HP must have a lot of confidence into FedEx handling these packages really, really carefully. The top cover of the laptop has one little flaw (a small bump), which I consider a minor cosmetic flaw – no problem for me.

The build quality of the laptop is excellent – as I was hoping. The unit feels very robust to the touch, not “plastic y” at all. The display hinges are sturdy – just like I am used to with my ThinkPad.

Since I am a touch typist, the keyboard is very important for me. I do love the keyboard on my Lenovo T60p and I was hoping the 8760w keyboard has similar qualities.
There are two characteristics I can not stand when it comes to keyboards: too much flex and bad synchronization. Keyboards with too much flex feel like a moving target and it is very hard to find the right key. Bad synchronization comes in two flavors, one is when the keyboard sends the key signal before the tactile feedback is generated, the other is when the keyboard creates the tactile feedback before the key signal is sent. The first problem causes “unfelt” characters – you have slightly touched a key, the key signal has been sent, but the tactile feedback has not been generated – your fingers “think” that they did not generate a keystroke, but it has already happened. The second problem causes “missing” characters – you have pressed a key not all the way down, the tactile feedback has been generated, but the key signal has not been sent – your fingers think they have generated the keystroke, but the key signal did not happen.
The keyboard on the 8760w has neither of these problems. It is as good as the T60p keyboard.

The power supply that came with the laptop is half the height as the one that came with the docking unit. Both are pretty large and heavy. However, reading the specs, both are exactly the same dimensions like the ones for the Dell M6600 - I guess this is the brick you get when you need 230W these days...

The efficiency of the power supply chain seems to be excellent. I measured with a "Kill A Watt" device, and it shows "0" Watts when the power supply is plugged in, attached to the laptop and the laptop turned off and the battery fully charged. I.e., there appears no significant leakage of power anywhere. With the laptop plugged in, but turned off and only the battery charging it is 65W. With the laptop plugged in and sitting at the FreeDOS command prompt and without any battery it is about 72W.

I expect to post more infos and some pictures on Sunday.



Power Consumption

 

Good for you that your laptop has arrived. So it's configured with the 5010M, right? Dell still doesn't even allow to configure it

Piotr

 

Great to hear your opinion. I'm very intolerant against keyboard flex and bad keyboards in general. You describe the quality directives of a laptop keyboard very well.

I seems like I'm leaning towards this laptop rather than the Dell M6600 because the keyboard quality. Despite the M6600 has slightly better performance, the build quality is just a deal breaker for me.

I'm interested to hear more of your opinions.

 

Is your "low build quality of the M6600" opinion based on hands-on experience, or just a hear-say?

 

Based on what they say in the Dell forum and I've not touched any of the new laptop myself and I don't think there is any way I can do that either.

 

Thanks for the review info. I'm mostly thrilled to see someone actually received one. Gives me hope for my ship date.

Matt

 

Yeah, the keyboard feel is one of my real concerns this time around. I love the thinkpad keyboard -- is this really close to the firm "clicky" feeling of the thinkpads -- since the chiclet keyboards typically have almost no key travel?

Once of the reasons I am leaning against the Dell 6600 is because of the reported sponginess of the keyboard -- its almost a dealbreaker for me.

Not having the amd m8900 on the HP is holding me back from ordering it because the $1200 plus premium for the 5010m is a little hard to swallow.

Also, did you order the backlit keyboard? Last generation in the 8740w there was a lot of flex on the backlit keyboard but not on the non-backlit one?

 

Finally, I got to work a bit on my new laptop. I am sure it will take quite some time until I have it running the way I want. I noticed that HP has put a lot of Linux driver downloads for the 8760w on their web site. HP provides these drivers for SuSE and RedHat, but I work primarily with Ubuntu and Debian. I installed CentOS (which is the free version of RedHat) 5.6 – just to check out if the HP drivers work for this, but the HP installation procedure is checking for “redhat”. I have now (as I am typing this review) installed Ubuntu 11.04. This distribution comes already with the proper Nvidia driver and I don't need the HP package for this. However, other peaces need still some special drivers. E.g., I am using primarily the pointing stick. I think it is faster than using the touchpad. The pointing stick is in “finger reach”, whereas you have to move your wrist to get to the touchpad. . Unfortunately, I can not turn off the touchpad by tapping the top left. I expect that I can do this with the HP-provided driver for the touchpad.

The Pictures

I am probably one of the worst photographers you can think off – so please excuse the quality of the attached photos. I still hope they give you an idea of the laptop.


“Desk.png” shows the laptop on a secretary, indoors and plain daylight

“DarkKeys.png” shows the laptop with the key-lights turned off (I have set the key-lights to turn off after no typing for 15 seconds)

“LitKeys.png” shows the laptop with the key-lights turned on

“Closed.png” shows the laptop closed

“Back.png” shows the backside

“Open.png” shows the backside with the battery removed and the access panel opened

“Bump.png” shows the bump I mentioned in my previous posting, it is definitely a production defect, but as mentioned, I consider it a minor cosmetic defect – not worth the time and effort getting it fixed (and I am pretty sure that this laptop will show a few more bumps as I am going to use it ….)

“Brick.png” shows the power brick that came with the laptop, the power brick that came with the docking station is almost twice as high! If you look closely, you will again notice the bump on the top left, between the left panel hinge and the left side of the laptop.

“Q5010M-30bit.png” is a screenshot showing the Nvidia settings application. It shows that I selected 30bit color depth, but I am not sure that I have a good application which actually can use this color space. The Avatar video that you see in the top left is from a DVD – I have not (yet) figured out how to play the BluRay disc....

“SysMon.png” is another screenshot showing the eight CPUs in the System Monitor and it shows the output of the “hdparm” command for the disk. At this point I still have only the original 320G disk installed. However, the system gets about 115MiB per second transfer speed.

Once I am done with this posting, I will install 16GiB of memory that I ordered from Newegg (Kingston, 4x4GiB). I will then continue with more installations (like installing Debian Sid). I expect to experiment for at least a couple of months before I am ready to replace my current “main computer” (the ThinkPad T60p) with the 8760w. Once I am ready for this, I will also use the two 256GB Corsair SSDs, which are now installed in the T60p, in the 8760W. Already now the performance of the 8760w is great as far as I can tell (though I have not done any formal benchmarks). Once I have the additional memory and the SSDs installed, I expect the performance to be more than sufficient for the foreseeable future.

SATA II or SATA III
I don't have a SATA III disk, so I can't verify if the disk bays support the higher throughput of SATA III. Does anybody know if there is a way to tell if the disk ports can support SATA III without plugging in a SATA III disk and verifying the throughput?

Single fan versus dual fan
Some postings (in the HP and Dell threads) state that a dual fan cooling approach (like the Dell M6600) is preferable to the single fan approach (like the 8760w). IMHO, it's just the opposite – for two reasons: reliability and noise.
1. Reliability
In the 8760w the CPU is consuming up to 55W of energy and the GPU up to 100W. Considering that there are a few other components consuming some energy, it is fair to assume that the 8760w may use up to 200W of energy. All of this energy gets transformed into thermal energy, heating up the laptop. The cooling system has to disseminate the heat which is produced by the laptop. A rough calculation (under the assumption that the cooling system is allowed to heat the air between intake and exhaust by 20F) shows, that the cooling system requires an air flow of 30cfm (cubic feet per minute). The cooling system has to ensure that it can generate this amount of air flow. For this calculation, it is completely irrelevant if the system works with one, two, three or twenty fans. High-availability servers, like the ones we have in the office, all have multiple fans for cooling, but these fans are there for redundancy purposes. Typically a small fraction of all fans can generate the required air flow. This is required so that the system can be used even if one fan or multiple fans fail. This is not the case in the dual fan approach in the M6600. If the CPU fan fails, the laptop can't be used because the CPU would overheat. If the GPU fan fails, the laptop can't be used either, because the GPU would overheat. This means, that the cooling system of the M6600 has two points of failures, the cooling system on the 8760w has only one.
2. Noise
Due to the space constraints in a laptop, it is in general possible to use either one somewhat larger fan, or two somewhat smaller fans. Smaller fans means higher rpms. Higher rpms means more noise. It is for a reason that I don't use small fans in my workstations, only 120mm. I don't know the size of the fans in the M6600 and I have not (yet) measured the size of the fan in the 8760w, so I am not sure how the fans compare. Reading the postings about the M6600, these fans run very silent. And I can confirm that the fan in the 8760w is also hardly noticeable. This is while browsing the Internet and typing this review on my new 8760w. Obviously, the fan speed and noise will increase if the CPUs/GPUs have to work harder. Right now, when I put my ear right next to the fan exhaust, I can feel the air flow, but I still don't hear the fan.

The remaining photos will come in another posting.

 

here are the remaining images

 

Thanks for sharing~
I have bumps on my allienware m18X and I asked for replacement.....you should do that and ask HP to let you keep using the 8760w until the replacement arrival.
also they should give you compensation too. Dell gave me $100 refund.

When your new replacement come, just switch your Hdd to new 8760w to save your time to re-installation.

If my incoming M6600 not good enough, I will buy 8760W instead....in my opinion, 8760w is much better looking than M6600.

 

ugh *shivers* i still hate the design of it. thank god i'm not keeping mine!

mine is apparently arriving this week. all i'll be doing with mine is reinstalling windows and handing it in to work.

 

I'm in the same boat. The keyboard feel is important to me. I've basically only used Thinkpads for the past ten years, and the island/chicklet style feels too spread out, with almost no real travel on the keystrokes, like pounding fingers on the table.

Although I'm in the market for a 15" not a 17", the board for the 8760w must be very similar to the 8560w, which is what I am looking hard at.

How does the 8760w keyboard feel as compared with Thinkpad or even last year's Elitebooks? I have seen last year's Elitebooks and felt they are stiff and not nearly as user-inviting as Thinkpads' keyboards.

Screen looks nice, btw, wkuballah. It's DreamColor IPS, right??

 

>>wkuballa:

About the single/dual fans:

I think you made a point, but I d like to see real world side-by-side stress results of both machines.

From what I ve found out, M6600 handles stressload really good without much sweating, stays warm on the bottom (but not hot!) and relatively silent under full load for a longer period of time. Now this is a REAL sign for me of great cooling design (lets say that the machine is overdimensioned in terms of cooling), the fans are pretty BIG (I dont think the fan in 8760W is any bigger) so I dont find any noise problem mentioned relevant (and the relative silence of M6600 has been reported on forums).

So, burn the hell out of your 8760W and measure the temperatures and noise, other then that we could be only theoretizing here.

(dont get me wrong here I am not prefering one or another, as a matter of a fact i m deciding between the two - M6600 and 8760W)

Petr

 

I'm curious what you hate about it? Not trying to start a flame war I swear!

Matt

 

well being unbiased, the new design looks like a mongrel apple mac.

i also dislike chiclet keyboards, no matter how 'good' they are. thirdly my resentment is the screen, 1080p eh.

it just looks like a 'OMG look at my elitebook!' instead of a machine built for work. i hate the 'trendy' look its been given.

i have extended all my warranties on my 8740's to the max. hopefully ivy bridge next year will provide some sane notebook designs. if not, i will be moving away from hp. something which after 16 years is a sad thing to say.

 

Oh, I love the new design, very simple industrial design, for me it really looks like a machine I can do some serious work on, and besides I love chicklet keyboards as long as there's no flex. Sure, the backlit logo I could live without, but that's just a small issue.

 

It definitely has some Apple influences but everything does now. Apple is chic and all the marketing people are "me tooing". My only concern is if the pretty wares off after a few hundred trips in and out of my case and it starts to look like crap. I'd prefer basic if it stays looking presentable in front of customers. Trendy is OK so long as it doesn't detract from core function.

I can't believe I hadn't noticed the 1080p spec on the display. You're right, that sucks... especially on a business machine. I can imagine marketing influence here too: "Customers don't want to see movies with black bars around them." I'd like to have the 120 pixels back please.

This will be my first chiclet keyboard. So I can't comment yet.

Matt

 

chiclets don't take hard use very well, at least my MBP didn't. it's why i'm steering clear of this notebook.

i like a proper keyboard thank you.

My chiclet on my now toast G73JH asus also died on me after 3 months
keys began clicking off when touched to type

so i just hope hp know what their doing eh

 

You will not get the 16:10 screen back. LCD manufacturers state that the 16:10 format doesn't fit well when they cut the substrate to smaller pieces and creates unusable left overs. The "watching movies without black lines..." is just a marketing rationalization.

Too bad since I think 16:10 was a better format as well for general workstation use.

 

Yeah, I agree, 16:10 is much better to work with, but let's face it, it's over, everything is 16:9 now.

 

I guess I don't feel so much an idiot for missing that if it's generally not an option anymore. Still sucks.

Anything can be had for a price. We're already paying a pretty extreme premium for these machines... you'd think the waste or extra expense could just be factored in...

Oh well. Matt

 

when will any manufacturer offer a bigger resolution beyond 1920x1080? Or will this not happen in the near future? I don't mind 16:9 but more pixel please...

BTW, the prices for 8760w models are a little lower than for the 8740w (here in Europe, pre-configured models)...

 

OK,
This thing came in.

The shipping packaging is definitely a POS as described. Mine came with the box all beat up, I was sure that it would be broken. Appears that this is some sort of green idea, as the packaging is all paper based, however, they could have at least used a corrugated outer box. The computer is providing the structural strength for the packaging in shipment, not the other way around.

The unit was alright though. It is a beast. I had a 17" HP Nx9420 before, and this is longer by an inch, THICKER, and about the same width. There is a huge ring of housing around the display. It weighs a ton. Sort of Monty Pythonesque in modern terms. It is definitely solid, it needs to be.

I was a bit startled by this, never had a notebook get bigger for the same diagonal. Also, at 200W, the power supply is huge, there is no improvement of Watt/cubic inch since the 5 year old nx9420, it is the same technology with twice the power. I imaging the weight and size of the machine is dictated quite a bit by getting rid of the heat.

As I use it mostly at fixed desks, use a giant wheely briefcase, I always wondered why they were not making a huge mega machine for power users, damn the weight. Now I know why, it is a battleship and comes across as such. Fine for me, I would rather have the horsepower, but it will excite remark as a T-rex.

The keyboard is good, I got the backlit one. I am big on this, have never owned a Dell because of the lousy keyboards. I think this one could be a bit better than it is, but, it is as good as my nx9420 unit, so, I have no complaints yet. We will see the reliability, I am hard on keyboards.

I gave it to someone to build up. I have a Crucial 6Gb/sec 500GB SSD that is going into drive bay zero, we will see how this works out. I ran HWiNFO, the slots one and zero are definitely SATA III. Crucial forums have large discussions of configuration issues, I forwarded these to my setup guy.

I did not get the dreamcolor, but the 1920 X 1050 display is really nice. I hope this thing have a virtual display driver for the Nvidia, I run 2048 X 1536 on my nx9420 with panning, would like to have more.

I am positive to date, but this thing is a battleship for this day and age.

 

Hmm you ordered 3 days before me... my estimate has stuck to the 18th for 2 weeks. Fingers crossed.

Matt

 

First fun.

The crucial m4 sata iii ssd wil not mechanically plug into slot1 on the 8760. It is ver subtle , inspected both ends of thes and many other sata connectors with calipers and magnifying glass. Many other sata disks slide right in the port one. The 8760 came with a disk in port 0, this one readily slides into port 1. The crucial m4 slides easily into port 0 and othe machines sata ports. Finally installed crucial ssd in port 0 and supplied disk into port 1, for now, reconfigured boot to port 1. 8760 boots fine, can copy file to crucial on port 0.

Will now rebuild operating system and key apps to port 0 on the ssd, will use hdd on port 1 for non ctitical apps and most datafiles, chanfe boot back to port 0. Seems fit problem of crucial on port 1 may be a ver fine deformity on 8760 mechanical connector port one.

Also, original port 0 has a cover for the instaalled hdd that has a connector and an ic amd a pcb. No clue what that is, port 1 does not have it. Maybe soe weird thing for rfi/emi specs. No matter, ciputer wors with that installed over crucial drive. Weird, there does not seem to be documentation on this.

Will keep posting over weird stuff, but would love an explanation on these two phenomena. . .

 

Ok ,
The weird pcb assembly over the port 0 slot is the smart card reader. Weird assembly. Why the crucial will not mechanically slide into port one is still a great mystery.