HP Ultrabook: HP Folio 13

just picked up the folio and gotta say i just love it. great build quality and aesthetics to boot

 

It's a really, really nice machine and probably the best Ultrabook (Give or take a few things here and there)

 

Thanks for that Sanchertx.

Done a little more playing on my Spectre (which by the way is a really, really nice machine and probably the best Ultrabook ). It uses similar architecture to the Folio. From what I can see, the BIOS setting [enable Intel Rapid Start Technology] (IRST) is misleading and could be a waste of time for practical purposes. Misleading because it does not effect boot time (It effects wake/resume time) and Because it disables sleep (instant on) after a predetermined period to save battery.

Therefore you have a choice:

Sleep + IRST (Intel) = Near instant on for the first hour or so then slower start. Wake by tapping key, trackpad, opening lid, followed by IRST writing state to SSD and power button required to restart. Battery may stay charged for a few weeks (big deal), but unit no longer wakes when you open the lid after the fist hour.

Sleep + Hibernate (Microsoft) = Near instant on for the first two/three days. Wake by tapping key, trackpad, opening lid, until battery runs down to critical at 5% and then system hibernates.

So if you are the sort of person who is away from a power charger for more than a couple of days then IRST might be handy. Zero power drain after the first hour. But you could also just shut the unit down on these rare occasions to save battery. It boots in 25 sec anyhow. It is almost like Intel created this technology to match the MBP (Sleeps for 3 weeks) without giving much thought to its practicality.

But for the rest of us who are never too far away from mains, S3 instant on remaining active for as long as the sytem has battery above critical seems more useful. I prefer to my laptop to reliably start up when I open the lid. Not just some of the time.

Would appreciate your thoughts. For now I am running my Spectre with IRST disabled, simply so it stays in Sleep mode all the time and it starts up as soon as I open the lid.

 

My fan is running all the time at the same sound level.I have tried coolsense on and off.It runs the same all the time.What can be done or is this what I have to live with. Thank you all

 

See my earlier post (on page 5). Here are the options to try and stop the fan:
- Tweak as I did to see if things improve (It should... a little)
- Wait for a CMOS (Bios) update
- Accept that the fan will probably ALWAYS be on*
- Extreme option: Re-paste the cpu/heatsink.

*This is the one reason why I'm selling mine on ebay.


P.s. If you think it's bad then stay away from the Z830 and HP 6465b

 

any Canadian owners here know if you can change the keyboard on this? Cannot stand the bilingual keyboards

 

Yes you can change the keyboard to something else. Get the HP Folio maintenance manual (PDF) and it'll have all the available keyboards and part numbers.

 

So while I wait for some more information regarding the upcoming Elitebook 8770w (and it's release date), I'm contemplating getting a middle-of-the-road laptop (ultrabook) as a temporary upgrade / stopgap / reliable 2nd laptop.

The goal for this secondary laptop would be to handle numerous small tasks (with no slowdown/speed issues in workflow). I figure that the following specs should do nicely:

+128GB SSD (as it wouldn't be my primary laptop, storage capacity is pretty much a non-issue, SSD for increased speed across the board)
+4/8GB RAM (upgrading manually from 4GB to 8GB seems super cheap)
+Core i5 CPU
+13" screen
+1 USB 3.0 port
+Backlit Keyboard

I'd also ideally like the build quality (not necessarily the design, though that's nice too) to be superb. The HP Folio seems to fit the bill for all this, not to mention it seems to be the lowest cost of all the ultrabooks right now (especially with these coupons).

I'm only wrestling with this decision (which I'll be making within about ~5 days) because I really love the *design* of the 2011 Samsung Series 9 laptop (not the 2012 design). Black brushed metal is definitely a favorite look on a laptop for me. The specs on the 2011 Series 9 seem to be very close to the "ultrabook" definition, although I think the HP Folio actually outperforms it in benchmarks by a decent amount.

The catch here is that a lot of the 2011 Series 9 models are mostly refurbished units at this point, and reliability is a primary factor for me. I'm not sure I could trust a refurbished unit - are they typically reliable? The prices for these 2011 Series 9 laptops (128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, Core i5 Processor, Backlit Keyboard) seem to be roughly around the price point for the Folio 13 (sometimes adding a hundred or two-hundred dollars extra depending on which Series 9 SKU model is being compared).

My other big concern is the looming Ivy Bridge release. What are the odds that an HP Folio refresh will be available with an Ivy Bridge processor within a month, maybe two? The real big boost I see in waiting for that upgrade would be the bump from Intel HD3000 integrated graphics to the Intel HD4000 integrated graphics, which from recent reviews seems to be a rather large increase in performance in that area.

Do you think this version of the HP Folio 13 would see a further price reduction (into the $600-700 range) once the Ivy Bridge model is released? I feel that might be a real steal, all things considered. Or do you believe that the Ivy Bridge upgrade will simply tack on a premium to the current price point, as opposed to replacing it?

As I typically work with speakers on or a pretty good pair of sound-isolating headphones (with music playing), I don't imagine the minor fan noise will be a real issue until (if) a BIOS update is released.

 

Also, since I'm looking this stuff up on Google to see if I can accidentally stumble across anything about a potential Ivy Bridge refresh, here are the HP Folio model numbers I've come across:

13-1029wm (pretty sure the wm stands for WalMart, obviously):
Walmart.com: HP 13.3" Folio Ultrabook Laptop PC with Intel Core i3-2367M Processor and Windows 7 Home Premium: Computers

The 1029wm model has:
-Intel Core i3-2367M processor (1.40GHz, 3MB L3 Cache)
-4GB DDR3 SDRAM
-128GB SSD
-Price Listed As $798.00
Specifications PDF:
http://i.walmart.com/i/rb/0088611283462.pdf

13-1020US:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Steel-...dows-7-Home-Premium/19580998?findingMethod=rr

The 1020US model has:
-Intel i5-2467M processor (2.30GHz, 3MB Cache) (this is mislabeled, it should be the same 1.6GHz as the below model, seeing how they're the same processor, the 2.3GHz is the speed when Turbo Boost is enabled)
-4GB DDR3 SDRAM
-128GB SSD
-Price Listed As $898.00
Specifications PDF:
http://i.walmart.com/i/rb/0088611261845.pdf

This one is simply listed as "HP 13.3" Folio 13 Laptop PC" (I don't see a SKU/model number anywhere):
http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-13.3-F...dows-7-Professional/20434739?findingMethod=rr

This model has:
-Intel i5-2467M processor (1.60GHz, 3MB Cache)
-4GB DDR3 SDRAM
-128GB SSD
-this one lists a 4-in-1 Card Reader as opposed to the 2-in-1 Card Reader on the other listings?
-Price Listed As $978.00
Specifications PDF:
http://i.walmart.com/i/rb/0088611270356.pdf

I scanned Walmart first mainly because I remembered seeing an article the other day saying "HP Folio drops to $800 at Walmart". However, I remember Sony making some cheaper, retailer-specific models of their laptops (for Best Buy), and one of the ways they reduced costs for those models was through using cheaper materials. While it seems that the price difference here is due to the i3 processor, after knowing this happens, I can't say I'd trust the models to be 100% identical in build quality. All the reviews I know of for the HP Folio have been for the i5 model.

Also, I believe it says in the PDFs that the maximum RAM for the i3 model is 4GB, but that an 8GB RAM stick can be swapped in place of the 4GB RAM stick in the i5 models. There apparently is only one RAM slot inside the HP Folio.

 

There are 2 versions of the standard Folio. The 1000 series is the consumer version with no TPM and consumer support while the 2000 series has TPM and business support, which is far superior.

 

Well, an addendum about HP Folio model/SKU names I was working on died in my browser.

Anyway, the i3 model of the HP Folio is available on Walmart's website for $800, but you can also get that same price on the i5 version right now via Office Depot's website ($850 - $50 Mail In Rebate), or more preferably, straight from HP (after adding a customized [you don't actually have to add anything while customizing] Folio to your shopping cart, check your cart and enter Coupon Code NBT8547). They're also offering free 2 (business) day shipping right now.

I think those prices both beat Amazon (who has it for $850 right now, I believe).

 

So, the other day I couldn't get online tech support to reduce the price in my shopping cart, but at the end of the conversation, they gave me a phone number to call:

"One of the best resources that we have to place your order is our Sales Center. Please call 866.221.4553 and a Sales Representative will be able to assist you with your order placement and answer any remaining questions that you have."

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe that HP's "Sales Center" has 2 different "departments"; the first being the actual sales center with the sales reps, and the second being their "supervisors" (who actually identified herself today as the "Resolution Department" when she picked up the line).

Either way, none of the sales reps were able to do what I wanted them to do.

There was a coupon code for the CTO (Configure-To-Order) model of the HP Folio. Since there's really only one model of the HP Folio (at least, sold through HP's website), it's identical to their "Quick Ship" model. When you click on the CTO model, there aren't any options to add/change the hardware, you just have to click through all the pages because there's just the single default option on each one. The only stuff you can add with the CTO model is software, along with the usual assortment of miscellaneous accessories like a laptop bag, digital camera, wifi router, usb thumb drive, etc, etc etc.

So, being that both the base CTO and the Quick Ship models are completely identical, I wanted them to simply apply the coupon price for the CTO model to the Quick-Ship model.

My reason for this is twofold: if I'm ordering now, with Ivy Bridge right around the corner, I don't want to be waiting an exorbitant amount of time for this laptop to arrive.

The base model of the CTO variety won't actually ship until May 15th (~2 weeks from now). The Quick-Ship model, on the other hand, will ship within ~1-2 business days.

Long story short, while I was super polite on the phone, they (both departments) were not able to do more than give me $75 off the $899 price (which wouldn't match their own coupon...). The sales rep's accent was very difficult to understand (we spent an obscene amount of time spelling out my name and email address...), so I'm not sure whether or not he was willing to add free 2 business-day shipping (though I seem to recall him saying "that's not one of our current offers"...).

While I seem to have seen lots of people on here have a very good experience (and get a good discount) with the sales center, my first experience so far was quite the opposite. I'll call back tomorrow and give it another shot, perhaps I'll get a more helpful group of reps.

On a potentially more interesting note, while I was emphasizing that one of the primary reasons I was looking for a discount on the Folio was because:

1) They'd previously already had the Folio on discount for $703.49 around December 7th, 2011, with free shipping.
2) Ivy Bridge refreshes should be hitting the market in force pretty shortly, so the Sandy Bridge models should receive a reasonable markdown.

The sales rep told me (though again, it was hard to make out what he was saying half the time because of his accent) that he would recommend I wait approximately 3 weeks, since that's when the HP Folio was supposed to be refreshed with the Ivy Bridge processors.

 

Hey,

Does anyone have any idea how to get the Turbo Boost working?

Tried the diff power settings but its alway max 1.6ghz :-\

No option in bios either..

 

I'm wondering if, like many past models, the Folio 13 is going to end up being a sort of "one-off". They announced the new Elitebook Folio (14-inch), but no word on any Ivy Bridge refresh for the Folio 13. Makes me wonder if they're trying to phase out their 13-inch lineup?

 

The Folio may be replaced by the Envy Spectre XT Pro (the configuration with TPM).

 

there is a folio 9470m, however I dont think there is a tpm option in the envy xt.

apparently business users are not too fond of the 13'' form factor, its always getting replaced by something smaller

 

The Spectre XT Pro was announced at the launch. It has the TPM, WIndows 7Professional and optional 3 year warranty which serves the prosumer market that is all the rage right now. The Folio 13 also addresses this market with its 2 configuration, the 1000 models sold through consumer channels and the 2000 variation which is for the SMB sector. The Elitebook is an enterprise class system.

 

didnt saw the pro in the press releases. will take another look, I actually found the folio 9470m more interesting tough.

 

I've been a huge fan of the 13" form factor for years. My ideal daily laptop has always been a powerful one that doesn't flinch at every day tasks, even when those border on extreme use cases (I have a habit of opening almost every page in a new tab, which means I can easily end up having 30-50 tabs open in my browser. Needing to open Photoshop randomly during that use makes 4GB of RAM a burden, 8 or more is much more ideal. I'll also run virtual machines in some instances, which likewise makes the additional RAM a must. Editing HD video occasionally also is the biggest reason for the added processing power and RAM - I basically need my system to be a jack-of-all-trades / Swiss army knife.

13" laptops with those specifications have been relatively rare, as well as ones with a 1080p (FULL HD) resolution. Sony's Z series has been the only reliable option year after year, but I now feel that short of the 512GB SSD option (256GB x 2, RAID-0), the upcoming Spectre XT should deliver what the current Sony Z does (ntm with better native graphics), but at a MUCH better price point (Sony's Z is approximately $3,300 with the configuration I mentioned). The Spectre XT should easily come in well under $2,000, which for similar processing power, no 512GB SSD option, no 1080p display (an admittedly nice option, but less necessary when you plan to have it hooked up to external monitors the majority of the time), and no BLU-RAY, is still a huge improvement on the price point.

The Folio-13 is limited by it's 4GB of RAM that is soldered to the board (non-upgradeable), as well as it's lack of an i7 option. It can handle most basic tasks without any real problems, but doesn't have that extra overhead for truly intensive stuff. I don't think either of the Folio-13 models truly address the 13" prosumer market's needs, due to their lack of higher performance options. As-is, they are barely "good enough" with limited functionality beyond browsing, typing, MSOffice, and some multitasking with maybe a music program and chat program. Creative work, or anything really processor intensive would probably still kick them in the teeth compared to an Ivy Bridge i7 ULV processor with 8+ GB of RAM.

 

HP Spectre XT Pro Ultrabook 13-b000 specifications - HP Small & Medium Business products

The Folio 13's RAM is user upgradeable to 8GB (1 SODIMM slot).

 

extremely interesting thanks!

Although I do like the 13'' format much more than the 14'' one, I find that the weight is the major problem, not to mention the res.

any idea if they are ever going to put any kind of higher res screens on the folio or the xt pro?

another thing I noticed, does the folio comes with a 7mm height HDD bay?

 

I kind of wish I'd kept the folio. I had one but returned it as the fan noise kind of drove me crazy, especially as it appeared to build upon ambient noise in the office. I also worried about it sucking up debris in the general area, as it appeared to take on some additional noise within a week of ownership.

Other than that, though, absolutely gorgeous design. I really liked it quite a bit. I tried to replace it with a Lenovo X220 but ended up returning that, too, due to QC issues. I think I'm going to end up waiting for the Spectre XT, or see if the Folio gets updated for Ivy Bridge. I like the Folio design better, with the flat bottom, but it kind of looks like HP is intending to replace the folio with the XT Pro?

 

So, this thing is actually currently on sale (short-term it looks like, but might become more permanent in the future?) at the HP Home website for $749.99 (i5 version, not the crappier i3 version from Walmart). That's the best price I know of for a Core i5 + 128GB SSD Ultrabook with backlit keyboard (13" form factor). Free shipping + tax, but if you purchase through the cashback site FatWallet, you can get 5% Cashback from HP's Home website, which basically nixes most of that tax cost. Mine that I ordered yesterday cost me ~$760 total, which I thought was great. I'm kind of pumped over finally getting it in that ~$700 price range (new), finally.

I think the current $750 sale ends either at the end of today, or the end of tomorrow, however, so you might want to jump on it.

Also, I received an email from Amazon today and HP's Folio-13 is on the docket for a Gold Box sale today at noon EST today (deal lasts for 3 hours, or until they're sold out of promo stock). I'm going to be monitoring that as well, since the ship date for the one I ordered from the HP website isn't until May 22nd. Whatever the deal is, I don't know if there would be tax on that or not yet. Either way, there's a good chance they'll undercut that $750 sale price, so I'll be watching it closely. Deal goes live in about an hour.

 

Wow! Tempting. I'm conflicted. I found it fast enough but the fan noise really was a serious issue for me O_O

Love the design otherwise, though, except for maybe the screen...though it got the job done OK I suppose

 

Sorry, I think I had my time a bit off on that. The Amazon deal, whatever it is, doesn't start until 1pm EST (10 minutes from now). At least I was early, not late

 

Do you typically wear headphones while using it? I've got pretty large ones (I'm listening to music almost non-stop most of the time) that silence most outside noise, so I feel the fan noise won't really be an issue at all for me.

I plan on having this hooked up to the Dell Ultrasharp 24" monitor the majority of the time I'm at my desk, so the screen is less of an issue for me as well. This will eventually be a secondary laptop, for me.

 

When I could, I did typically listen to music or something when using it, and in those cases it wasn't a problem. At other times, the ambient noise was sometimes enough. However, it had a frequent tendency to, for lack of a better term, intermodulate with ambient noises such as other computers in an area and this made for a relatively loud oscillating sort of noise that was very conspicuous and at times obnoxious. I pretty much tried to ignore it until it started attracting attention from others near me on occasion because they found it distracting and would look over at the computer once they figured out the source.

I did go and check out another Folio to see if mine was unusual, and it appeared not to be. Maybe I just had the 'perfect storm' of conditions to cause a problem.

In any case, that probably was my main complaint with it. I didn't care for the trackpad either but I got it to work well enough. The keyboard was great, the overall build quality very nice, and I just really loved the look and feel of it. If not for the fan, I'm certain I would have kept it. Clearly, I must have liked it, since I'm at least tempted to get one again.

Still, with Ivy Bridge coming out, I do wonder about the propriety of getting one versus the upcoming Spectre XT or XT Pro. I like the Folio's design better than the Spectre, but Ivy Bridge is a significant upgrade on the graphics side and at such low resolution on both of them (1366x768) I imagine that it's actually a fairly functional GPU.

 

Amazon's lightning deal is $735.00 flat, no tax, free shipping.

Plus, it'll actually arrive sooner than the one I ordered from HP yesterday. HP's was scheduled to ship around the 22nd, whereas the one from Amazon should ARRIVE around that date.

HP's customer service wouldn't pricematch the Amazon deal, so I had them cancel my order and bought the lightning deal. Saved me about $30, including the $37.50 rebate I would have gotten via FatWallet. If you weren't going to use FatWallet for the HP one, buying via Amazon's lightning deal will save you $70. No-brainer.

 

Oh, definitely a difference in environment for our uses. If it was annoying those around you, then that definitely is a perfectly reasonable explanation for wanting to return it.

Ivy Bridge, for the purposes of why I'm buying this laptop, I don't think I'll see any additional benefit honestly. I don't think that Ivy Bridge is going to handle email, web browsing, some basic multi-tasking, any better than Sandy Bridge, since that stuff really doesn't push the limits of the system. The whole point of getting a Core i5 + 128GB SSD combination for this laptop was so that it pretty much never experiences any slowdown during normal use. I want my workflow to be unhindered by freezing and slowdown, and that power/speed combination should do that perfectly.

For something more powerful for light HD video editing / Photoshop stuff, I'm going to be looking at a 256GB+ SSD, 8GB RAM, Ivy Bridge i7 option (if they have that combination) from the Spectre XT. The base model Spectre XT is almost certainly going to be several hundred dollars more expensive (for good reason) than this sale price, probably 500-800 more expensive with that hardware combination, so for the different intended uses, this makes complete sense at this lightning deal pricepoint. But yeah, totally looking forward to the Spectre XT for my laptop that needs the additional power that Ivy Bridge i7 can provide.

 

Yeah, the noise thing just ended up being a bit embarrassing, and it definitely isn't quiet. My old laptop was an M1330 and the Folio is considerably louder than that laptop ever was. Overall, probably the loudest of anything I'd owned in the past. Still, I probably would have kept it otherwise.

In any case, I missed the lightning deal while at the gym. Oh well; maybe it's for the best. Hopefully the Spectre will prove quieter.

 

The noise thing seems to be an HP awkwardcy. My ProBook 4520s has it too. I can even hear hard disk activity if there's no sound playing... ;S

On a different note, I assume there's no problem to exchange the Folio's SSD with a Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB, right?

 

no you cant do that, not that it would be wise. I dont know if the mba blade drives out there work on the folio, but there are up to 480gb at owc, with those nasty sandforce

 

Okay, so I got my Folio 13 in the other day and I've been using it about 24 hours so far. Still really just getting it set up with everything.

Anyway, really love it so far. The speed is fantastic. My dislikes mainly stem from it's keyboard. The keyboard is sized fine, imo, I love the keys themselves. Feels great to type on. Much rather have this machine's finely textured keys than slick/almost frictionless plastic ones (like the ones on my Toshiba laptop that I just upgraded from, which had keys so slippery it was like you were typing on ice, terrible for touch typing).

If there's one thing I'm more than a little disappointed about, it's the backlit keyboard. I have a chair that reclines very nicely/comfortably, so I sit back alot. From that angle, the keyboard ends up looking more like the Millenium Falcon as opposed to a backlit keyboard. It's crazy bright (in a bad way), and extremely distracting. This is due to the amount of light that leaks out from underneath the keys. When you lean back away from the laptop, you're basically staring straight at the LEDs themselves. Ouch.

But I totally do love this machine. I'll post more on it once I finish somethings.

[EDIT: Oh, and the other big dislike is the cutdown arrow keys, but moreso actually, the fact that you have to hold down the function key for page up/down and home/end...among other things. That's a time-killer, no question about it. I used to be able to hold a drink with my left hand and hit the pagedown button while reading a page/document with the right hand...now it takes both hands simply to scroll downward

 

You still can, there's a trackpad gesture for that, it should be something similar to swiping down the right end side of the trackpad.

 

Hmmm, I may check that out. To tell you the truth, I'm a little blown away at how accurate / responsive this touchpad is on the Folio-13. Out of the box, I've only done Windows updates. Haven't messed with any of the settings on the touchpad, don't want to screw it up. No need to fix what's not broken.

 

It is, I didn't get the bad reviews the trackpad on my ProBook 4520s got. I believe they're using Synapsis again. So that gesture should be there out of the box. Speaking about boxes, I get mine today so I can check it myself.

 

Okay, so a few more notes now that I've been using the Folio-13 a bit longer:

Having a USB 3.0 port is great, since now you can use your external USB 3.0 drives at a pretty high speed (though I don't think the MSATA SSD can saturate USB 3.0, I think it only does about half of USB 3.0's max speed, though that's still really quick in practice).

However, having only 2 USB ports is a bit of a downer, since I connect an external mouse / keyboard (each with a separate dongle), as well as external hard drive(s) and thumb drives. 3 total USB ports would require a lot less juggling in practice.

More importantly, they should have made BOTH ports USB 3.0. Transferring from a USB 3.0 thumb drive to a USB 3.0 external drive, or copying data from one external 3.0 drive to another, of course, bottlenecks on the one attached to the USB 2.0 port. This takes some of the wind out of the USB 3.0 process, in practice (like when populating a backup external drive from your primary).

I must not really have much problem with the noise, though of course, I do use it out of the way in my own space. While it's at my desk, where I have another laptop and external hard drives plugged in, it's really not noticeable to me (though it exists). I guess to me it's more like a faint wind sound than a whine, and perhaps being used to fan noises from 2 deployments in Iraq, it's not bothersome to me, especially with headphones on.

I did hear it go pretty loud once, while I was rendering a 720p HD video in Premiere Pro. That's the hardest I've pushed the machine, and while it took 40 minutes to render the video (~14 minutes, for a Friends-and-Family fantasy football league), the heat never really seemed to get bad. After that was the only time I really felt the palm rest anything other than chilled. Granted, I don't actually rest my palms on the palm rest while typing, I hover my hands usually, but when they do touch it's cool.

I'm not thrilled with the display, but I suppose until something really awesome comes out, I'll live with it. Vertical viewing angles is really what bugs me.

I'll be looking for improvements in these areas for the laptop that replaces this one, along with a quad-core i7/16GB RAM/512GB SSD option (whether buying it via a customized product, or upgrading it myself after purchase).

 

I upped the palmcheck when I had the Folio and found that helped prevent some inadvertent movements without hurting overall performance. It is definitely one of the better "clickpads" I've tried. I don't care for them overall, though.

Regarding noise - It wasn't the worst I've ever seen, but the dominant frequencies in the fan noise ended up being the main problem. It would intermodulate with ambient noise to make for some (apparently) fairly obnoxious noise...to the point of bothering people nearby.

The display isn't great, but I found it adequate. The viewing angles do stink, though. I my old M1330 was kind of bad in that regard, but apparently there was plenty of room to go down from there

 

I've had my Folio 13 for about 3 1/2 weeks now and I have yet to experience this loud fan noise everyone is talking about. I've heard the fan come on ones and it wasn't all that loud. Sound lasted for about 3-4mins and then started.

Anyway I've voided my warranty and when ahead and upgraded from 4gb ram to 8gb. Only costed $40 bought the Corsair 8gb sodimm RAM, Amazon was having a sale. I have no desire to buy an Ivy Bridge ultrabook after this upgrade. My next upgrade will probably be my SSD drive. I have to do some more research but in the meantime i'm using my memory card slot with a 32gb. Another thought is just getting a 64gb or 128gb SD card and skip the SSD upgraded.

my accessories:
- KAI Anti Glare screen protector $12.99 on ebay (search HP Folio 13 Anti Glare)
- HP Slim with USB port power adapter $46 on amazon (sale may be still going on)
- DVI to VGA connector
- 8gb Corsair RAM upgrade
- 32gb SD Card
- Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX (free from logitech)
- Brenthaven 13" laptop sleeve fits perfect and has a hand slot grip
- STM Velo (small version for 13" laptop) I use when I need to carry everything.
Recommend buying a 32gb USB Flash Drive and creating a backup of your system. Then you can delete the restore partition and claim the space back.

 

Snapped a picture of the annoying keyboard light that leaks from underneath the keys when leaning back away from the laptop, for anyone purchasing this. Snapped it for the Spectre XT thread, which appears to have a backlit keyboard built using the same style.

Obviously not a dealbreaker, but more than a little annoying at night in a dark room.

 

Had a ton of tabs open in Google Chrome (3 separate windows, close to enough tabs to fill screen on each of them). Didn't really have much else open, a couple of Notepad files, had Steam open in the background (but not running a game), some File Explorer windows, not much else.

Randomly Blue Screened and restarted. W.T.F.

Starting to be not-happy. Haven't had a bluescreen on a Windows 7 laptop before. Heard the fan going a little harder than usual right before the BSOD, but there was no heat on my palmrest so I wasn't worried. Laptop has been sitting on my desk with plenty of airflow available, so that shouldn't be the issue...

Annoyed. Probably going to look to move onto a laptop with higher specs (i7/8GB RAM), now.

 

I don't recall getting a blue screen, but I do recall the Folio getting pretty warm (and so the fan would spin up) when I had a lot of tabs open in Firefox and had a bunch of documents open. I get pretty tab-happy, so it wasn't exactly a rare occurrence.

For whatever reason, the backlight thing never really bothered me, but it is a little cheesy. I can see how it would be annoying, though.

I wish HP had refreshed the Folio instead of making the XT. I actually like the Folio design better, but it does have design issues that I think could have and should have been addressed in a refresh.

 

Is anyone using the HP Folio with Windows 8 Release Preview? I am and liking it. Some stability issues, though. It might be live mesh or one of a million apps since I did the unrecommended upgrade. How is it work for you?

Hoping to get updated trackpad drivers.

 

I simply would have preferred if they'd had the keys used a sort of "sealed" backlight system so that light doesn't leak out from under them.

Also, now that I've got my Folio-13 hooked up to my new Dell U2412M monitor that just arrived (monitor only has VGA, DVI, and Displayport connections, and is 1920x1200 resolution), I'm realizing that the HDMI port on the left side of the Folio is uncomfortably close to that USB 3.0 port. I can't connect ANYTHING to the USB 3.0 port with the HDMI-to-DVI adapter plugged into the HDMI port.

I'll almost certainly be upgrading from the Folio-13 now, to an ultrabook that includes a display port (or that I can connect the adapter to without it blocking other ports).

Runs the monitor like a charm, though, no actual problems there. Glad to have the screen real estate back.

 

Okay, this laptop is definitely not for anyone doing any video editing. Mine keeps overheating after periods of extended video editing (just 720p projects in Premiere Pro CS5.5, not even 1080p material yet). Starts locking up / blue screen / instant forced restart (with no shutdown).

4GB of RAM is certainly a bottleneck for video editing, but the form factor just can't cool itself fast enough while doing video editing. Sad because this is just an i5, not an i7. No wonder they don't include an i7 option...

 

Matter of fact, I wonder if I can still return this to Amazon. Going to have to check on that...

 

Probably needs a re-paste and that's going from what it's like on the 8460p/Eliltebook range

 

Can you please tell us what Folio model you have and the dimm model?

Thanks!

 

Hmm...it shouldn't be overheating to the point of locking up. Maybe something is defective? I didn't find mine overheated like that under heavy load.

After seeing the new offerings from Dell and Lenovo, I do still feel I'd consider the Folio 13 if they updated it to Ivy Bridge >.<

 

Wich HDMI to VGA do you use? I've bought one on ebay but unfortunately it doesn't work. It is recognized by the folio but does not have VGA signal at the output connector.