*HP ZBook 15 Owners Lounge*

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm definitely going to upgrade it. However, which one should I get: the 1.1 or 1.2? There doesn't seem to be much difference at all, both are available in glossy and matte.

 

Exactly. So whichever is fine - according to the web...

 

Is the fan equally quiet?

 

Is there a separate owners thread for G2 or does this apply to both?

 

This thread applies to both. The G2 is very similar to the first generation.

 

Hiya'all.

Today I took delivery of a Zbook 15 G2. I got it for a really really nice price. Sealed in box with 3 year on site warranty including battery and with K2100M, 16GB, 256Gb OAL2 SSD, FHD IPS screen, Gobi 4G and more or less the whole lot, for 660 Euro. The only drawback with this machine was that it had a Dual Core i7 4610M. Now, as some might know, the DualCore machines are said to offer only 2 DIMM slots.

This got me really going and for 6 days while waiting for the machine I've searched more or less the entire WWW to figure out if the DualCore machines only lack the support for 4 DIMMs in combination with a DualCore or if they actually miss two DIMM slots all together. I just cant believe that no one seems to have asked this question on the internet. So the first thing I did when I got the machine was to rip it open, and now I know. And I haven't even powered the machine on. And I even bought a 4710QM of Ebay already.

First I want to say that I am a previous heavy Thinkpad user. I've had more Thinkpads than most people can count. And I've ripped them all apart. T22, T40, T40 Workhorse, T40p, T41p, T42p, T43p, X32, T60p, T61p, T61p Penryn Vpro, T61p 4:3 14", T61p UXGA 15" IPS Frankenpad 2.5Ghz 8GB (best machine ever by the way, if it wasn't for the dreaded Nvidia chip-death), and by then i went back to College and have been beating my T420s do death for about 3 years now. I also have a W500 which I'm writing this post on right now.

With all that Thinkpad experience, I have never ever ever ever ever ... EVER had such a hard time removing a keyboard. =D .
What the f*ck man! And this should be a service able laptop? &¤%"%/"¤#! HP, if your reading this, shut the front door, go home, redo and get it right!

So, to answer the question. The Dual Core Zbook 15" motherboards are different. The surface for the two memory slots under the keyboard are there, but the slots them selves are missing.
So that's that. Ridiculous! But now everyone knows. If you need 32GB of ram you have to buy the Quad Core to begin with. If you only need 16GB and a Quad Core, there are plenty of 4710QM or 4700QM on Ebay for about 100 Eur, so that might save you quite some money.

Best!

 

Sorry, this is an old story with the Elitebooks Ws: ever since many generations ago the dual-core processors get only 2 physical dimm slots (and sometimes a weaker heatsink too). Not sure it makes much sense economically, but...

As for the keyboard, just press hard. Won't be so difficult the second time around. Just strong glue, I guess.

 

The thing is that i5 and dualcore i7 only support two dimms and if there is four slots is causes all kinds of support related problems if such fact is not known.

...we might have had a warranty replacement on a "broken" motherboard that had only two working dimm slots. Even the onsite tech coudn't figure it out. Until someone realised that it was a dualcore i7 and a 4-slot motherboard (Lenovo w540 I believe).

So it's easier just to let the two slots uninstalled. It might even save a penny or two.

 

I'll have to tell you I've only owned one Thinkpad (several ideapads) but numerous HP mobile workstations. I have marks, divots and scratches all over my w520 from trying to remove the keyboard. It was so bad I ruined the keyboard. I take excellent care of my equipment, dig around in them all the time, build my own desktops & this was ridiculous. The replacement keyboard fit perfectly & easily so obviously the first was out of spec or something. So there's mud to sling at thinkpads as well.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Hi,

I bought a zbook 15 g2 and I am trying to figure out what size m.2 sata I need to buy, 2260?

Any ideas on what size and or aftermarket brand that I can purchase and will work?

Anyone have any experiences?

Thank you in advance.

 

Upgraded the laptop screen today with B156HAN01.2... MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT. I can't hardly believe how bad the Chi Mei panel was, unbelievable. Wish I could take some photo's. This is now the perfect laptop for me, and with the SSD it's blazing fast. I recommend everyone to upgrade the panel, if they have the Chi Mei one. I lastly want to thank all of you guys, and also the Lenovo Y50 boys ofcourse!

 

anyone????

 

In theory any M.2 2260 should work. The Crucial MX200 should be available very soon in a 500GB M.2 2260 variant.

 

Hi All,

I've just ordered a Zbook 15 G2 with 2 * 1TB drives and wondering if I'll be able to install an additional m.2 SSD down the track to make 3 drives total? I've looked through the documentation but haven't been able to find any information around this.

Would anyone happen to know the answer before I call HP to ask next week?

Thanks

 

Yes, that is possible.

 

I ordered the Transcend MTS600 2260 512gb M.2 SATA drive and I cant get it to register in the BIOS or when I check disk management windows. I turned off the M.2 in the BIOS and switched to RAID and then restarted and switched the M.2 functionality back and nothing. Anyone have any ideas?

 

Im not being so successful with Transcend MTS600 2260

 

I was also unsuccessful with the Transcend MTS600 2260. I believe that the M.2 on the Zbook won't work with the SATA style M.2 and requires the PCIe style. I just returned mine to Amazon.

There is a review on Amazon for the Samsung XP941 (x4 PCIe M.2 style) working on the Zbook 17. However, it is an 80mm, so it is rigged in there. Unfortunately, I can't find any yet in 60mm size that are PCIe, even x2.

I decided to just use a Samsung 840 EVO 2.5" SATA drive for now and look at reloading it with a PCIe x4 2260 size when they get more common.

 

Thanks, it's going to be possible to run the two 1TB drives in a raid 1 mirror and the m.2 SSD as a single drive right?

 

Yes, set the drive to RAID in the BIOS, then use Intel RST.

 

What is the Chi Mei panel? Is that the non IPS panel?

Also, on another note. Does anyone know if the 3200x1800 display is a PenTile type or a full RGB-stripe type?

 

Finally gave up on the Dreamcolor display after a total of 6 displays all exhibited blue & pink ghosting that I couldn't live with. So I ordered a G2 with the 3200x1800 IPS panel with my fingers crossed. Received it Monday & the display looks great. Haven't calibrated it yet, but I'm liking it. Changed some settings for scaling & I have no complaints.

I had a 512gb mSATA Evo that I hadn't put in my Yoga2pro that I was going to put in it to play with, but there is no port for it in the G2 unless it's stuck under the keyboard. No big deal as I have Dvd caddies, other SSDs, mSATA to Sata etc that I can use but I was surprised. Am I missing something? I'll wait on the PCIe SSDs until there is more variety. Can someone tell me the proper size one would use? Or does it matter? I've seen some that were 80mm & some that were about half that.

Anyway, I'm glad that I find myself a permanent member of this thread - that is unless something pops up in the next 3 1/2 weeks.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Prose - I have all the CPUID apps among others. I will see if I can find the answer for you.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

thx man.

I have a slight interest in changing my Zbook 15 with 1080P IPS for an 3200x1800 equipped one, but I'm not entirely sure that its a good idea. But you recon its a display that works well with scaling?

An interesting thought though. It doesn't seem as if Intel will release any high-end CPUs in its Broadwell line up. That probably means that we won't see an upgrade of the Zbook 15 for a while, except for the "ultrabook" that just saw the light.

 

Coming from Zbook 14, also a little disappointed on the display on that one. What options do we usually have? e.g., is it possible to insert a high quality display myself?

 

Prose,

I'm not really running into many scaling issues but I've done a lot of research on making it work. Mainly just adjust to 150-200% in display options and change text sizes in things like thunderbird, chrome, etc. you will have problems in older versios of things like photoshop, but even then, I'm using a very old version of Adobe Audition 3, not CS. I don't like the newer versions as well, but I do own them - it's perfectly usable. Photoshop CC2014 comes with experimental scaling, works great. Most of my plugins, MS Office, etc work okay with the adjusted windows scaling. I'm going to calibrate the monitor this afternoon - I'll try to remember to give you the info.

It does help when I put my glasses on, lol.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Prose

I got around to calibrating my QHD 3200x1800 IPS display this afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised at the results. 100% sRGB, 76% RGB & 71% NTSC, not bad eh? I use a DataColor Spyder 4 Pro for my calibrations. And it looks fine to me. As received the display was set slightly cool and I could certainly see it in the before/after calibration, but it wasn't enough that I noticed it immediately upon setting it up out of the box.

Because you had technical questions about the display - you can do some research on the panel if you would like: It's a Sharp SHP141C

The only scaling issues I've had that I haven't been able to change or work around are some of my Photoshop plug-ins. Hopefully those vendors will have some patches available. I have a Yoga2Pro with a high rez screen so I knew what I was getting into and other than the plug-ins I haven't had much trouble. Other users might disagree as I guess it depends on what software you are using and things like that. But I have a fairly broad range and quite a bit of software on my machines. Like I said, even one of my most used programs - Adobe Audition 3 - is very usable and that software is at least 6-7 years old, probably more with the way time flies. Either with the windows scaling adjustments I made or with adjustments in the programs or both I have no problem with it. As I put my other software on the laptop if I run into major issues I will post a note about it.

 

aztec506

I see. So you are running the full 3200x1800 resolution in windows then and just scale the windows theme and the apps then? I'm a bit concerned if I would benefit from the resolution. I've got a Dell u2711 + a u2412 1920x1200 in portrait mode at home which is quite all right but on the go, even fullHD is somewhat limiting. The 4 memory slots are more important for me. However it indeed seems that the gamut coverage is quite alright. I'll check that panel out.

The apps I'll be using are mostly Indesign, photoshop. Rhino, SketchUp, Catia, Ansys Workbench and STARCCM+ and I'm not sure if several of these softwares will be implementing any scaling functionality in the near future. Some of these software just take forever to adapt to new conditions even the slightest.

But thx a million for your help. Keep me updated on your progress and any problems. I'm gonna try to change the CPU in mine now which I havent gotten around to do yet.

 

Prose- the main adjustment was just in windows 7/personalize/display/custom Rez 200%. That made things like word,excel,thunderbird, chrome, Firefox, etc look nice and then if a particular program had any kind of possible internal change I could make I used that as well. For example - in Quicken I just changed the font & size of the ledger. Other programs I've been able to go to preferences and make changes there. Again my main problem is in some of my photoshop plugins. Tiny menu box items & such. I usually spend a day reinstalling all of my software on the new laptop but this time I'm just going to have to do a little bit at a time because I've got so much other stuff to do. But I will post a note to you or email you as I go along and point out any major problems if there are. Right now though I'm perfectly happy with it but I do have a whole lot of plug-ins and other software to install.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Just wondering if anyone has successfully installed Windows when hard drives are running in RAID mode?

I received my Zbook 15 Gw today, enabled RAID in the bios, created a RAID1 volume consisting of the two 1TB drives but when I try to install Windows 7 it says "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information." The following error also appears "Windows cannot be installed to the disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu".

Now this is what I have done:
-Loaded RAID drivers during install
-Removed the partition.
-Recreated the partition.
-Reset BIOS to defaults.
-Updated the BIOS.
-Disabled/re-enabled RAID in BIOS.
-Tried all of the boot options (Legacy, UEFI with CSM and UEFI without CSM).
-Tried installing WIndows 7 and Windows 8.1.

I'm hoping I am missing something really silly here as I can't believe it is this hard. I'm about to log a support case with HP too but hopefully someone here can assist as I'm really keen to get this going.

 

I managed to sort out the above. If anyone is interested the instructions in this URL worked a treat! http://druss.info/2014/07/fixed-set...installing-windows-8-18-7-vista-etc-from-usb/

 

Hi all, just bought a HP Zbook 15 G2 with the following specs:

Win 7 / Win 8.1 Pro
i7 4710MQ
8GB DDR3 1600MHz (Will upgrade to 32GB)
1TB HDD (Upgraded to 256GB SSD)
AMD Firepro M5100
1920x1080 ChiMei Panel

So I've been using the laptop for a little while now, and I like it, save for two major problems. The first is this LCD. I am coming from a Dell M6500, but the anti glare coating on this screen seems to be ridiculously obtrusive. Everything looks very grainy / sparkly. Would this issue be fixed by upgrading to the B156HAN01.2 panel? I am assuming the replacement would also have better vertical viewing angles than the chimei, which is not very impressive.

Also, I have noticed that the express card slot on my unit seems to not work. Does anyone have a G2 and express card peripheral to test this theory?

 

Would anyone that has Zbook with the M5100 Firepro be willing to run GPU-Z and share a copy of their bios ?
If so, just get GPU-Z, start it and click "Save BIOS". And then please share here or PM me the file> I have an M5100, but realized too late that it was the dell version and so need to reflash it with the HP BIOS.

 

hishamkali - People seem to like that panel. I think you should be OK to swap LCDs. I've done a bit of this and really, the trickiest part is in re-routing the wireless cables

 

My ZBook 15 G1 Dreamcolor finally auto-applied the latest BIOS update last week, along with new firmware for the Nvidia K2100M. Strangely, after the update, I was no longer able to use PowerDirector 12's hardware video encoder option to render in the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) format. This is my camera's native video format and the hardware encoder gives much better results than PD12's crappy software encoder (introduces stutters at some transitions). Hardware encoding was still available for the standard MPEG-4 format, but that requires some transcoding coming from the AVC version, which I want to avoid.

Anyway, rolled back the driver and all is well. Wondering who I should start complaining to...

 

Anyone fo you guys use Thunderbolt slot, if yes to what use?

 

Hey folks - been using my Zbook G2 for a month now and really like it. My biggest complaint is the fan running quite a bit and it's slightly noisier than I expected, but I can live with that.

Stuck Samsung SSDs in the main slot and with a caddy and I'm just waiting for Samsung, Crucial or Intel to come out with a good 60mm x4 PCIe drive. Like mentioned previously I bought the high rez display and I like that a lot and looks fine after calibration to me. I have some scaling issues, but none have caused me big problems.

I haven't gotten around to getting under the keyboard to see how all of that looks and to replace the minimum memory that I ordered - has anyone been under there? Hard to get there? Problems? Again, like previously mentioned, I had hell getting under my Lenovo w520, I can live with the two 4gb sticks under the keyboard but I'd rather match the two 8gb Crucials that I put in the back cover slots. Just looking for anyone's experience with that......Thanks in advance for any replies.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

That Chi-Mei panel is indeed a TN panel, so very bad angles...

 

If you search on Google for dismount ZBook 15 keyboard or ZBook 15 upgrade memory you will find a video. I don't have the link unfortunately. I did this on mine, however the keyboard can be a bit sticky. Do you know the EXACT type of your 3200X1800 display (you'll find this with HWiNFO 64, selecting monitor at the left side. If I can upgrade it to this panel, it would be awesome!!

 

Thanks for the idea of looking on YouTube - I always forget that. I was able to get under the keyboard okay just using the maintenance manual. There were a couple of oh oh moments & at one point I nearly gave up, but once I realized that the two keyboard screws come all the way out I did okay. I had some hard plastic tools that I had bought for just this kind of procedure and they came in handy. It was in there pretty tight. Just in case anyone might wonder in the future I have 32 GB of Kingston Hyper X Black CL9 1.35v in my Zbook and so far it is working properly.
'
The "exact" kind of display that I have on my Zbook G2 is a Sharp SHP141C. HWiNFO happens to be one of the programs of mine that the text is nearly too small to see. If a person runs the sensors only the text is a little larger, but in the main program it is nearly useless. I didn't have my glasses on but I had to copy/paste the monitor type into word to read it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

If you are referring to the G2 version of the Zbook there is no option for the dreamcolor display and my experience with that display on the first generation zbook was terrible. Over six months, two different machines, 3 different techs and a total 8-9 different displays I could not find one that would work for me. I lost track of how many displays were involved. I couldn't get past the pink and blue ghosting that all of them had. Only one had backlight bleed. I can certainly understand why it's not offered any more. My salesperson said she had never had anyone other than me complain about the ghosting which I found hard to believe.

I am very happy with the high rez display on my G2 despite it not covering as much of the color gamut. It's matte, not shiny. Like mentioned in other posts the biggest problem is the UI of some programs involving small text. With adjustments in windows and with Adobe working on the scaling in their latest versions of programs I haven't had a lot of those type of problems. Despite owning the latest version of Adobe Audition I like the interface of the CS3 version and the UI is fine - I guess the windows changes I made made that possible. ANyway, there is no ghosting on this display and when I calibrated it it showed over 70% of the RGB gamut.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

As Aztec points out, the Dreamcolor display has some common problems with uniformity, mainly noticeable on solid, light-colored screens. Mine has pink tinting in the lower corners, but that's about it. It bothered me a bit at first, but since I mostly use my system for photo and video editing, I don't really notice it very often. It's not 4k, nowhere near it, so it's not going to "hold up" there (not sure what you mean by that, though). But I find the pixel density of the 15" display to be very nice (plenty sharp), just about perfect for editing, since pixel-peeping can be done without scaling artifacts. My friend is constantly complaining about his MB Pro retina screen not scaling nicely in Photoshop CC - he thinks I'm better off with FHD, since there are still growing pains with the ultra-def screens (especially on PCs). I do love the matte finish and nothing else out there can compete with the color definition (besides an external, of course).

FYI, I have seen the Dreamcolor option offered for the G2's recently. Can't recall where, but pretty sure it was on HP's site. I don't think that option will be around for long, if it even still exists, since they appear to be phasing it out. You can also still buy G1 Dreamcolors from B&H, where the price has been steadily dropping over the last 6 months.

 

Does someone know the exact display type of the DreamColor display in the ZBook 15 via HWiNFO64? I'm very curious if you can purchase this panel and upgrade it for yourself..

 

Avid - I'm with you on the display. Beautiful, I just couldn't get past the color casts when doing non Photoshop stuff. Even in PS it sometimes irked me. A portion of a white tabletop at a wedding? You get my point & we've discussed it. Glad that yours. Is working for you. Photoshop wise Adobe has done a good job with scaling on Cc2014. Works fine for me on the hi Rez screen. Now if my plugin guys would work on some of theirs. So far I'm happy with my G2 though. I should make a list of programs and how scaling is working - if any one is interested?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

It's an LG panel, I can post the number later, but I don't think that's a trivial process. If you search these forums, you'll find numerous posts from people who have attempted it on Elitebooks in the past. For one thing, it requires a special LVDS cable which, apparently, can be hard to come by. There were other complications as well as I recall, possibly involving the color mapping board. Here's a schematic someone posted...

 

ZBook 15 Dreamcolor Display:

LG Philips LP156WH3-TLB1

EDIT: Searching for the "Monitor Name" above finds only WXGA panels that don't seem to be related to this panel at all. My DC panel's HW ID is:

LGD0220

 

Mine were the same.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Here's our review of the ZBook 15 G2 now posted ....very much enjoyed reviewing it. Editor's Choice.

 

Hey all,

If I order the version of the Zbook without the PCIE SSD, does the motherboard still have the PCIE slot available? I was looking in the support manual and it looks like the only differences between motherboards depend on which processor you purchase and which version of windows (or no windows) you choose so it seems like it would be possible.

Similarly, if I went with a PCIE SSD from the factory and selected an empty HDD space, will the SATA connector for a future HDD still be available?

 

Yes.