New HP Elitebook 8560p

Full HD screen or not?

When I look at datasheet here, there's no mention of a Full HD screen:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmisc/vac/us/product_pdfs/HP_Elitebook_8560p_Datasheet.pdf

When I look at PDF Quickspecs, the Full HD screen is there:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13947_na/13947_na.pdf

So, which is correct?

 

They were both updated in Feb, but I'd trust Quick Specs over a marketing pamphlet.

 

Given the following known facts:

1) The 8540p/8440p offered different discrete GPUs in parallel with the 8540w/8440w.

2) The 8460p/8540p do not offer different discrete graphics.

3) nVIDIA has not announced a replacement for FX380M.

I conclude that the 8460w will offer the same GPU (FX1000M) as the base 8560w. This is great news for 14" lovers, they will finally have a decent professional gpu to work with.

 

And this is very bad news for the 8560p. The new gpu is a terrible downgrade comparing to the one carried by the 8540p

 

A 96 shader 128-bit GDDR3 card is a lot better than the 64-bit FX380M but as a consumer, I still want more

 

What's the big deal about upgrading from the 8560p to the 8560w?

 

The 8460p DOES hve a discrete graphics card: Discrete: AMD Radeon HD 6470M with 1 GB dedicated DDR3 video memory

 

I had a typo in the unit types, but you misread the rest. I said they do not have different discrete GPUs. The 8x40p offered 2 separate options of nVIDIA GPUs, then these same cards are offered in their FX variations on the 8x40w machines. My point is then, since the 8x60p series offers the same GPU, I suspect the 8460w will have the same base option of GPU as the 8560w.

 

Ahh. When do you think the 8460w will be coming out? The p comes out on the 15th and I'm between that or the w. Really my interest for the gfx is some mild gaming and for movies, so getting the W would just be an aesthetic decision (unless you see another reason).

 

I'm guessing they will be announced shortly after the p is released (by shortly, I'm thinking within 2 weeks). I'd at least wait that long to see what the GPU options will be.

 

To resume what we know at this moment...

8440p: NVIDIA NVS 3100M < 8460p: Radeon HD 6470M (upgrade)
8540p: NVIDIA NVS 5100M > 8560p: Radeon HD 6470M (downgrade)

8440w: NVIDIA Quadro FX 380M (512k)
8540w: NVIDIA Quadro FX8800, NVIDIA Quadro FX1800, ATI FirePro M5800

8460w: ???
8560w: ???

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I wonder when 8460w, 8560w and 8760w will be announced? In any case, I think the 8560p would probably be the best option for me at a reasonable price, I just want to make sure it comes with a full HD screen in good quality.

 

8460 = FX 1000M (upgrade)
8560 = FX 1000M, FX 2000M (downgrade, unless they release a higher end model later)

 

In this datasheet the full HD screen is there:

http://h71016.www7.hp.com/html/pdfs...560p.pdf?jumpid=in_r2910_DataS/nb/cfg1103/mes

 

FYI, The 8x60p models are up for sale now. You can't configure anything yet. I think there is a typo on the warranty for the recommended 8560p, it says 1/1/0 while the other pre-configs offer 3/3/0.

 

Yeah, I saw that, shipment March 22nd, can't wait to see the first reviews of this laptop.

 

Cost and OS aside, I am looking hard as to how this model compares to MacBook Pro 15" with anti-glare.

Performance wise, specs seem close, but is it fair to say without a hands on comparison, nothing stands out on the spec sheet to tell me what is the "do more" product?

I don't care about blue-ray, but I am intrigued to be able to run two OS on same machine with MBP and airstream with all the iPhone, iPad and APTV stuff in the house. This to me means I can do more with MBP yet have a quality built laptop.

Thoughts?

 

Generally the benefits of business laptops are outside of what you would see in a spec sheet. These include.

1. Cases that are designed to withstand far more stress than a consumer level laptop. They are designed to take far more a beating than any consumer level (including the Macbook Pro) laptop.

2. Excellent support options. Unlike consumer level support, business support is very responsive, knowledgeable, and they will repair your laptop very quickly (e.g. within 24 hours).

3. Unlike consumer laptops, long term use (3+ years) is taken seriously. This means spare parts will be available for the long term, parts can be interchanged between models, etc. This also means things like the cooling in the laptop is designed well so the laptop will last.

4. The "workstation" models typically can be configured in a myriad of ways, using stuff that is not seen in many consumer level laptops (16GB+ of RAM, dual SSDs, IPS displays, professional GPUs, etc.)

5. Bigger IT departments need to have good plans about the IT infrastructure. Companies like Microsoft provide long term roadmaps, support for older operating systems (e.g. XP), etc. They are much better than Apple at this. Since Microsoft is favored because of this, hardware designed for Windows is a better option.

Most consumers typically only care about a couple of specifications like CPU speed and weight. Business users have to also be concerned about long term support and durability.

Speaking purely in terms of spec, Apple has created some really nice machines with the Sandybridge macs. The benefit of the 8560p will be durability and long term support. However, the durability/build of the Macbook Pro and Apple support are good and are fine for many people.

 

Boy what a downgrade in design, these new models does not look nice at all.

 

First off, I just want to clarify that I am looking at this as objectively as I can. All should know I never owned an Apple Mac, but do own an iPhone 4 and iPad 2. I am not trying to sway people to the HP or the Mac, but looking for confirmation that others see what I see (or not).

I went to the Apple store this weekend to handle a 15" MBP. I also watched the video of the new HP here.

I agree all your points are important, but I am not so sure I agree the HP 8460p-and-8560p is superior to the MBP 15".

I am no engineer, but I disagree. The bottom of the MBP is solid aluminum, where HP 8460p shown in the above link is a metal grill bottom that theoretically can let in stuff and not as sturdy.

I am in the process of retiring a loaded Dell D820 that is 4.5 years old and found loading it at purchase got me this far with it.

The phone support is top notch at Apple (subjective) and the warranty is strong enough I schedule a Genius Bar appointment and walk into any Apple store to get my item fixed or replaced on the spot.

Good point about the cooling. I don't want hot thighs. I rather look at hot thighs. Given the MBP case has been out for a year now, there appears to be no heating issues. However, that grill bottom of the HP has me a little worried.

For my uses, the MBP and HP are dead even in terms of my important specs. I don't need the finger scanner, TPM chip, docking station (now becoming available for MBP - see Henge) and external batteries, and dual pointing devices. MBP has the new Thunderbolt I/O for future externals, but sadly no Blue-Ray. I do like the higher res HD screen spec on the HP.

I am not an IT Admin looking to purchase a fleet of laptops and manage them, rather an independent consultant that just wants a very reliable, durable, flexible, feature packed laptops with anti-glare screen, and latest processor that will last some years that works for home and office.

Also, Mac OS Bootcamp will allow me to operate my computing life using the best features of both Win 7 and Max OS. It's like two PC's in one!

 

Durability has way more to do with energy disapation than "solid looks". Just compare a car from the 1960s to today. The 1960s car is piratically solid metal. The new cars have flimsy bodies easily crushed on impact. Even if you take away air bags, the survivability of the passengers inside the new cars is much greater basically because the crushing body design increases impact time, which decrees the force of impact (Newton's Second Law). These "flimsy cars" are designed with a deformable shell around a solid chassis that prevents the crushing from continuing into the passenger compartment.

A business notebook as a similar kind of dual-stage design. An outer shell around a sold metal chassis. The MBP is like the old 1960s car with just a solid metal shell, which actually increases the force at impact by decreasing impact time (again Newton's Second Law). But it does "feel" more solid because you get very little flex...which is actually a disadvantage when droped or bumped or subjected to vibrations.

If you need to replace battery, keyboard, ram, or optical drive, HP will overnight the part to you and you can easily do it yourself. For more advanced things, they will send a tech to your house (assuming you get on-site, which some models come with by default). Ask Apple how much money it would take for them to send on of their geniuses to your home/business and listen to them laugh at you.

Me too.

Bootcamp still has problems because of drivers. Win7 in Bootcamp is still inferior to Win7 on a PC for many demanding applications. Other forum members have had major issues with CAD software.

 

knight427 has said what I would say so I'll leave it at that.

The "superior" laptop is the one that a) meets your needs and b) is the one you desire. There is no laptop that can be "superior" for everybody unless you are talking about a broken laptop versus a working one. I'll give you two clear scenarios where a person's needs favors the HP.

1. The Official Apple Stores are primarily in bigger cities. What If I live in a smaller city with no Apple store or frequently travel to smaller cities? If my laptop breaks in the middle of a job I'm stuck with mailing the laptop to Apple or taking it to a local retailer. The local retailer might be really slow and take a week to repair it.

As has been pointed out, HP will mail the parts to me or typically fix it within 24 hours. You can imagine how important this is in a business environment.

2. I have a friend who almost always uses his laptop (this is his only machine) with a number of external devices (e.g. keyboard, mouse, hard drives, monitors, etc). He does this because a) his job requires him to and b) he has severe back issues and cannot do serious work only on the laptop. He works at at least 2 different sites.

In that case a docking station is a must so he can easily and quickly move around.

--

As far as the build quality of the Macbook Pro vs the Elitebook/Thinkpad/Dell E series, try to find reports from people who have dropped their laptops from desks/couch arm rests, etc. I've seen plenty of people who have dented/damaged the cases and internals of the Macbooks. With the business class notebooks I've seen "I cracked a small piece of plastic and HP replaced it in 24 hours." Replacing these parts is easier when you have more flexibility than replacing one big piece of aluminum.

I've been at a job where I used to travel a lot. I eventually got sick and tired of being careful with the laptop. Eventually I got to the point where I treated it only slightly better than I would a bag full of clothes. I'm not sure how a Macbook Pro would have handled my indifference.

I know a number of independent consultants (from a wide variety of fields) who have switched to Macbook Pros and are happy with their laptops. They would never go back to a Windows based machine. It's just a question of if it meets your needs. Apple makes a product that fits for many people.

 

I am very sad to see HP business glass notebooks on their site now with the 16:9 ratios. Are all business laptop makers going this direction? Mac is looking better now even then I guess.

 

Yes, everyone except Apple are going for 16:9 ratios, only exception for HP is the 8740w with the 1680x1050 screen.

 

Actually, both Dell M6500 and Lenovo W701 offer 16:10. But all three are a generation behind the new MBP. Dell has announced the M6600 will be 16:9, Lenovo appears to have dropped the W7xx series entirely, and it very likely the 8760w will also be 16:9, though this is not yet confirmed.

 

I thought I'd post another situation where an onsite, within 24 hours, option is very valuable.

In certain cases people have a lot of expensive ($10K+) software on their computer. This type of software requires specialized licenses and software that restricts the software use to the single computer the software is activated on. Some software is licensed per core so and that can get very expensive on a multi-core computer.

If your computer crashes you cannot simply use a backup computer since you cannot easily transfer those licenses. You need your computer to be fixed as quickly as possible so you can get back to work. Unless the software maker has very flexible licensing options, or unless you pirate software to run on your backup computer (which many people do), you are totally out of luck.

Some computer manufacturers wipe your drive when you send it in for repair. Trust me, this is a headache for software licenses. Mailing your laptop in is not an option at all in this situation.

 

I've been browsing the Apple forums looking at the MBP and there is an overheating problem that seems to be software/CPU related. Oh well.... Not spending premium dollars on that.

So, MBP laptop has dropped off my list even though I wanted to use the friendly home orient software for media.

That leaves me with figuring out the practice difference between the 8560p, the impending W and the Lenovo T410 as my top choices with the new Sandy processor.

I don't run intensive programs like CAD, but I do run basic video editing of iPhone videos to create content for my DNLA server to stream via Apple TV. Other than that, just a power MS-Office user on the road and in the office.

Oh, and I am a quality freak and perfectionist and like to have great graphics, performance and build quality and of course the latest gear.

Should I forget about waiting for the W and focus on comparing the P against the Lenovo T410?

In the office I'd be using a docking station and on the road, I don't want the glossy screen, but like HD rez.

 

BTW - the HP 8560p looks to be configurable now on the HP site here.

 

Is it normal to have 300-400$ more on configurable ones over non-configurable ones?

 

Yes, because you will be able to get a discount on the CTO by working with a sales rep. Last generation, many of us got 28% off CTO 8x40w laptops. If you want my sales rep info, send me a PM. I can't promise 28%, especially b/c this is a whole new generation (and they might be pricing them more realistically this time...probably not though).

 

I'm sitting here on the couch ripping 80GB of FLAC files to Apple loss-less files with my poor ol' Dell D820 that has an Intel Core 7200 @ 2.0 Ghz. It will take 5.5 hours and the CPU is burning my legs and about to catch fire any minute.

I worry the bottom oriented intake and exhaust fans on the 8560p will do the same if I push the CPU while other models have keyboard and rear fan and intake.

But then again, I don't make it a monthly habit to push a CPU so hard.

 

Thanks for the info, but I am from Canada, so I don't think it is the same reps. But what do you tell to the rep when you call them?

 

Regardless of how sturdy the MBP looks, it is not nearly as solid as any Thinkpad or Elitebook in terms of build quality. It may not creak or groan because it is basically all aluminum, but it is still very fragile. As a person who is relatively rough on computers, I wish that I would have gotten a case for my MBP sooner. I have scratches all over the bottom of the case and there is even a small dent on the top cover because one of my textbooks in my backpack was pushing too hard on the screen.

If you are looking for something that won't burn your thighs, the MBP is not the way to go. Even without that CPU/Software glitch that you mentioned, it just never really runs all that cool. In Windows 7, there is no option to run the IGP, so the laptop is always hot and in OS X, as soon as you load any webpage with flash on it, the thing heats up to around 55-60 degrees Celsius (not sure where the temp is taken from, but probably an average of the CPU and GPU cores).

 

Canada has different pricing. Elitebooks are way more expensive there. I'm not even sure you can configure one. Talk to Aikimox.

 

Thanks all. I am swayed.

Are there more traveled Forum for the HP 8560p out there? Strange, couldn't find any.

I use my laptop 80% on docking station with a big monitor while only 20% of my time in the field. I forgot to mention that I do run Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, etc.) and like good display when designing.

Will the graphics card different between the 8560p and the W model make a difference?

I am so ready now to pull the trigger but don't want to regret not waiting for the W.

 

Do you use a color-critical monitor for designing currently? Would you like this feature in a laptop?

Do you do any sort of gaming or major GPU intensive work (CAD, etc.)?

I would say that the W would be beneficial for you if you said yes to either of those.

 

I'd say the only CPU critical stuff I do are:
1) Convert QuickTime MOV files to something else
2) Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, etc.)
3) Don't do it now, but will in the future, edit HD videos taken on iPhone (will try iMovie first on iPad 2)
4) Rip DVD movie files to NAS

This is mostly home based stuff. Work is a little of the Adobe CS.

UPDATE: So glad I am not doing MBP.

 

hi, i reall like new design and new things, but I have two questions
1-in italy seems to be sold only in 2 core versions. i'm an engineering student and I have to run heavy simulation, and don't want cpu to be the bottleneck.
I have in mind to keep it for 3-4 years, do you think there will programs able to run all the '8' cores of a quad cpu?i have seen benchmarks of 2620m vs quads, there isn't much difference in single and double cores programs
2-choosing in discrete graphic vs integrated. 6470 doesn't seem too powerful compared to integrated one. should I choose ati only if i want eyefinity or are there other reasons (beside wasting battery life) thanks

ps i don't need a particular gpu just because i'm more comfortable with vidock gpu + 24" monitor to do CAD projects and play, second question was just curiosity

 

Maybe someone can answer this question based on 2010 models.

Does the W version have a motherboard and cooling designed for constantly being on in a docking station while the P design is not as efficient since maybe designers assume it won't be on all the time?

Or are they the same in terms of quality and life expectancy for sitting in a docking station running all day?

 

I'm seriously considering purchasing the 8560p model, so I'll resort to your knowledge and experience:

1. Would it be possible to upgrade/replace the GPU with a better one?

2. Are keyboards in other languages available or could one have a custom design keyboard, for instance in Turkish (with the Tukish characters which are non-existent in the English alphabet)?

3. Anyone had the chance to test the 8560p model yet? I'm specifically curious about the heat and noise emissions (both under low load and high load)...

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

@pinguinkiller
1. that's 8 threads core and yes already there are some apps. that appreciate more cores (like WinZip even x8 cores/threads). Beside that almost always having x4 core benefits, even with lower (but not too much) clock, systems on x4 cpus works smoothly. I was really surprised, I've changed CPU in my colleague PC from x2 to x4 (back and forth just to check) and running many "single-threaded" tasks is great uder x4 core, when we started Octane render on x2 config, we couldn't do practically anything more but with x4 ... no problem at all! Other parts were as is: 8GB RAM, GTX275, 7200rpm 1,5TB HDD, Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit.
I you do many things same time , go for x4 - ecpecially if one of the task that you will run is heavy one!

2. To clarify, when you choose config. with discrete GPU you still get IGP (integrated now with CPU). Although current Intel IGP is very fast (as for IGP standards) if your apps. need RAM consider that runinng two displays with high res. and 32-color IGP will reserve 1,7GB RAM max. Considering that you are choosing 15.6" laptop you can go with discrete GPU.

 

Wouldn't think they'd be any different for usage on a dock based on the current models. The better cooling is for the increased power consumption due to use of more powerful components, I believe that they use the same cooling for the same parts.

From the current model, I believe only the 17" model has upgradable GPUs (discrete models only). This only applies if you get a GPU that is offered by that specific model, ie. you can't just put any MXM card in it.

 

The suspense is killing me not hearing actual user experience on this baby since units have been shipping since a week ago, March 15. Allo out there!

I tried to find a support forum on HP.com to monitor issues coming in but have been unsuccessful locating one there or anyplace else. Anyone?

 

Yeah, I'm looking forward to see some reviews, but nothing yet.....

 

I also want to bring up one thing, 8x60p doesn't mention anything about RAID support in specifications

 

Elitebooks have traditionally come with only a single hard drive bay, unless you swap out the optical drive for a second hard drive. This kind of precludes the opportunity for RAID unless you do that...

 

The 8560p is now available in the Business to Business portal, but I can't choose dedicated graphics and full HD screen, arrghhhhh.......I need a new notebook now.

 

just for info:

since yesterday I can configure the 8560p here in Germany via Top Config at the distributors.

Pre-configured models like LG733EA#ABD have ETA at the distributors around 11.04.-19.04.

EDIT: only 2 core models... biggest is i7-2620M. Hm, I´ll wait for a while then...

 

Has anybody received his/her 8560p yet? Any info on heat and fan noise emissions?

 

I still need confirmation on the full HD screen before I order, I still can't see that option when trying to configure.