hp zbook14 for students

I am currently a student looking for a moblie workstation and I was wondering if the zbook 14 would have the power I need. I am in mechanical engineering. The laptop is good and portable which I like a lot! Also I was wondering about the screen. Is a 1600 x 900 good enough on a 14 inch laptop? One last thing... do I need 16 gb of ram or is 8 enough?

 

Sorry I can't comment on how much power it has (not yet anyways), but do remember that the Zbook 14 uses ULV Ultrabook CPUs so it's not going to be as powerful as the CPUs used in much bigger 15.6" notebooks. Although, the dedicated graphics will definitely help. (There are a couple of gaming 14" notebooks that have more powerful CPUs, like the Gigabyte P34G and Razor Blade 14.)

Remember that you can get the Zbook 14 with a 1920x1080 panel, and I would recommend that since it's the only one that's IPS with good viewing angles - although for some reason you can't also get it with touch. I guess you'll have to decide what's important. 8GB is likely more than enough memory, although many of the "Smart Buy" models with the i7 and 1080p screen do come with 16gb by default. Be sure to check out the prebuilt models before customizing, as I found custom expensive in comparison, even after the stock discount coupon.

Also check out the cheaper Elitebook 840 G1 series, which is the same notebook with "consumer" vs "professional" AMD GPU, slightly different cosmetic appearance, and depot vs onsite warranty. Although, your engineering software may work better with the pro drivers.

 

Ok thanks but just to clarify. If I get one with an i7 and 8 gb of ram it will be able to handle anything i throw at it without to much trouble?

 

It really depends what "anything" encompasses. How heavy 3D are you talking about? What kind of intense calculations? Does your software require oodles of RAM? What kind of computers have you used before for this application, and how have they performed?

 

I don't have a lot of experience on other computers. However, most of the calculations will not be super intesive or large. I don't think they will need "oodles" of ram. Most of the 3d work will be fairly small I assume so I think it should be able to handle it without being to slow or crashing but I was just looking for a second opinion. Thanks for the help

 

Unfortunately mine isn't arriving for another week yet. The i7-4600U seems to get a CPU Mark of around 4500-4600, while the i5-4300U gets 3800-3900. That's not bad considering the i7-620M in my current Sony Z11 scores around 2800, and that's 2.66ghz with a 35W TDP (versus 2.1ghz and 15W TDP)!