8540w 8540p 8440w 8440p spec sheets

yes it could. it may be (but I doubt) that HP only offers HDD install options simply because you get more space and generally you wouldn't need the speed of an SSD to just hold files.

 

Thanks altoid, the reason I ask is for virtualization purposes. Running the VMs from a secondary HD, and just stick the OS "stuff" on the primary will fly on this rig. I'm really looking forward to this comin out soon. This Dell XPS M1530 I'm on now has been the most disappointing purchase I've had from Dell. Time to branch out.

 

oh ok, very cool you plan on having an HDD as your primary an SSD as your secondary and using the VM software to run off the SDD while its on top of windows (or whatever OS you choose) on the HDD?

 

Actually I was planning on getting it w/an SSD and then plugging in the current SSD in my Dell to be used as the second. Nice and speedy

Any word on the drop date for these, as well as any info on temps w/the quad CPUs?

 

lol, everywhere I looked said all the way from early january to early februrary. Some members here said they think closer to may. I am hoping for next week myself. One review on the 14" model said it had the i7-920QM in it and it got warm under heavy load but nothing too unbearable. I ordered an envy 15, but everyone is having issues with it. I want a well built machine that will last me 4-5 years. I'm not up for broken BIOSes and poor driver support any more. I went through that with my current laptop and I don't have time, nor do I want to spend money on something that gimps out and I just have to "live with" like I did with my current laptop. Plus I'm excited to get my first all metal chassis laptop woohoo!

What specs are you looking to get? I'm definitely interested in the 8540w with the FX1800M 4gb ram and the i7-820QM and I'm debating if I should go for the SSD option. I'll be doing CAD and dreamweaver mostly, I don't think SSD is needed for that.

 

Those are the specs I am looking at as well. I'm going to opt for a 128GB SSD as the system drive, then throw a large HDD in the upgrade bay as a data drive. I do software development (a lot of it in a VM) and occasional gaming.

 

Actually actually, you could put both SSDs in the HP and raid0 them. You can do that now with the 8530w too.

The upgrade bay is just another SATA port, so it behaves exactly the same as the primary SATA, and can be used as primary if you want.

 

Sure you have, 1394a is FireWire 400, thats what these come with (10 year old technology). They could have put 1394b (FireWire 800) on it by now (8 year old tech) but yeah, USB3.0 should blow that out of the water.

 

True, but the RAID setup'd be acting as one disk, so when working w/my virtual servers, that work would affect the drive the OS is on. Keeping them seperate, 1 for OS, 1 for virtuals, allows me to not affect the "host" drive while doing server development.

As for specs, I think I'm looking at all the way up...the i7-820, try to max it out at 16GB (whether I get all that from HP or go to like Newegg or something all depends on pricing), and the FX 1800M (as I do play some WoW inbetween my dev work )

The only thing that bothers me is the Nvidia card. My current XPS M1530 has a GeForce 8600M GT and the temps on this lappy consistently cause it to freeze, and Dell's been no help at all. I'm just hoping the design of the new HP facilitates a relatively good temperature setup.

 

holy smokes! that would be quite a system! is that power necessary for development work?

side note: i wish we could RAID processors lol

 

Maybe, I think what you say holds true for mechanical disks, but I'm not so sure for SSDs.

 

same deal with SSDs the envy guys who have dual 160gb drives say it shows up as 1 320gb. How reliable is RAID 0 compared to a non RAID setup?

 

The quad helps with the number of possible virtuals I can spin up, as well as the memory. Having a seperate SSD allows for all that work to happen away from the OS, so if I need to swap back and fire up MS Word, or a few other apps, they won't be doggin'. Plus, this kinda setup will carry me for a couple-3-4 years at the very least.

Well, until the next best thing comes out, eh?

 

well said. I am looking for a long term option as well, though I don't think 16gb is necessary for me right now, but it might be nice hehe. I bet you could run exclusively off the RAM for mudane tasks with 16gb. Get 12 hours of battery life surfing the web and emailing with the hard drives turned off.

Hmm...I wonder if windows would do that on the fly? load itself to the ram, turn off the HDs when it realizes (or is told) that HD access isn't required. Eh, I guess not with all the temp files etc that are generated. Good idea though.

 

Using memory over a hard drive won't yield substantial gain in battery life as both components do not take up a significant portion of a notebook's power consumption (ie. you might save a fraction of a W, while a screen can consume up to 10W on idle depending on size).

 

Ah thanks! Thats what the difference is, I totally forgot about that. Indeed with USB3 there is no point to have 1394b/FW800 as many external drives are USB2 compatible and very soon USB3 compatible. I think the person wanting it was hoping to load OS X on it and do target-mode in OSX at fastest load to the 8440w.

A picture comes to mind ... something about developers working in a room and playing around and the boss comes in, saying what going on .... the response is "waiting for rendering"

 

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13529_div/13529_div.HTML

spec sheet, maybe more detailed? I don't know...

 

HP I hate you. I want this 8540w with the 128 GDDR5 GPU and i7...but the 150W adapter...wow...

Note, 2 USB 3.0 and 3 USB 2.0. Total 3 only. The USB 3.0 is backwards compatible.

Though, mobility with "Starting at 6.37 lb (2.89 kg)" plus the 150W PSU are limited.

HTML:

Stand-Alone Power Requirements (AC Power)	Nominal Operating Voltage	18.5 V
Average Operating Power	TBD W
Max Operating Power	< 90 W
  or
< 120 W
  or
< 150 W
Temperature	Operating	32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C) (not writing optical)
41° to 95° F (5° to 35° C) (writing optical)
Non-operating	–4° to 140° F (–20° to 60° C)
Relative Humidity	Operating	10% to 90%, non-condensing
Non-operating	5% to 95%, 101.6° F (38.7° C) maximum wet bulb temperature
Shock	Operating	125 G, 2 ms, half-sine
Non-operating	200 G, 2 ms, half-sine
Random Vibration	Operating	0.75 grms
Non-operating	1.50 grms
Altitude
(unpressurized)	Operating	–50 to 10,000 ft (–15.24 to 3,048 m)
Non-operating	–50 to 40,000 ft (–15.24 to 12,192 m)

Nice thing to have.

 

According to the specs above, I see 4 ports...am I missing something? Then again, I just woke up and have had only 1 sip of coffee, so I could be wrong...

 

The interface section of the website states there are 3 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 so a total of 5 USB ports. Probably due to limitations of the 3rd party USB 3.0 hub controller, with backwards compatibility theres no reason to have any usb 2.0 ports.

Does anyone know if the possible 9 and 12 cell batteries stick out of the chassis any more than the standard battery?

 

2.89 kg (HP 8540w notebook) + 0.70 kg (150W PSU) = about 3.70 kg.
My five years old Acer 15" (2.80 kg) + PSU (0.380 kg) = about 3.20 kg.

I'd have absolutely no problem in accepting 500g more weight for such a powerful machine (I could save an almost equal weight putting less "garbage" in notebook bag ... ), real problems for me start just with heavy 17" notebooks such as Dell M6500 (about 5 kg including PSU! ).

At the moment I don't even see a problem in having only two USB 3.0 ports out of five (according to the above indicated specsheet, on downloadable PDF datasheets I've read of four).
A lot of peripherals such as printers and mice don't really need USB 3.0 and I'm happy to have some ports based on an "old" proven standard instead of relying just on a new standard at present not implemented by Intel chipset, just in case there is some driver or firmware issue.
Moreover, to connect external high-speed peripherals such as hard disks there is an eSata port, too.

 

good points I'm not too concerned about the weight of the total packageI just hope the PSU isn't too bulky.

 

Will there be a Blu-ray burner offered with the 8540w? I was confused by the spec list, which includes a "Blu-ray R/RE DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL" optical drive. At first, I thought "R/RE" meant that it would only read Blue-ray disks, but I read elsewhere that this describes a Blu-ray burner. Is that correct?

 

BD-ROM is a reader, BD-R/RE is the writer.

 

Thanks for the confirmation.

 

Anyone find anything if this rig is supposed to hitting the market tomorrow (i.e. February)? I'm really jonesin' fer this thing...

 

http://www.hp.com/canada/products/landing/notebooks/8540w_elitebook.html

 

Hella yeah! I'm hoping that means that it's coming to US then as well!

 

That's just a few hours away in the Americas. I guess we'll know shortly.

Assuming the 8740w doesn't pop at the same time, this will be a tough decision: buy an 8540w now, or wait for the 8740w?

Personally, I really would enjoy the extra vertical pixels on a 17" WUXGA display, not to mention 133 DPI instead of 141. On the other hand, every day spent in this gilded cage with a fruit logo on it is a day when I'm not operating at full productivity.

 

Interesting news about upcoming ATI graphic cards and heat dissipation on new Elitebooks:

http://hpfansite.com/hp-elitebook/ati-firepro-m5800-graphics-leaked-coming-hp-elitebook-8540w/

http://hpfansite.com/hp-elitebook/2010-elitebooks-order-ati-firepr-graphics/

http://hpfansite.com/hp-elitebook/elitebook-8440-8540-heat-dissipation-generation/

 

Very cool hopefully those ATO CTOs will show up sooooooon I don't get this staggered release date thing, unless they're just stocking up on parts.

 

Hi,

I currently own a 8530w and I am quite satisfied. The main cons of 8530w is its fan noise even when idle so will this make me go for the 8540w...?

Does someone know how much will cost the 8540w with NVIDIA FX 1800M or ATI M5800 GPU?

Do you really think HP has made much improvements on heat dissipation with those GPU? (HP Fansite mentioned that 8540w has better heat dissipation but this is regarding the NVIDIA FX 880M GPU only, right?)

 

Can do a modified ACPI table override in Windows/Linux to quieten it down.

Anyone know if these new HP systems have expresscard 2.0 to provide a x1 2.0 pci-e interface? Required to get very high graphics performance using external desktop video cards, like HD58xx or new Nvidia Fermi cards using a DIY ViDock.

 

I'm not sure about your GPU question but as far as fan noise I've been reading reviews all over the globe and they all mention excellent heat dissapation and low fan noise relative to the 8x30 series. I've never owned an elitebook so I have no frame of reference. As soon as they have CTOs I'll be buying one and I'll check out the fan noise and let everyone know as will others I'm sure.

 

if you look in the 8x40 thread in this subforum the service manual has been posted I bet it's in there

 

Looks like they're up, but only pre-configured models for now...grrrr

 

Just to curb some enthusiasms (mine included), at present ATI HD 5xxx cards seem to have some issues, maybe driver related.

I don't know if these regards desktop cards only or mobility versions too:

grey lines http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Grey-Screen-Fix-5870,9549.html

2D acceleration http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi,2539.html


Moreover, first reviews about ATI mobility cards performance go from exciting

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Hands-On-Asus-G73Jh-with-ATI-s-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870.25103.0.html

to disappointing

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Newsentry.153+M5ade9499b07.0.html
http://twisted-reviews.com/short-review-ati-mobility-radeon-hd5850-1-gb-ddr3-first-benchmarks/

I suppose they are just teething troubles but better to know in advance and stay tuned.

 

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01998924/c01998924.pdf

dreamcolor and ati fire pro 5800 on the 8540w

 

According to that document, no Blu-Ray burner for 8540w/8540p ...
Maybe a later option?

 

There is a Blu-Ray shortage currently. I'm sure the option will be there in the future.

 

What does "Windows XP Professional (available through downgrade rights from Genuine Windows® 7 Professional)" mean for the operating system for the 8440w?

I want to have Windows 7 on the computer, not XP. Does it still come with Windows 7? If so, what do I have to do to get Windows 7 on the machine, not XP?

 

I believe that means it comes with Win7 but you can downgrade to XP.

 

It actually means it comes with Windows XP Pro installed, but you are provided with the discs for both XP and W7 Pro in the box.

 

The 8540w is carrying also an ATI M8500 new GPU to be named. More here: DCMForums

 

What's interesting is it's supposed to be higher end than nVidia's 128-bit GDDR5! I assume it would also be a 128-bit GDDR5 card but slower than the current M7740 128-bit GDDR5 card.

 

Well I hope they hurry up with it already...sheesh...i want one now lol

 

Hi, the fan noise is not that bad on idel. it is abit noisy if even minor noise is a problem.
The problem is if u can flash it yourself you can set the fan speed when its different temps. At the moment HP has set the fan at 100% on idle temps aswell as maximum load. If they set it at about 60-70% (the gpu) it would be literally inaudiable.
When i found this out. i can accept this alot more. Otherwise i suggest a thinkpad cos ive owned the t61p and they very quiet.
The HP 8540w will be cooler but i doubt it will be any less silent. unless they set the fan speed lower.
owning a nw8240, 8510w and this 8530w makes me believe that ur wasting time buying a 8540w sooner at a higher price cos of sound emission which will still be there. even at a lowe sound i think it will still bug u.

 

I spoke to a rep a moment ago, and they swore to me that the stats on the website for the (WH137AW) ($2600 8540w model) were correct. So unfortunately the sales people are still in the dark as to the real specs of that model.

 

Did you ask them if they were capable of reading and vaguely familiar with computers?

 

I got basically the same information from another sales rep but she told me that the difference in price was that the cheaper model is being sold under the "Smart Buy" discount program. Here are the models on the Small & Medium Business Store:

Cheaper modules under the Featured Models tab.

Expensive models including the WH137AW under the Additional Models tab.

Crazy expensive models under the Configurable tab.