Got my nw8440 - first impressions

I got to take my sturdy pretty baby home on Thursday - I haven't been playing around with it much, must be spring-depression or something, my love of geek-tweaks seems to have left me , but anyway, here's a few first impressions:

Impressive build. Really impressive. It doesn't *feel* like a laptop even.
No squeaks, no un-even things, no slightly crooked lid (as someone reported on a "sister model", nc8430).

But my! Is it the most boring design ever! Everytime I look at it I get this warm and fuzzy feeling of self-righteousness: "this was a SENSIBLE buy, no frills".

I'm still not really used to the keyboard, or perhaps it is the sheer size of the lappy that makes me get lost and hit the wrong keys sometimes. But it's nice - a bit more to the "IBM-clicky" side than my previous hp:s have been.

The touchpad seems ok, it's not as smoothly textured as on my old nc4000, but it's bigger and I think I'll grow to like it quite a lot. The marking for the scroll-zone annoys me a bit, I think it would look better without it.
The buttons - now there's something a bit different: very, very soft and rubbery. I actually like using them quite a lot, but I'm a bit fearful how they'll stand up to wear and tear. Pretty they aren't.
The stick is much nicer than on my nc4000 - perhaps I'll even try to learn how to use it.

The screen is absolutely gorgeous - crisp and nice and bright enough. And viewing angles have taken great leaps in 4 years I notice.
Only problem so far is that at 1680x1050 I should probably do some tweaking to get xvid etc rips of movies and tv-shows to look smoother when enlarged.
I've mostly not used the ambient light sensor - but it isn't that bad, though I don't really get the point of it.

Noise is more or less non-existent. I must try to stress it a bit sometime in the middle of the night when it is really quiet before I can comment on the fans - I haven't been able to hear them "change gears" yet.
Heat is another thing. Not too bad for using on my lap, even on bare skin. At least not when just browsing or watching a movie.
But I'll have to delve deeper into this issue - I installed Notebook Hardware Control, but it kept alarming me about high temps when I played civII (why is it really old games always makes newer 'puters work themselves silly?), needlessly as it turned out. Got SpeedFan instead, lets see how far I get.

I haven't checked out all the various hp-thingies yet. Not the fingerprint scanner, nor anything else. I will, I will.

After the ultra-light nc4000 this is something of a big beast to have on your lap. I'm not sure I totally get what's so great about a wide screen, at least not at this resolution.
It is of course also much heavier. But not in anyway unbearably so. More annoying is how the weight is distributed: it is noticeably back-heavy, almost like it wants to tilt over backward (OK, exaggeration, but it does feel like the center of it is somewhere just in front of the screen hinges).
But since the battery lives at the back I think it will become a very comfy lap-animal when I remove it and only use it with a powercord.

Since I've not been my geeky self I can't really comment much on the setup wrt software. Basically it seems to be nothing except for Norton (which I chucked at once) and some Sonic-whatever for the DVD-RW (which I'll probably chuck too). The "hp-wireless assistant" hasn't annoyed me much yet, but I don't understand what it's supposed to be good for. I haven't delved deeper into this hp-update or whatever it is; just let it do it's thing at first and then told it not to bother me. We'll see if it gets to stay or if it becomes annoying. The "back-up and recovery tools" I got to use when I burned those recovery discs (what a ridiculously slow thing that was, and 3 DVDs? Ridiculous.), didn't seem too bad, but not too good either.

All in all I'm pretty pleased. This seems like a solid machine. No bells and whistles to get excited about, but OTOH it's got a PC-card slot (can't believe how fast those seems to be phased out on consumer models in favour of express card) and even a serial port! (not that I need one anymore...)
But it so sensible I'll have a hard time refering to it as "my toy". Which means I should properly start doing some *work* instead - now why didn't I get an ASUS G1

 

nice choice of a laptop
im sure itll last you a long time
specially as its a business class machine though it can withstand alot of abuse
but do care take care of ur "beauty"or the "beast"what ever you may choose to call it
enjoy your new laptop
and congrats on your purchase