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I wasn't planning to post any reviews of this notebook until I had a chance to download and run the standard benchmarks but I found the "out of box" experience to be so pain free and my first impressions of the notebook so favorable that I thought I would publish some preliminay thoughts. I am hoping to get a full review with benchmarks done over the coming weekend.
HP 8710W configuration: Preconfigured model - RM265UT
Santa Rosa Chipset: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.20 Ghz
2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
NVIDI Quadro FX 1600M 512MB video
17in WUXGA
120 GB 7200 rpm SATA HDD
Intel PRO/Wireless 802.11a/bg/draft-n wireless
Bluetooth 2.0
Blu-Ray Disc DVD+/- RW Super Multi DL Note - I would normally not have opted for a Blu-Ray DVD but that is what came with the configuration.
Windows Vista Business
Upon removing the unit from its shipping carton I was pleasantly surprised that it was not the behemoth I was expecting given it has a 17inch screen. It feels relatively light and is impressively thin. When open, i.e. screen cover lifted, the 8710W presents one with an impression of elegance. LED icons along the top edge of the keyboard directly below the monitor as well as touch sensitive controls for audio. The only physical switch is the power button at the left side of the top edge. The color scheme is black and gray and all of the case subassemblies which make up the keyboard and the surrounding deck have excellent fit and align perfectly. All ports, slots, jacks, card slots - with the exception of the media card slot, are on either the left or right hand side. Nothing in the back of the unit or along the front edge. From my perspective that makes things very convenient without getting in the way.
When twisting the screen there is minimum flex on the hinges and absolutely no rippling of the LCD screen itself. There is a single sliding latch at the front edge of the screen which provides a very positive and secure latch. I also noticed that there are a number of rubber bumpers around the screen bezel and on the keyboard deck which insure a tight and vibration free closure when the screen is latched. These bumpers also prevent marring of the screen when closed.
So I plugged in the power brick and turned it on. Getting the unit fully configured, and this is done automatically via all sorts of installed HP and Microsoft software, takes about an hour: Windows Vista Business does all sorts of configuring and then HP creates all sorts of back up partitions. Nothing hung or produced errors, it just ate up the clock.
Upon starting up the machine after all of the set up work was done I decided to give the finger print reader configuration wizard a try. Just followed the prompts, it gathers prints from two fingers - by the way for those who are interested I seem to remember that there is a federal law regarding gathering electronic images of finger prints for security purposes which limits such devices to two or three fingers only. The set up wizard worked without a hitch and I now sign on to Windows with only the swipe of a finger.
The monitor, happily, is matte finish. Turning off all of the lights in the room and viewing all sorts of screen images from a very busy desktop to a screen saver which consisted of a single small graphic moving around the screen on a black background revealed absolutely no light leaks. The screen is very tightly sealed in its bezel. Frankly I was surprised at this. The back lighting appears to be very even although with the aforementioned screen saver I did notice a wide band of slightly brighter back lighting running horizontally along the bottom of the screen, about an inch wide, and similar one, although not as wide, running vertically up the middle of the screen. However, with the normal desktop and applications being displayed and regardless of ambient light, these slightly brighter areas don't show. Graphics and text on the screen are very bright and crisp, very nice to work with. No dead pixels found!
The keyboard was a real surprise. It is a full size keyboard with a separate numeric keypad and it is amazingly stiff. The keys have slightly less vertical travel than my desktop keyboard. Simply put the keyboard is a pleasure to use. I don't have any comments on the touchpad, pointer stick because I always use a wireless optical mouse, simply personal pereference.
The machine comes with no "bloatware," thank you HP. There is a sixty day trial of Norton/Symantec anti/virus security stuff. The machine is also MS Office 2007 ready. This means that you can download an activation key from Microsoft that gives you a fully functional Office 2007 Professional application suite for 60 days. I did some searching around various Internet vendors and found that an OEM version of MS Office 2007 Professional retails for around USD $320 while the activation key for MS Office 2007 Professional installed on an HP Office ready machine retails for about USD $225. So there is a savings of about USD $100 to be realized here.
By the way for those fans of solitaire, etc. They come with Windows Vista Business but it has to be added from the control panel it is not active by default - it is a "business machine" after all.
Final comments are on fan noise and heat. Over two hours fan noise didn't seem to be present. It was only when I actually went out of my way to listen for fan noise did I occassionally hear some. As to heat, the keyboard deck stayed at room temperature for most of the time. Occassionally the front of the keyboard deck would be warmer than ambient but not much more. I'll be curious to see how fan noise and keyboard deck temperature are during the benchmarking. My thought is that given the large volume of the case because of the 17" screen, providing cooling wasn't as difficult a problem as it might be on a notebook with a smaller screen.
So those are my obvioulsy for the most part subjective first impressions of the 8710W. As I said, I'll get the more objective bench marking results and further impressions up here by the end of the weekend.
Regards,
Paul
HP 8710W First Impressions
Discussion in 'HP' started by navigator, Aug 1, 2007.
