New 8710W, a couple small issues.

The HP Compaq 8710W I picked up off TigerDirect when it was $750 last week arrived today...but I've run into a couple things that don't make me all that happy.


1) extremely long post. It stays at the BIOS splash page for several seconds more than I think that it should.

2) It won't boot off the optical drive unless I physically tell it to. If I have it set to just go through the boot sequence, it won't boot off the CD.

3) As a part of 2: I've replaced the DVDDL it came with with a BluRay reader/DVDDL. Both drives exhibited the issue.

4) Although this doesn't seem to be an actual problem, it keeps showing up as muted. If I click play in Winamp, it'll start playing. I don't know if it's Win7 related or not.

5) I can't seem to find a way to turn AMT off. I'm not using it in my Thinkpad, and won't be using it here. I'm unsure whether or not this could contribute to the long POST times.


I'll eventually make a review/thoughts posting on it vs. the T61p, the W500 & my wife's DV9548US at a later time...too busy looking for a new apartment.

 

I have both a HP 2710P & the 6930P and with Win7 the Mute is the same way.
The led goes on/off as if it was muted.
The boot order should take care of the optical booting.
Although i have not checked my units, i simply like to use the boot menu
and have bois set to boot directly to hard disk, this may be the reason for your delay as it checks for bootable optical media?

Also, you should be able to set the bios splash page delay to 0 sec
I think it was something like the multi boot or the F9 F10 F12 delay

 

I had the boot order set properly, but it took forever. The OS is installed now, and won't be a concern until Aug 6 when 7 goes RTM and I can download it from Technet, so I just turned it off. Now, there's little delay.

It'd be nice if I could set it to not check certain things, rather than reorder them. None of my other computers take that long to scan for bootable media.

I did set the delays to 0.

 

I have 2 of these 8710w's I've been using daily for over a year now. Generally, yes they do take a few seconds extra to POST than you would expect.

I'm pretty sure there is a BIOS option to disable AMT.

 

I have it set, as it would appear in the BIOS, to disabled, but it still pops up in Device Manager, where it doesn't do that on my Thinkpad.


I've got to say, though...this 8710W is pretty nice. Plays games beautifully, Blu Rays look great, and it isn't burdened by ATI's craptacular driver support like my W500 is. I really hope Lenovo goes back to nVidia.

I found a docking station online for $30, with AC adapter, which should arrive on Monday.