HP EliteBook 8440w: On-the-Go Workstation
by Vivek Gowri on August 13, 2010 10:10 PM ESTHP EliteBook 8440w—Battery Life
Now, with a Core i7 processor and dedicated graphics, one wouldn't expect the 8440w to offer particularly great battery life, but HP offers a simple remedy—the higher end SKU comes specced with an absolutely massive 100 watt-hour 9-cell battery. While this adds weight and sticks out of the back of the system by an inch, the sheer amount of lithium ion stuffed into this thing means that despite the high power consumption, the 8440w ends up with pretty excellent battery life.
With everything idle, you can expect over 8 hours of runtime using an ideal (not realistic) usage model. Start browsing the internet or watching a movie, and things start looking less rosy, but you still get nearly 6.5 hours in the battery life test, which is a reasonable estimate of a regular use case scenario. Our HD video playback test gave just over 4 hours of viewing time, more than enough time to watch one movie, and perhaps enough to get through a second movie as well.
Also, due to the weak graphics card, the 8440w doesn't have the same kind of power consumption as a more gaming or CAD oriented notebook like the MSI GX640 or ThinkPad W510 would have. So even on a per-watt basis, not factoring in the gargantuan battery, the 8440w consumes less power than anything with a performance class GPU.
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fire400 - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
I don't like it though. It doesn't seem to compare to the older HP Compaq generation of notebooks. Business class LCD's should have the best displays of any laptops available, in my opinion. You're already paying a premium, you should get premium quality on one of the most important things you're looking at most of the time... the LCD?saifikhan - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
It is sad to see that there is not even one AMD processor based Elitebook.JarredWalton - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
Sad maybe, but hardly surprising. EliteBook is a mobile workstation product, and mobile workstations tend to focus more on performance. My testing of an AMD Phenom II P920 shows it to be about on par with an i3-330M in terms of performance in heavily threaded scenarios (i.e. video encoding and 3D rendering), and in less multi-core friendly tests it's not even close (like 50% advantage to the i3-330M). In other words, a 1.6GHz quad-core AMD chip using their latest mobile architecture matches Intel's slowest dual-core + Hyper-Threading mobile part.The fastest AMD mobile quad-core is the X920 BE clocked at 2.3GHz. Going by the same figures I see with the P920, it would probably win some tests against the dual-core i7-620M, but overall it would be at best a wash. And then you can throw in the quad-core Intel chips and it's not even close anymore.
Now, AMD does provide better power figures if you compare their quad-core to Intel's mobile quad-core, but that's hardly the primary consideration in a mobile workstation. In fact, our biggest complaint with the 8440w is precisely that it doesn't offer more power, specifically in the graphics department where the 16 core FX 380M lets it down. There are some interesting AMD-based laptops coming out now, particularly with Nile and Danube platforms, but for mobile workstations the current stuff can't make a good case.
We've got a couple reviews coming soon--yes, I know I've said that before. The P920 Toshiba system review got delayed for two faulty laptops, but it was pre-production hardware. I should have a final production sample next week so I can post the full write-up. The other is perhaps the best AMD-based laptop I've ever used, a Toshiba T235D. Packing a 1.5GHz Turion II K625 and a 61Wh battery, I've actually managed to get into the 6+ battery life range. Performance is respectable as well, and the HD 4200 is still better than any current Intel IGP. It's 13.3" and costs $600, but it's the first AMD "ultraportable" (thin and light) that I can really recommend. It's a viable alternative to the old CULV, and even holds its own against Arrandale ULV.
sapiens74 - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
Its sturdy and made for work.Not nearly as quick as my MAC, takes almost 3 times to boot Windows 7 Ultimate, but for a Windows machine it does the job
seanleeforever - Monday, August 16, 2010 - link
so.. your definition of 'quick' is booting OS.you can vastly improve that by using ssd. booting speed has almost nothing to do with CPU/GPU. my T7400 with SSD can boot up windows 7 ult in less than 20 seconds.
jaydee - Monday, August 16, 2010 - link
AT has a CAD junkie on staff?!?! Can we please get a CAD workstation videocard roundup? Pretty please?
jea508 - Monday, August 16, 2010 - link
Anandtech is amazingoshogg - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - link
I have been using business class notebooks for over 10 years - first 7 years, I was using IBM Thinkpad lines of notebooks and the last 3 "HP Compaq" and EliteBook. Both lines are fairly comparable and each one has its unique advantages over the other. One key disadvantage of HP that I find is lack of bay battery. With IBM thinkpads, the bay battery was a god-send. I could easily go over 5 hours with real heavy workload with 2 batteries. With the 3-year newer technology of HP's business notebooks, 2.5 to 3 hours is a max.I wonder why more business-class notebooks do not come with a bay battery option. I hardly ever need a CD/DVD Rom drive in my work. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times I have used the CD/DVD drive in last 2 years.
Osho
kenyee - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - link
HP has ridiculous sized ones compared to thinkpads. I also don't think the keyboards are as good as the older T series thinkpads.And I'm looking forward to your Envy 14/15 comparison. This seems like it's a business version of the Envy. Too bad the screen is crap :-P
I just want a relatively light 14-15" laptop I can stick 8GB or more into to run VMs :-P
kfjg - Sunday, August 22, 2010 - link
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