Switching from T series to HP Elitebook Series...

[pshifrin]

I will try and be as objective as possible in this review. I manage over 100 computers in our organization. We probably have about 40 laptops, most of them ThinkPad T series. I have the advantage of being able to buy the newest one and pass my current laptop to someone else as a hand-me-down. I’ve personally had a T40,41,42,60p,61,400,400s,410 and 410s in the last 8 years or so. From the T42 onwards I was in a docking station 50/50. My newest laptop is an HP EliteBook 8440w workstation and here’s why:

Up until the T400, everything was great. The laptops were rock solid and reliable (for the most part). The T400 suffered from the usual issues of some physical quality control but the computer itself worked fine. As I was travelling more and more I wanted something slimmer so my next was a T400s. My unit suffered the random power-offs which plagued that model. I went through the nonsense of tech support denying it was a real problem, following the threads on the message boards and eventually got the main board replaced. We all love the Thinkpad keyboard but I really disliked the new textured touch pad. I know some people love it but I just never got into it and found it inaccurate and insensitive.

When the 410 series came out I jumped on one quickly and was disappointed in the screen quality and very squeaky wrist rest. It was fast, i7-620m, 8gb ram and intel ssd and worked well. Unfortunately this one got heavily damaged on a project (a golf cart setup with forward and rear facing web cams while streaming an event live. Let’s just say bouncing around on gravel / dirt roads for 4 hours in high heat and dust could kill any laptop.)

So this time I went with a T410s integrated graphics and intel ssd. This thing would over heat very easily and slow to a dead crawl when CPU usage spiked. I’m talking 1-2 frames per second on a handbrake transcode. Also battery life wasn’t great as we all know. Anytime I hooked a monitor to the display port I got lots of flicker, DVI was ok. Lest I mention the flexing keyboard!

Faced with the need for a new laptop and no concrete info on the T420 series, I started looking for alternatives. We actually have 2 Dell 6400 Latitudes and while they’re ok, they are subpar compared to the ThinkPad in many ways. I read all I could about the HP Elitebook Workstations. Most everything I read compared them very favorably to the Thinkpads so I took the plunge.

I knew going in the 14 inch model would suit me best. I take the laptop home every day and travel often. The 15 inch models, while they do have better screens have shorter battery life and were too big for me.

Screen: The HP 14.0 HD++ 1600x900 screen is, unfortunately, it’s greatest weakness. It’s not terrible but coming from the T410 and T410s screens, which many people complain about, it’s about the same.

Keyboard: Still getting used to some different key placement but it’s excellent. Great feedback, solid feel, doesn’t flex at all!

Touchpad: Even though it’s smaller, I’m SOOOO glad to have a smooth surface again. Also two finger scrolling seems to be much smoother than the T series.

Speed: I got the i7-640m, 8gb ram and intel ssd. It’s fast but I’m sure no faster than a comparable Thinkpad.

Keyboard light: On the ThinkPad you press a key combination to activate. On the HP you press the light itself and it pops open. End result is the same they both get the job done.

Software: I always do my own clean installs and install most OEM software but skip out on a few things like Access Connections. I really miss the ThinkPad power manager and the display of battery time remaining on the taskbar. I coworker has our only Optimus laptop. It doesn’t provide much battery improvement and if you have Adobe CS5 products, forget about it, doesn’t work correctly with Optimus enabled.

Volume buttons: Much better on the ThinkPad. The touch sensitive controls are a little slow to respond.

Battery: I’m getting 6-7 hours. Enough said compared to T410s.

Dock: Thinkpad dock feels more secure but the HP one has a media drive bay so I can put the DVD drive in it (I have a 500gb HD in the HP media bay).

Overall feel: Sorry to say, the HP simply feels way more solid. Nothing flexes, nothing creaks, it’s heavy.

Conclusion: I’m not totally 100% sold yet but there is NOTHING wrong with this unit compared to the little and sometimes big things with some of our recent thinkpads. So if you are looking for an alternative, this is certainly a great one. I would however, always choose a Thinkpad (and now HP Elitebook) over anything else out there!

[dr_st]

At work we have a lot of T400 and older 14" Thinkpads, with the T410 starting to become mainstream (have one myself) and a few HP 8440ps (mostly the 15" variants - 8510/8530/8540 though).

I briefly played with all of these, and they are very nice laptops, although my accents are different, let's see:

Screen: I agree that it's probably not very different picture-quality/viewing-angle-wise compared to the Thinkpads, but the fact that it's 1600x900 is a bonus for some - you get more screen space compared to 1440x900 (dot pitch is smaller, but I still found it very usable). The next generation of 14" Thinkpads will come with 16:9 screens too, and 1600x900 will be available.

Keyboard: I also got the impression that the feedback is very good, but the different key placement would drive me nuts and make it totally not worth it.

Touchpad: I don't use it.

Trackpoint: From some reason HP does not put a middle trackpoint button on its 14" and smaller models, while it does so on the 15". This decision boggles the mind for a trackpoint user, and greatly reduces usability.

You will notice that my complaints are merely those of a user who is used to the Thinkpad way, which is just a personal preference, nothing more. Other than that, like you said - there is nothing wrong with these machines.

A final word - I notice that your complaints about recent Thinkpads are mostly about the slim 14" series (T400s/T410s). It seems that there are/were quite a few lemons in this series, and you are not the only one to complain about their reliability. Also, battery life is subpar, since the largest battery is a 6-cell, and one with smaller capacity than the standard 6-cells too (~48Wh compared to 56Wh). The only way to get a reasonable battery life from these machines is to add a bay battery, which means more weight and loss of optical drive.

I was very excited about the slim 14" series at first, but as the user experiences started pouring in, I became convinced that too much usability/reliability got sacrificed for the sake of slimness and low weight. It's a very unique laptop in many senses, but they didn't quite get it right yet. I hope that within another generation or two things will improve.

Conversely, the regular T410 seems a marvelous laptop. There were some complains about creaky palmrest, but most of them (including mine) seem fine in that regard, and creakiness can probably be dealt with by reseating the bezel / fixing the screw tolerances. Other than that, you get relatively low weight (it's the lightest 14" Thinkpad so far, outside of the slim series), great battery life (the 9-cell actually has more capacity than previous 9-cells, so it lasts even longer), and IMO, good looks as well.

Enjoy your Elitebook 8440w!

[anthean]

The HP Elitebooks took the full plunge to 16:9 before either Thinkpads or Latitudes, so for those of us who are less than thrilled with 16:9, this is a minus for HP.

We use HP business notebooks at work, and as our IT spending has been quite meager the last few years, well, all the machines are old, but are holding up very, very well.

I was very excited about the slim 14" series at first, but as the user experiences started pouring in, I became convinced that too much usability/reliability got sacrificed for the sake of slimness and low weight. It's a very unique laptop in many senses, but they didn't quite get it right yet. I hope that within another generation or two things will improve.

Conversely, the regular T410 seems a marvelous laptop. There were some complains about creaky palmrest, but most of them (including mine) seem fine in that regard, and creakiness can probably be dealt with by reseating the bezel / fixing the screw tolerances. Other than that, you get relatively low weight (it's the lightest 14" Thinkpad so far, outside of the slim series), great battery life (the 9-cell actually has more capacity than previous 9-cells, so it lasts even longer), and IMO, good looks as well.

Yeah, I mostly agree. I do think the fit-and-finish on my T41 is better than the T410, but both are quite durable.

[TTY]

pshifrin, thanks for the in-depth write-up! For some time now, i've been wondering how the keyboards and overall build quality of the EliteBook Mobile Workstations are. Seems they're OK