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HP Elitebook 8730w battery life numbers

Based on my extensive usage and testing of the HP Elitebook 8730w (2.53 GHz dual core, 4 GB RAM, 17 inch DreamColor screen, Windows Vista Business, Nvidia Quadro FX3700M 1GB workstation graphics) since November, I’ve come up with a list of battery life numbers that can be achieved using this Mobile Workstation notebook PC. Using the included primary battery:

• Gaming – 1 hour (Display at the brightest setting, high performance mode)
• Graphics rendering – 1 hour 30 minutes
• Adobe Photoshop CS4 continuous use – 1 hour 40 minutes
• High-definition movie playback – 1 hour 40 minutes (Display at the brightest setting)
• Documents, excel and casual web surfing – 2 hours 30 minutes
• Combined usage (Some documents and typing, music through headphones and Photoshop CS4) – 2 hours (Display at medium brightness, balanced power mode)

These numbers were recorded when the battery ran down to 3% and Windows went into sleep mode. The battery life numbers have also been rounded down to the nearest 10 minutes.

So there you have it; now you know what to expect from the HP Elitebook 8730w when performing specific tasks. Adding on a secondary battery, that is HP’s Extended Battery option, will effectively double those numbers listed above.

Gaming on the Elitebook 8730w

Besides running Photoshop CS4 and other heavy duty applications, I’ve found the HP Elitebook 8730w Mobile Workstation fairly adept at gaming, to a certain extent. That’s what I’ve been doing throughout most of last month: gaming on HP’s Elitebook 8730w.

Before I go on, let me give you guys a run down of the specifications on the one I managed to test out:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53 GHz
• 4 GB of RAM (2 X 2 GB)
• 17 inch Dream Color display (1920 X 1200 resolution!!)
• 160 GB SATA II Hard Disk
• NVIDIA Quadro FX3700M graphics card (1 GB of dedicated memory)

So this is sort of the middle child of the Elitebook 8730w Mobile Workstation line with top graphics and a really nice, but expensive, Dream Color display. Yet this isn’t the best processor it can take (there are configurations with Core 2 Extreme processors available) and larger hard drive options available (HP currently offers up to 320 GB).

Anyway, the Elitebook 8730w runs most games really smoothly, even at the highest settings. I say most games because I haven’t tried things like Crysis Warhead on it yet. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare runs fine (well, most of the time) at full 1920 x 1200 and everything else set at the highest/best quality settings; with frame rates going at around 60 to 90 frames per second.

Unfortunately, there are some shortcomings to using a workstation-class (!!!) graphics card for gaming. For those who aren’t familiar, workstation-class graphics cards like the Nvidia Quadro card on the 8730w are meant to deliver quality frames as opposed to quantity of frames on real gaming cards. Somebody told me that they’re both based on the same thing, only tweaked later for their respective purposes but we’ll save that debate for some other time.

So you can get an amazing amount of detail and fairly smooth frame rates, though you certainly won’t get  200 frames per second as you would on a real gaming PC. Enter very intense game scenes when using a workstation graphics card, and frame rate tends to choke. A good example is when somebody throws a smoke screen bomb or calls in an airstrike which lands in the area in front of you in Call of Duty 4, frame rate drops down to 20 FPS… and you don’t even need benchmarking software for that, for I could notice the frame rate drop noticeably with just my eyes.

It’s not HP’s or Nvidia’s fault for that by the way, blame me for maxing out all the textures and setting “soften smoke edges” to ON (LOL!). Again, I had maxed out literally everything in the game… if I had turned off or lowered some of the settings, perhaps the frames wouldn’t have dropped so drastically.

But really, a workstation graphics card, or a mobile workstation notebook for that matter, should NOT be used if you plan on doing some serious gaming. It’s fine if you’re doing some casual gaming (in my book, that means you don’t smash your head on your keyboard if you die because of choppy frame rates when someone calls in an airstrike) to unwind after a day of rendering Shrek 4 scenes. You could use the Elitebook 8730w at several LAN parties with friends, but you probably shouldn’t use it in gaming tournaments where the different between life-and-death matters…

HP Firefly “Mobile Blackbird”

If you thought huge notebooks like the HP Elitebook 8730w or HP HDX “Dragon” were huge, you can add another notebook from HP to the list: the HP+Voodoo Firefly concept aka the “Mobile Blackbird“. This thing features a main 17 inch display AND a secondary 4.3 inch display below the main one. In addition, the Mobile Blackbird packs a Core 2 Extreme processor, 5.1 speaker system, dual ATI graphics card and what looks like FOUR headphone jacks in photos. They’ve also moved the touchpad (which is multi-touch, by the way) to the right hand side of the notebook compared to the usual below-the-spacebar position… you know, where you’d normally find the numeric pad on other notebooks with lots of keyboard real estate.

Right now, this gaming notebook still remains a concept and probably won’t be released onto store shelves. But still, it looks like a solid concept and a sign of good things to come.

HP Firebird 803 leaked

Reading about the leaks online about the HP Firebird 803 feat. Voodoo DNA this morning caught me by surprise… not because of any mind blowing specifications, but a gaming PC setup in a net-top-like form factor (plus the Blackbird 002′s design). The Firebird 803 will supposedly feature a Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz processor, 4GB [included?] RAM (though for a gaming PC, I’m expecting it will be able to SUPPORT up to 8 GB of RAM), Blu-ray drive and dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S cards with NVIDIA nForce 760i SLI. The “confirmed” features (looking at the leaked images) are a single slot-loading DVD drive, dual hard drive bays, 6 USB ports, 1 Firewire 800 port, 2 eSATA (non USB hybrid though, unlike those on the HP HDX16/HDX18 notebooks), HDMI, 1 S/PDIF and 1 DVI dual-link port.

The HP Firebird 803′s PSU will be external to reduce heat and supposedly shares the same one as the Voodoo Envy 133. Based on the leaked pictures, I’m pretty sure the PSUs of HP’s latest notebooks can fit as well (whether they can be used is another story).

Looks to be a solid concept – miniature Blackbird 002, less features and customizability, but probably less expensive as well. I’m guessing it’ll be available in February, from $1300.

In other news, Dell has confimed that they will be releasing their ultra-thin notebook, MacBook Air competitor very soon… which will also be competition for the Voodoo Envy 133. It will be called the Dell Adamo (sounds a whole lot like the Honda Asimo)… Voodoo, are you feeling the heat?

My favorite HP trackpads

My all-time favorite notebook PC trackpad has gotta be the one on the HP Pavilion tx-series notebooks. The tactile feedback of the little dimples are absolutely fantastic and I have no problem finding the trackpad area, even when I’m not looking at it. And the thing still works great when using wet hands to touch. By the looks of it, I suppose the one on the Voodoo Envy 133 will offer the same, nice control as the HP tx-tablets. Next up is the ones on HP business notebooks, which always have a matte like finish to the trackpad area and rubberized buttons.

The vertical scroll zone has gotta be the best thing since sliced bread too since I don’t need to shift my hand to the arrow keys or page up/down controls, or move the mouse to the scrollbar on the side of the screen. Practically, minimum finger/hand movement. I don’t quite care for horizontal scroll zones on my trackpad though, as it somehow isn’t as precise or natural as vertical scrolling and it takes up precious real estate (Really now, with widescreens and high-resolution displays nowadays, how often does one need to do horizontal scrolling?).

I’m not a big fan of the slippery trackpads on the HP HDX, and some of the HP dv-series and Compaq Presario models, which make them hard to use with wet hands and the horizontal scroll zone makes things worse, in my opinion.

I can’t wait to see multi-touch on more notebook PC trackpads. The Voodoo Envy 133 already has one which supports multi-touch and chiral gestures. I’m sure this will trickle to high-end notebooks and other premium notebooks, before (sooner or later) becoming a standard feature on all notebook PCs.