I’m not sure what is it with HP recently, making products (or at least their product and order pages) available first before an actual announcement. But regardless, they’ve just come out with a new Touchsmart-like (similar form factor with no touchscreen here), budget net-top computer – the Compaq CQ1. The CQ1 may look a whole lot like the more expensive Touchsmart PC’s in terms of design but their similarities end there. The CQ1 has a 18.5 inch non-touch display, a dual core Intel Atom processor, 2 DDR2 RAM slots, runs Windows XP (what year are we living in again?) and has a relatively affordable starting price of $430. The CQ1 also sports its fair share of ports and a slot-loading optical drive.
They’ve done it! They’ve finally done it! Earlier today, the 17 inch Elitebook 8740w appeared in its full unofficial glory on HP USA but the good news keeps on coming – seems that in the midst of all the 8740w madness, HP has also quietly added the new 1 GB ATI FirePro M5800 workstation graphics card (the one discovered 2 months ago in a service manual) as an option for the existing 15 inch Elitebook 8540w. They’ve also added a little note on the same specifications page (here) stating that DreamColor display options for the Elitebook 8540w will be available in May.
The listed “DDR3″ ATI FirePro M5800 suggests that it could be based off an ATI Mobility Radeon 54×0 or 56×0 card, instead of the Mobility Radeon 5800 series rumored earlier, which means that it won’t be a whole lot more powerful than its Nvidia Quadro FX counterparts, but will still offer two main advantages – DirectX 11 support and power-sipping efficiency.
Hey everyone, guess what? A friend of mine got his Elitebook 8440p just last week equipped with the Intel Core i5 540M 2.53 GHz dual core processor and not-so-well known Nvidia Quadro NVS 3100M graphics. While he’s still doing some hard disk spring cleaning and organizing data from his old Dell to be moved to their new home, he’s feeling nice enough to let me have a little spin with his new tech toy. So far, the Elitebook 8440p feels a whole lot like the Elitebook 8440w I reviewed when it first came out – including the nice, spill-proof, tactile partial-chiclet keyboard. There’s an odd change to the items above the display though: the webcam has been shifted slightly to the right (but now in a position more centralized than the 8440w’s webcam) and the HP Night Light is slightly more ‘right side’ biased than that of the 8440w.
I’ll be writing up a review on the Elitebook 8440p soon, once I spend more time with this thing; with opinions and user experience input from my friend once he starts using the notebook for real. What I can tell you so far is that gaming performance has been surprisingly underwhelming – compared to the 8440w, I had to tune down Left4Dead 2 to 1280 x 720 and Low settings in order to play at 20 FPS (8440w manages almost double the frame rate with higher settings). I’ll have to do more testing on this, maybe update a few drivers or something. EDIT: Turns out Core i5 is real picky on whether the notebook is plugged in when it comes to choosing either performance or power saving. With the charger plugged into the HP Elitebook 8440p, I managed to play Left4Dead 2 with a frame rate ranging from 24 to 40 FPS – frame rate only drops down to 10 FPS if you’re running off battery power.
The new, upcoming HP Elitebook 2540p!
In another one of those obsessive visits to HP’s website, I’ve spotted that they seem to have slipped up (or maybe they’re updating the page) with the wrong set of pictures the Elitebook 2530p page. They’ve posted pictures of the unannounced 2010 Elitebook 2540p ultra-portable instead! Hurrah for the world! The HP Elitebook 2540p looks a whole lot like its predecessor with the silver + black aluminium/metal design…
But there are several cues that makes it definitely the upcoming Elitebook 2540p – check out those partial chiclet keys, that round HP logo (instead of square) and low-profile, “blended” fingerprint reader – these are design elements found on HP’s new 2010 Elitebook models (check out my review of the Elitebook 8440w and you’ll notice a striking similarity, save for color). Unfortunately, one thing HP didn’t slip up/update yet are the features: the specifications are still that of the old Elitebook 2530p.
For the record, here’s the picture of the 2008 Elitebook 2530p (that used to be in place of the leaked pictures). Compare it to the pictures of the 2010 Elitebook 2540p above and you CAN spot the differences between the two.
From the “Oh snap!” department (because my HP Mini 5101 is officially outdated) comes the new HP Mini 5102. HP’s latest netbook targeting business users comes 6 months after they launched the Mini 5101 last year. The Mini 5102 looks a whole lot like the Mini 5101 with an identical exterior design, 95% full sized chiclet keyboard, various operating system options and tool-less access to the single RAM slot on the netbook’s underside. The Mini 5102 is not what you think – it offers more than just a processor upgrade of the Mini 5101. The new features on the Mini 5102 include:
- Intel’s latest Pine Trail Atom N450 1.66 GHz single-core processor (Mini 5101 had an Intel Atom N280 processor)
- Though HP does not mention battery life, from the point above, battery life is definitely going to see an improvement on the HP Mini 5102 thanks to the new power-sipping processor
- 10 inch LED backlit design with optional multitouch panel
- New handle connectors at the bottom of the Mini 5102 to attach an optional carrying handle
- New colors: Blue and red colors are now available, in addition to black
