A Few Questions about HPs

I believe the business line is fairly high quality, and does not share a series with Compaq. It is solely HP. HP support is not the greatest from what I've heard as well. There is always the Costco route. Costco has a 6month return policy and is usually cheaper. I'm not sure if the offer the business line though, but it's something to look into.

^^^^^SEE above^^^^^

The business line is unique. It's HP Compaq (not HP or Compaq). The computers people are referring to are HP's and Compaq's consumer models (Pavillion and Presario) which are often similar. No. nc8430 is HP Compaq (a business model). Compaq Presarios are consumer models. They are built to last and to meet more strict quality standards than consumer models. That's why several of them have 3-year warranty standard, as is the case with nc8430. Well, it meets strict business quality standards, but it is not perfect. It's one of the best computers available, though. If you are comfortable with its screen, you'll probably be comfortable with the machine overall. The screen is not very bright on the maximum setting, but if the brightness is enough for you, it's a very good screen. At the moment, there is also a driver problem with the mic in jack, which adds hard drive noise to the in-sound, thus making the computer unusable for line-in recording, but once the driver gets updated, the problem should be fixed. I think that HP's design, quality, and feature set is better than any of its competitors. That's my personal opinion, though. That's a shame. You must count on the return policy. For business models, it should be better than for consumer models. In Finland, I have nothing but praise the business service. Cheers!

Tommi,

Ditto on your previous post...

You mentioned being in FINLAND.

I have allot of RESPECT for FINLAND...

I've read that after WWII....

FINLAND was the ONLY country that PAID BACK war debit to the USA.

Oh, that's nice to hear. We paid all debts to the USSR as well, but most important of all, we stayed independent.

Tommi, could you give more details on the shortcomings of the screen? Do you know any specs? Is it slow? Is there light leakage?

This Dell M60 in front of me is my first laptop, so I'm not sure what my standards are when it comes to LCD's.

Well, I assume it's the same I'm using on nw8240, since the chassis and resolution of nc8430 are the same (1680x1050). The shortcomings aside from the brightness thingy are:
- A little bit of light leakage at the bottom of the screen - not too much to worry about but noticeable if you look at it
- Whites are grainy, not pure white

These are things you forget in a few days though, and they don't annoy you anymore.

But on the positive side:
- The screen is crisp and sharp
- Colors are good
- The screen is fast, no ghosting, at least what I could see when I was playing WoW
- No dead or stuck pixels (at least on mine)
- Uniform brightness
- Ok viewing angles, although there is a slight brightness degradation if you look at the screen from sides

Well, at least to me, as a guy who does some business, some graphics, and some 3D development, and some programming the screen is great. If you are a professional photographer or something like that, you might want to consider another screen, but for 90% people I think this screen is very good.

IMHO, the screen is the least problem with this computer. Other problems aren't that big either. At the moment, I'm most worried about heat, since during summer months my room temperature rises, which consequently rises the temperature of the intake air, making cooling less effective. My CPU temperature record is 90 degrees, which is 5 degrees below the CPU shutdown limit (IIRC). nc8430 can produce even more heat than nw8240, so I hope that the cooling solution on it is likewise more effective, so that it does not shutdown in the middle of a 10 hour long gaming session or something like that. But I'm pretty confident that HP has tested that their computers do not overheat.

Another small annoyance that I have encountered is that the touchstick has worn off and cannot be used anymore. Well, I can use the touchpad or mouse instead, but it would be nice to have a working touchstick too. Well, it's not so big problem that I would call for a pickup to a repair center.

buissnes vs consumer model...just get warranty?

I have also heard that the Buissnes models of HP are higher quality then the consumer model. But the consumer models are a lot less expensive. What do you guys think of just buying the consumer model and getting the 3 year extended warranty? or the 3 year acidental coverage warranty?

That would work.

Hp case manager with 20+ years said the build quality is the same. Units coming off the same assembly lines. Sharing allot of the same parts. The differance being the longer product cycles on the business line. The consumer line coming with all the bells and whistles (new items) The business line coming with parts in which "stablity" is more important than the "bells and whistles."

Business line also I believe has a FASTER turn around time for getting something fixed (which makes since when you're "using" the product in a "business".)

Translation the business line =More stable, faster turn around on repairs.

Consumer line... More bell and whistles... which "may" be at times a blessing and other times a curse. Sort of look at it this way... when something "new" comes out they put it in the consumer line.... then the business line.

If you're using it in a business, I'd consider a business model, should be more stable.... and you get it repaired, serviced faster.

My 2 cents...

the screen again

i am getting the $1400 model with the WXGA screen. I know that its not going to have as many pixels as the next model up but is it still a good screen. Like crisp and sharp. I dont need to have alot of windows on the screen at one time so resolution isnt that big a deal to me. Also is the quality the same? Thankyou

Nope. WXGA has poorer viewing angles. I don't know about crispness and sharpness, but they may also vary.

Is the build quality about the same as Thinkpad T60?

I just received the nw8440. The build quality is exceptional. It's a world apart from my Dell M60, though it seems Dell is gradually improving their build quality.

Congratz on your purchase!

Congratulations! I just ordered an nw8440 yesterday as well- I can't wait to get my hands on it (early next week I hope). I ordered the base model (1680x1050 screen, 2.0 core duo, no bluetooth), and I'm dropping in a 100GB 7200rpm Travelstar and 2GB of 667MHz ram. Should be a good deal faster than my current tower computer to say the least (P4 3.2, 2GB RAM, 6600GT,10K HDD). I went for the WSXGA+, as I've used a 15" XPS with 1920x1200 and the interface icons in Maya, After Effects, and Photoshop were far too small for me to be comfortable with for any length of time. What configuration of the nw8440 did you purchase? Which LCD did you get, and what are your first impressions? Can you post pictures?

i ordered a nc8430.. yet to arrive though.

my understanding with business line models is yes, they dont change for a set amount of time.. handy if you have to build an SOE(standard operating environment - an installation image you deploy to a number of pcs) for 500 laptops and dont want to make 20 soe builds because of different revisions of hardware.

my dealings with HP warranties are limited to network items and i thoroughly swear by them. im in australia though.

oh yes, you're more likely to find a serial port on a bus. notebook too.

handy for me coz i config cisco/hp networky stuff from their (serial)console port every now n then..

Zombie, my configuration is the same as yours. I was really annoyed by there being only 3 configs available. Anyway, I'll be taking out that lousy 5400rpm HD and replacing it with a 7200 as well.

I had Maya 7 crash for no reason a few times. I'm quite worried. Two of the crashes happened simply when changing viewports very quickly (which I and many 3d artists do continuously). I hope this is just a driver issue at worst. Anyway, Maya 8 should be shipping soon. Damn I wish I could've been at SIGGRAPH this year.

ZombieDawg, care to share your experience with the 8440 and Maya? Performance is generally good for me, but there are too many jerky periods where the computer is choked up on something. The default blame goes to XP, for me, since Maya on my past Win2k systems has always been super smooth--any slowness is consistent as opposed to the periodic bottlenecks that I feel now.

Okay, time for a 2nd gig of RAM (anyone have experience using non-matched sticks in their HP?) and a faster HD. Maybe that'll ease things.

If it doesn't, I'm going to try what may be hell in installing Win2k on my nw8440.