New HP EliteBook latops announced by AxisWorkGroup

Johann Toerien, AxizWorkgroup Product Manager says that the new business rugged workstation notebooks from HP are a range for those who require workstation performance without compromise. “The 15 and 17 inch laptops are both portable and convenient,” he says.

He goes on to say that these incredibly powerful laptops are ideal for engineering, power-computing and content-creation customers.  Each has an 8-cell battery which gives about four hours on the top spec EliteBook 8760w and five hours on the EliteBook 8560w (optional 8-cell and 12-cell secondary batteries are also available).

The 17.3 inch EliteBook 8760w is at the very top end when it comes to specs.  It boasts your choice of Sandy Bridge processors up to a Core i7-2920XM.  There is also the choice of either AMD FirePro or NVIDIA Quadro graphics with up to 4GB of memory.  On top of that there are up to three hard drives with RAID 5 support and options for quad core processors.

The list of impressive specs goes on; each has four RAM slots with quad core processors and can max out at an impressive 32GB using 8GB RAM sticks.  It also boasts 7200 RPM 2.5 inch hard disk drives which comes standard with capacity options ranging from 320 GB to 750 GB. Solid State Drive options are also available – HP’s configuration options let you choose between 128 and 256 GB.

The HP EliteBook 8760w supports two disk drives by default without sacrificing the optical drive bay, which means you can now have three storage drives if you swap out the optical drive for a third HDD/SSD.

Both EliteBooks with EyeFinity+ feature have the capability to hook up to four external displays and both models come with at least two USB 3.0, one USB 2.0 “always-on” and eSATA/USB 2.0 combo ports standard, 5 USB ports in total.  They also have 16:9 ratio displays and 1 billion colour, 30-bit DreamColour displays (nicknamed as “DreamColour 2”) available as options. VGA and Display Port connection options come standard and allow you to hook up two external monitors right out of the box.  The optional HP docking station lets you connect even more displays.

Johan Toerien adds that there are some other changes to these new EliteBook models including:

• Improved hinge and latch designs
• Full chiclet-style keyboard design (opposed to partial-chiclet on previous models)
• Backlit keyboard options
• SRS Premium Sound branding for built-in stereo speakers
• Orange-coloured pointing stick and much larger multi-touch trackpad
• New ‘radial design’ finish and backlit HP logo on the back of the notebook
• Single easy access bottom panel gives quick and tool less (no screws to undo) access to the hard disk(s)
• RAM slots and fan via a switch

“For on the go computing with work station caliber computing in a rugged and reliable package the HP Elitebook 8560w and 8760w Mobile Workstation range is the sensible option,” concludes Toerien.