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Written by Sasa Pantelic
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Monday, 30 June 2008 |
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Page 2 of 3
Uncompromising approach is best shown on used components. Quadro FX 3600M is at the moment most powerful nVIDIA’s graphics card attended for pros, when it’s come to mobile platform. It’s launched at the end of February this year and has 512MB GDDR3 memory. This platform also has implemented support for Shader Model 4.0, CUDA, DirectX 10 and Open GL 2.1. Platform is supplied with certificates for well known CAD/CAM programs and full support even for 3ds Max, Premiere Pro, Maya, Lightwave etc. If you want, at some point, to play a little with this notebook, HP 8710w will give you far better performances in games than most notebooks do. Maybe Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 sign tells you that this workstation has fast processor, but only those who are true connoisseurs know, that this is at this moment fastest Intel processor for notebooks. If that isn’t enough for you, then we should mention that HP Compaq 8710w is equipped with 4GB memory (two 2GB modules). Under 32-bit XP operating system you can use only 3GB and that is quite enough. HDD doesn’t have impressive capacity but it surely doesn’t lack of speed, which is logical if we consider the fact that plates are rotating with speed of 7200 rotations per minute and has 16MB of cache. HP 3D DriveGuard is system that is dedicated for HDD protection and all data on it. Sensors register any sudden change in notebook’s position (in any of three axes) and park HDD “head” preventing any accidental contact between head and rotating plates that can result in HDD failure and data corruption. HP showed with choice of optical device that none of the components should be a weak spot. Blu-ray just simply, imposed itself as inevitable solution in this situation.
What will surely impress you, even before you do any serious work, is screen quality. In 17 inches HP packed resolution neither more nor less but 1920x1200 pixels. Matte screen is definitely good choice and all other characteristics that matters got only high grades. Ambient Light sensor automatically sets screen lightness, adjusting it to ambient light.
Safety is one of things that HP really did care of, such as mechanisms we already mentioned earlier in description of HDD. Finger print reader, bit by bit, becomes a usual thing but it’s still rare to see smart reader card that can be used even for security checking during logging. TPM is also present.
As much as cooling system in this notebook is good and efficient, it’s clear that notebooks that are powerful as this one cannot be easily cooled. Fan is on even when system is under minimal load and case warming is very noticeable after some serious overloading of vital components. Warming of keyboard is quite acceptable, while the heat is much obvious on the bottom side of Compaq 8710w. It’s advisable to provide good air circulation, especially on the bottom side. Battery is on first sight small and light and we were surprised with its specifications and big capacity. Thanks to that, this powerful configuration has a great autonomy. Notebook itself isn’t much heavy but we shouldn’t forget that only smaller adapter weighs one kilogram (2.2 pounds).
Even though HP Compaq 8710w wears Vista sticker, it’s left a very useful possibility for users to legally “downgrade” to Windows XP. When you estimate that Vista is “matured” and that you can fully trust it, you don’t have to pay for it because you already got it.
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