HP EliteBook 8460p

Pros 
The HP EliteBook 8460p provides a long battery life and has a durable design.

Cons 

This business laptop does not offer an HDMI port.

The Verdict: 9.45/10

This HP laptop delivers quality performance with a sleek design and rugged durability.

Specifications:-

Operating system

• Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 32
• Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Basic 32
• FreeDOS

Processor

• Intel® Core™ i7-2820QM (2.30 GHz, 8 MB L3 cache)
• Intel® Core™ i7-2720QM (2.20 GHz, 6 MB L3 cache)
• Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM (2.00 GHz, 6 MB L3 cache)
• Intel® Core™ i7-2620M (2.70 GHz, 4 MB L3 cache)
• Intel® Core™ i5-2540M (2.60 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache)
• Intel® Core™ i5-2520M (2.50 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache)
• Intel® Core™ i5-2410M (2.30 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache)

Processor technology

• Intel® Core™ i5 with vPro technology (select models); Intel® Core™ i7 with vPro technology (select models)

Chipset

• Mobile Intel® QM67 Express

Environmental

• BFR/PVC-free

Dimensions and weight:

• Weight Starting at 4.56 lb (2.07 kg)
• Dimensions (w x d x h) 13.31 x 9.11 x 1.25 in (33.8 x 23.13 x 3.18 cm)

Memory

• Memory, maximum 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• Memory slots 2 SODIMM

Storage

• Internal drive SATA II (7200 rpm)

                      From: 250 GB
                      Up to: 750 GB

• SED SATA II (7200 rpm)

                      Up to: 320 GB

• Solid State Drive

                      From: 128 GB
                      Up to: 160 GB

• Optical drive Blu-ray R/RE DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL; Blu-ray ROM DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL; DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL; DVD-ROM

(With the Upgrade Bay with Dual Hard Drive support, the optical drive can be replaced with an optional 500 GB 7200 rpm hard drive.)

Graphics

• Display 14.0" diagonal LED-backlit HD anti-glare (1366 x 768); 14.0" diagonal LED-backlit HD+ anti-glare (1600 x 900)
• Integrated: Intel® HD Graphics 3000
• Discrete: AMD Radeon HD 6470M with 1 GB dedicated DDR3 video memory

Expansion features

• Ports 2 USB 3.0
• 1 eSATA/USB 2.0 Combo
• 1 USB 2.0 charging
• 1 external VGA monitor
• 1 DisplayPort
• 1 1394a
• 1 stereo microphone in
• 1 stereo headphone/line-out
• 1 AC power
• 1 RJ-11
• 1 RJ-45
• 1 docking connector
• 1 secondary battery connector

Slots

• 1 Express Card/54
• 1 Smart Card Reader
• 1 SD/MMC

Audio

• SRS Premium Sound, Integrated stereo speakers, Stereo headphone/line out, Stereo microphone in, Integrated microphone (dual-microphone array with optional webcam)

Integrated camera

• HD webcam (select models)

Keyboard

• Spill-resistant keyboard and drain

Input devices

• Touchpad with on/off button, two-way scroll, gestures, two pick buttons
• Pointstick with two additional pointstick buttons

Communications

• Network interface Integrated Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (10/100/1000 NIC)

Wireless

• HP un2430 EV-DO/HSPA Mobile Broadband
• Intel Centrino 802.11a/b/g/n
• Atheros 802.11a/b/g/n
• Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n
• Broadcom 802.11b/g/n
• HP Integrated Module with Bluetooth 2.1+EDR Wireless Technology

Service provider

• AT&T, Sprint or Verizon Wireless

Power and operating requirements

• Energy efficiency ENERGY STAR® qualified configurations available

Power supply

• 90W Smart AC adapter (discrete or quad-core); 65W HP Smart AC adapter (integrated or without quad-core); HP Fast Charge

Battery type

• 9-cell (100 WHr) Li-Ion battery, 6-cell (62 WHr) Li-Ion battery, 6-cell (55 WHr) Li-Ion battery

Battery Life

• 9-cell: Up to 13 hours and 45 minutes
• 6-cell: Up to 8 hours and 15 minutes
• 3-cell: Up to 4 hours

Operating temperature range

• 41 to 95°F (5 to 35°C)

Security management

• Security management Standard: HP ProtectTools, Central Management capable, TPM Embedded Security Chip 1.2, Enhanced Pre-Boot Security, HP Spare Key (requires initial user setup), HP Disk Sanitizer, Drive Encryption for HP ProtectTools, Credential Manager for HP ProtectTools, File Sanitizer for HP ProtectTools, Smart Card Reader, security lock slot Optional: Computrace Pro for HP ProtectTools, HP Fingerprint Sensor..

Design
Compared to the basic black of, say, Lenovo ThinkPads, the EliteBook 8460p $1,169.99 at CircuitCity.com is a stylish platinum-silver slab measuring 1.3 by 13.3 by 9.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.4 pounds, with an aluminum lid, palm rest, and encircling strip that contains the ports on a black magnesium alloy base. A DisplaySafe rubber frame protects the screen, which has a tiny LED next to the webcam to illuminate the non-backlit keyboard (well, part of the keyboard) in shadowy situations.

The matte-finish 14.0-inch display offers 1,366 by 768 resolution. Though not the brightest or highest in contrast that we've seen, it delivered good detail and color. Audio from the HP's twin speakers—both mounted left of center, one on the front edge and one on the bottom—was loud enough to fill a conference room, but sounded flat.

The slightly concave, island-style keys of the 8460p's keyboard provide a nicely firm typing feel. Except for HP's bizarre keyboard trademark—small up and down arrows sandwiched between full-sized left and right arrows—the layout is fine, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys and three buttons at top right that toggle Wi-Fi, audio mute, and browser launch. The last, when the computer is switched off, opens HP QuickWeb, which satisfies impatient surfers and e-mail checkers by bringing up a Web browser plus widgets such as weather and news headlines without booting Windows.

The glass-topped touchpad is first-rate, with smooth cursor motion, tapping, and gesture control and not-too-stiff, not-too-noisy mouse buttons below—and above, with the latter pair of buttons belonging to the pointing stick located at the intersection of the G, H, and B keys. The concave pointing stick isn't quite as successful as the touchpad (or Lenovo's TrackPoints), but should please users who want a choice of pointing devices.

Features
An old-school 56Kbps modem, along with VGA and Ethernet ports, decorates the EliteBook's back edge. On the right side of the chassis are microphone and headphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports—one an eSATA/USB combo port, the other able to charge handheld devices—and a DisplayPort and Smart Card slot. On the left are two USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, SD/MMC and ExpressCard slots, and the DVD±RW drive.

A docking connector on the bottom completes the hardware connectivity roster, which lacks only HDMI. Similarly, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth check two of three boxes on the wireless shopping list, with Wireless Display, as mentioned, absent. With neither HDMI nor WiDi available, business travelers planning a big presentation with the 8460p had better rely on a VGA projector rather than an HDTV set.

IT managers will like the 8460p's Core i5 vPro processor and TPM security chip, but small and medium as well as large enterprises can benefit from the best part of the 320GB (7,200 rpm) hard drive's software preload: HP ProtectTools, a suite of utilities that steer you through security functions ranging from managing passwords to encrypting data and sanitizing (securely deleting) files. Other software found alongside Windows 7 Professional includes HP Power Assistant for managing power profiles, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, and a 60-day Norton Internet Security trial. HP stands behind the EliteBook with a three-year limited parts and labor warranty.

Performance
The EliteBook 8460p features a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M processor and 4GB of RAM. The combination won't set any speed records, but makes the HP a peppy performer for the productivity work for which it's designed.

ItsPCMark 7 score of 2,065 is 200 to 300 points shy of slugging it out with the likes of the Lenovo U400 and Gateway ID47H07u $549.99 at TigerDirect.com, but its Handbrakevideo encoding and Photoshop CS5 image editing times of 1 minute 46 seconds and 3:56, respectively, are extremely competitive with other Core i5-based, 14-inch laptops, though they trail the Core i7-equipped Dell XPS 14z (1:37 and 3:27, respectively).

And though we'd be the last to suggest that a busy business traveler waste her time playing games, we must note that the Radeon HD 6470M graphics powered the HP to playable frame rates at 1,024 by 768 resolution in Crysis (38.3 fps) and Lost Planet 2 (31.3 fps). Our biggest disappointment in benchmark testing was that the 8460p balked at our MobileMark 2007 battery rundown test, obliging us to fall back on our DVD simulation test of looping a two-hour MP4 video from the system's hard disk. The HP's removable 62Wh battery lasted 5 hours and 1 minute with screen brightness set at 50 percent.

Compared with the Editors' Choice pair of the Acer TravelMate 8481T-6440A and Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) , the HP EliteBook 8460p is a little heavy and short on battery life. But even with the extra weight of its semi-rugged construction and the lack of those laptops' HDMI and WiDi, the EliteBook 8460p is a first-class business laptop. It's attractive, with a great typing and touchpadding experience, and built with security in mind.

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HP Envy 17

Sophisticated design. Technology you crave. In a class by itself. Advanced design, precision craftsmanship, latest technologies, exclusive HP convenience features and priviledged access to HP ENVY concierge service and support. That’s ENVY 17. Always.

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• Pros
  Superlative screen. Gorgeous display. Lovely LCD. Top-quality audio with volume dial.
• Cons Expensive. Heavy. Not for hardcore gamers. Can play but not burn Blu-ray discs.
  
• Bottom Line
  This year's HP Envy 17 is a fast, loaded media center laptop with the most stunning screen we've seen.

Where to Buy:

HP

$1,419.99 +Free Shipping

Double-take, gape, gawk, ogle, ooh and ahh: That's what we did when first seeing the HP Envy 17 (2012)'s ($1,484.99 direct) screen. What HP calls a Radiance Full HD Infinity display is simply one of the best, if not the best, laptop screens we've seen, with bright whites, rich blacks, vibrant colors, wide viewing angles, you name it. Set in Control Panel to show text and icons at 125 percent size—100 percent can be a bit small or squinty at the 17.3-inch LCD's 1,920-by-1,080-resolution—it made Windows dialog boxes remind us of hand-inked and -lettered comic or poster pages rather than computer video, and made our digital-camera snaps look like fine art. If you don't mind a glossy rather than matte finish, it's a superb screen that'll spoil you for any run-of-the-mill laptop panel.
But as dazzling as the display is, it's not the only reason we're elevating the HP Envy 17 to become our Editors' Choice among media center laptops, replacing the HP Pavilion dv7-6163cl ($949.99 list, 4 stars)—although we do feel it's time our media center honoree offered full 1080p resolution instead of stopping at 720p. The Envy 17 complements its vivid visuals with awesome Beats Audio, thanks to a six-speakers-plus-subwoofer setup highlighted by a good old-fashioned volume dial. It's great for cranking up the volume and playing Blu-ray movies. It even plays demanding games, as long as you resist the temptation to max out on resolution and detail settings. Add a handsome aluminum chassis and bountiful battery life, and you've got a first-class ticket to multimedia. 

Design:
Except for a black rather than silver lid (with light-up HP logo), the Envy 17 resembles the Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch ($2,499 list)—a bulky (10.7 by 16.4 by 1.3 inches) aluminum slab with black chiclet-style keyboard and a slot-loading optical drive. At 7.5 pounds, the HP weighs almost a pound more than the MacBook Pro—too much for commuting duty, but less than the ponderous 8-pound-plus Acer Aspire AS8950G-9839 ($1,499.99 street, 4 stars) and Dell XPS 17 ($1,670 direct, 3.5 stars).
While the extra-bright and bodacious screen will command your attention, the keyboard is worth checking out as well, if only for its being free of advertising stickers. Complete with a dedicated numeric keypad (plus HP's weird half-sized up and down arrows sandwiched between full-sized left and right arrows), it offers a comfortably springy typing feel and the best implementation of keyboard backlighting we've seen: LEDs beneath each keycap provide bright light with minimal leakage around the edges. Besides toggling the keyboard backlight with the F5 key, which turns it on and off in cascading, one-row-at-a-time fashion (and leaves F5 always illuminated so you can find it again), you can simply move away from and return to the keyboard, letting an adjustable proximity sensor control the backlight.
Below the keyboard is a good-sized touchpad with clickable lower left and right corners and smooth-functioning two- and three-finger flick, zoom, and scroll gestures; though shifted a bit to the right—centered below the B and N keys, not G and H—it's a pleasure to use. So is the volume dial on the keyboard's right edge, which provides analog-style volume control (a small mute button is nearby). Pressing the dial opens the Beats Audio control panel, where you can play with a graphic equalizer; adjust bass and other listening options; or choose presets for music, movies, or 3D content. Two top-firing and four front-firing speakers and a 6-watt subwoofer provide symphonic sound; we never turned it up more than halfway lest we rattle the walls of the Labs.

Features:
Beside the Blu-ray player/DVD±RW burner, the left side of the Envy 17's chassis has two USB 3.0 ports, two headphone jacks, and a microphone jack. On the right are a third USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, a memory-card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI plus two DisplayPort outputs for driving up to three external monitors simultaneously (though depending on your monitor collection you may need to invest in one or two DisplayPort-to-VGA, -DVI, or -HDMI adapters).
The Envy 17's wireless repertoire includes Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi, both of which worked smoothly in our tests, plus a pair of multimedia streaming choices: Intel Wireless Display (the latest WiDi 2.1, with protected DVD/Blu-ray content, 1080p, and surround-sound support) sends the laptop's video and audio to an HDTV set equipped with a Belkin or Netgear adapter, while HP Wireless Audio promises to stream the Envy's sound to KleerNet-compatible wireless speakers or headphones at distances up to 100 feet.
Instead of bloatware, HP outfits the Envy 17 with some desirable real software in the form of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements for organizing and editing images and videos and a two-year subscription to Norton Internet Security, instead of the usual one- or two-month trial. The latter is a nice complement to the system's two- rather than one-year parts-and-labor warranty.
While our test unit was configured with a single 750GB, 7,200-rpm Western Digital hard drive, the Envy 17 can be ordered with a variety of mass storage options featuring single or dual hard disks; the top of the line is two 1TB spinning drives plus a 128GB solid-state drive. Dual graphics adapters are standard, with the Intel HD Graphics 3000 chipset built into the processor used when the HP is running on battery power and a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7690M XT taking over when the system's plugged into AC power. Plug in or unplug the laptop and you'll see some flickering and several seconds of a blank screen as the changeover takes place; there's no reboot required, but it's not as seamless a system as Nvidia's Optimus, which switches between integrated and discrete graphics automatically depending on application demand.

 Performance:
Like the HP dv7-6163cl and Toshiba Satellite P775-S7320 ($849.99 at Best Buy, 3.5 stars), the Envy 17 is built around Intel's Core i7-2670QM, a quad-core, eight-thread processor that runs at 2.2GHz. Teamed with 8GB of DDR3 memory and running on AC power (hence using the AMD Radeon graphics), the CPU helped the Envy 17 post a class-leading score of 2,805 in PCMark 7, ahead of the HP dv7-6163cl's 2,438 and Toshiba P775-S7320's 2,400. The Envy 17 and HP dv7-6163cl raced to a tie in our Handbrake video and Photoshop CS5 image-editing tests, both with times of 1 minute 30 seconds and 3:37, respectively.
 
The Envy 17 also led the field in our 3DMark 06 test, smashing the arduous 10,000-point barrier with a score of 13,064 at 1,024-by-768 resolution. It slipped behind the HP dv7-6163cl at native or full-screen resolution, however, with its score of 7,598 trailing the 8,847 the dv7-6163cl received—probably because the HP system's native resolution was a lower 1,600-by-900 rather than 1,920-by-1,080. In gaming tests, the Envy 17 posted an impressive 88 and 76.8 frames per second (fps) in Crysis and Lost Planet 2, respectively, at XGA resolution. At native resolution with anti-aliasing and image detail turned up, the Envy 17 fell way short of playable frame rates in Crysis (11.7 fps) but came close in Lost Planet 2 (27.6 fps), leading us to conclude it should be an acceptable gaming system at moderate settings but no threat to actual gaming rigs such as the Editors' Choice Alienware M17x (Sandy Bridge) ($2,254 direct, 4.5 stars).
Like desktop replacements, media center laptops rarely stray from their wall outlets, but you never know when any laptop may be called upon to hit the road. The Envy 17 is ready for unplugged duty with a hefty 86Wh battery, managing 7 hours and 19 minutes in our MobileMark 2007 rundown test (using the Intel integrated graphics). That's shy of the 8:24 posted by the HP Pavilion dv7-6163cl, leading us to conclude the 1080p Radiance screen uses more juice, but well ahead of the 4:40 result of the Dell Inspiron 17R-3530DBK ($879.99 at Best Buy, 3.5 stars).
Media center laptops form an elite or premium category—we won't deny that the HP Envy 17 is pricey at $1,484.99, although it's more than a thousand dollars under Apple's MacBook Pro 17-inch. But in every respect from its keyboard to its performance to its Beats Audio, and most of all, its stunning screen, it's a hard laptop to resist, and an easy pick for our new Editors' Choice for media center portables.

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