HP Compaq 8710P 17” Business Notebook

OK, OK, I’ll elaborate :frowning:
Totally different product line. The consumer Presario models are basically their “value” line, while the P series HP Compaq Business Notebooks are upper-middle tier business class. Numerous differences in build, components, etc. They design (most) of the business models with a 3 year base warranty in mind so I believe specs are often tighter and in many cases materials are also upgraded. Not to mention the extra business features like enhanced security, drivelock, fingerprint reader, etc. Also, I don’t know the exact specs of your unit, and I actually can’t recall any Core 2 Duo based 17" Presario with ATI graphics (although I don’t pay that close attention), but at that price you probably either stole it or your ATI graphics card and/or processor (perhaps AMD dual core or Intel Pentium Dualcore rather than Intel Core 2 Duo?) are likely more than two steps lower-end than this one. If it’s something like a V6000 the actual screen resolution is lower too.
This is a $1200+ notebook when new, so the price diference between it an yours is actually much more than $300, and, many would argue, still worth it.
Bottom line, not a valid comparison.

Edit: In other words “How is that used Lexus sooooo different than this Corolla I got a sweet deal on? I’ve got a navigation system and sunroof just like you do.”

im sorry, but in my 8 years of being an IT manager, i have NEVER seen a difference product lines besides cosmetically. when I was starting out as a lowly A+ certified technician, I saw the same amount of business line computers as “value” line computers. ive worked on both, owned both, and i really cannot tell a single difference. besides the usual little features like a built in fingerprint reader, 25-in-1 card reader, and all of those other things you will probably never use, i cant see why anyone would buy a business line of computers.

I bought the laptop for $350 at the college bookstore where i am working on my masters.

You say my processor is 2 steps lower than this one? I dont know the exact model number, I havent payed attention to those little tiny details since i was a just a tech a few years ago, but the cpu in my laptop is a core 2 duo 2.0ghz, and this one for sale is a 1.8ghz. I dont know about the cache size, maybe this one for sale is a little bigger, but it doesnt seem like it would make sense and it still wouldnt make that big of a price difference. the screen resolution is the same as this one, 1440x900. oh nevermind.

i wish i wouldnt even had posted anything, it doesnt matter what i say, you all are always impossible. i was foolish to think i could actually try to make a decent contribution to the forums but you guys already know everything.

I have drugs to sell right now at 4am so ill see you wooters another time.

anyone interested in some, send me a message or reply to this. ill supersize your order too for being a fellow wooter! dont worry, they’re legal though. theyre just as good or better than scheduled substances and most are cheaper than street drugs too.

<3 woot

Alrighty then. You’re clearly not the target market. You got a good deal on something that meets your needs. That’s great. I agree this deal isn’t for eveyone and would be a waste of money for some people.
(feel free to stop reading there)

This meets the needs of a different group and is a pretty good price for what it is. It was blatenty attacked as “the worst deal (you’ve) ever seen on Woot” so I defended it because it’s much better than many deals I’ve seen. I forgot to take into account that you may have only seen 3 other woot deals and bought each of them (since you’re in the 3 to 10 category). So of course this deal is worse than those, and is therefore clearly the worst deal you’ve seen. I stand corrected ;^)

On a side note, I was Compaq, HP, IBM, and Apple certified for manufacturer warranty repairs on notebooks some years ago and noticed some significant differences in build quality between certain product lines. Admittedly, it wasn’t true 100% of the time, but as a general rule of thumb. So I now (both personally and profesionally) buy business class and/or higher end units.

Actually thank you both - overall the interaction was based on substance and I feel like I learned a bit from it.

Too bad I don’t wat a 7.5 lb computer with a 17" screen. If this in the same league at 14-15.4 I might get it.

So, you’ve been an IT manager 8 years, even though you were just a tech a few years ago, and are now working at the school book store? Also, I thought your notebook was $400, not $350? That’s in the Eee PC price range there. : ) The lowest priced Core 2 Duo notebook at Newegg right now is $650 with integrated graphics, and last summer it would have been even more. The only way I see that working out is if you bought it through some school program where they pay part of the cost for student notebooks.

I’m not really interested in this notebook myself, but that’s mainly because it’s a massive desktop-replacement system, while I’d be looking for something more compact. It’s far from the worst deal I’ve ever seen on Woot though, and they’re selling it for less than anyone else.

Even though this interchange started out badly, I agree with the previous poster that it eventually got down to some good debate and expressed some good points. OK. but this quote just makes me want to say that this is why I have settled on IBM thinkpads for my end-users (business users). The Thinkpads are built just the way a portable should be. Simple; rugged; tidy. The X60 connected to its docking station is more ruged tied together then most single unit laptops are. It’s uncanny how mechanically solid these units are.

WIth that said, I like keeping a laptop at my bedside on a night table and this one for 700 bucks just might fit the bill because that’s where it’s going to stay. No wires except for the power cord is why I like the lapper, and when I get up and leave, I just close it to hibernate and it’s out of the way.

Several reasons I haven’t really considered a Thinkpad… First, the unnecessary name change (“Lenovo”? What the hell kind of name is that?). Second, I do not want an early 1990’s “we haven’t yet perfected touchpad technology” TrackPoint eraser mouse on my keyboard (at all! UGH I hate those things!). Third, the whole design still seems to look completely 1990. I don’t much care about style, but if I bring my laptop to someone’s place to help diagnose and fix their computer, I don’t want to be showing off a laptop that looks 10 years old.

Now, that may just be my blatant ignorance as to have not even looked at a “lenovo” laptop in a few years (or on 4chan /g/, someone perhaps posting an ancient Thinkpad model in “wat laptop should I buy” threads)… but that’s the image I get. If that’s wrong, I’d love to know. :wink:

Lenovo is an IBM spin off company, like Lexmark was.

I actually prefer the Trackpoint, but even the Lenovos have the touchpad nowadays. Why the preference? The touchpad is exactly where I rest my thumb when I’m typing, and I keep hitting it, making the cursor fly somewhere else on the screen, sometimes resulting in some hilarious writing, which while entertaining, is a pain to correct. I usually turn the touchpad off and use a small USB mouse from Targus.

To the other people that complain that they would buy this “If only it had” some ridiculous $20 accessory like a web cam or a 3.5" floppy drive: Get serious. Everyone knows you wouldn’t buy this unless it was under $25 because that’s all you have left in your Paypal Account.

Good review on the laptop

Good lord, yes. The IBM->Lenovo name change happened when IBM sold the Thinkpad line to the Chinese company that had been IBM’s OEM supplier for the longest time. Many people were worried that quality and innovation would suffer, but Lenovo seems to have pulled it out. Secondly, the little nubby keyboard pointer is preferred by many notebook users, including myself, as being a necissary supliment to the trackpad if not the ideal pointing device. (I like to use it as a precision mover, using my trackpad for scrolling and coarse gestures, sometimes keeping a hand on each.)

As for style - the only notebooks with any amount of style are made by Sony and Apple. Apples are too expensive and Sony notebooks fall apart if you look at them funny. People who know about computers know this, and people who don’t know about computers wouldn’t know if it looked ‘old’ unless it had reel-to-reel tapes and a flickery greenchrome monitor. On a related note, if you have a notebook that has a reel-to-reel tape drive and a flickery greenchome monitor, that is /completely awesome/ and you should post a link to some pictures.

Business notebooks don’t have impressive flashy flair for the same reason that dumptrucks don’t have spinning rims and underbody lights. They’re built to actually do something rather than to sit there and look pretty. If you want to impress someone with a notebook computer, tell them you only paid $700 for it.

Now, as for actually talking about THIS particular laptop versus Whatever Budget Computer, there’s really two things I can say.

One: It has a REAL GRAPHICS CARD. Anyone with experience playing computer games on a notebook will tell you that a notebook with an ‘integrated graphics solution’ - and most, if not all, of the budget notebooks out there have it - will simply not be capable of playing anything beyond the most basic flash games. Even if you aren’t a serious gamer, it’s still quite nice to be able to set up a quick game of TF2 at a friend’s house (you do have friends, don’t you?) or to kill some time with Portal in the waiting room. Even many 2d casual games won’t run on a notebook without a proper seperate graphics card. You may not be able to run Super Shiny New Deathmatch 3000 at UperDuperGraphics levels (though the nvidia quatro is a powerful, professional notebook graphics card) but integrated graphics you won’t be able to run much of anything at all.

Two: It has a full number keypad. This is extremely rare in notebooks costing less than your eternal soul and immensely useful for doing work any application more complicated than Dora the Explorer’s Let’s Learn Numbers Game. Entering numbers using only the top-row of the keyboard utterly bites. A keypad is a must if you even plan on balancing your checkbook or doing any kind of math.

On the downside, it only has 1gb of RAM… Of course, swapping in a decent amount is cheap and stupidly easy.

I usually don’t post messages on message boards about things I don’t own or have personally experienced, but good lord, people. This is a heavy-duty battleship of a notebook selling for the price of an inflatable dinghy. It’s not even actually /old/. HP still sells them - starting at twice the price of woot, and for being a huge Deathstar-class notebook, it’s actually light - most huge desktop replacements with TV-sized screens and full numberpads weigh 8lbs or more. The woot product description people just want to fool you so they can buy the unsold ones at budget-rate employee prices tommorow. (I hear they resell them to illegal Turkish immigrants and traveling salesmen to support crippling maraschino cherry juice addictions.)

We deploy these at work as our “CAD” laptops - but with a little beefier video card and processor. And a little more memory. Nice systems though.

I’m a photographer and looking for a laptop to do some photo stuff on. Not too into gaming but would this graphics card also work for photo manipulation. I don’t know much about computers, except how to use them, and I need one that will give me true color and good image quality.

would this work for use as a video editing computer running Adobe Premiere Pro??

here are the rquirements:

Intel® Pentium® 4, (1.4GHz processor for DV; 3.4GHz processor for HDV), Intel Centrino®, Intel Xeon® (dual 2.8GHz processors for HD), Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor; SSE2-enabled processor required for AMD systems.
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional or Home Edition with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista™ Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (certified for 32-bit editions only)
1GB of RAM for DV; 2GB of RAM for HDV and HD
10GB of available hard-disk space (additional free space required during installation)
Dedicated 7,200 RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing; striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD; SCSI disk subsystem preferred.
1,280x1,024 monitor resolution with 32-bit video card; Adobe recommended graphics card for GPU-accelerated playback (see the full compatible hardware listing)
Microsoft DirectX or ASIO compatible sound card
For SD/HD workflows, an Adobe certified card for capture and export to tape
DVD-ROM drive
Blu-ray burner required for Blu-ray disc creation
DVD±R burner required for DVD creation
OHCI compatible IEEE 1394 port for DV and HDV capture, export to tape, and transmit to DV device
QuickTime 7 software required to use QuickTime features
Internet or phone connection required for product activation
Broadband Internet connection required for Adobe Stock Photos* and other services

i did notice that this laptop does not have a 1394 port? can that be added?

thanks for any info anyone can offer me!

You can add a firewire PC Card for $50 to $75, but according to the specs on HP’s site, this has a 1394 port - http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/321957-321957-64295-321838-3329741-3369264.html

An LCD is not the ideal solution for processing photos. A CRT monitor is best. I’ve got a colorimeter on my LCD and it helps.

That’s the reason I’m considering this laptop, though. The larger screen and 160 GB HDD make it tempting for post processing on the road. But if you do it, get a Huey or a Spyder or something to help correct the color.

I went to school at Northern Michigan University, which the university is a member of a national college initiative to give every student a laptop. Anyway, we had the “privilege” of having Lenovo as our distributor. We were issued the R series Thinkpads. Let me tell you, they were completely cheap. Many of my friends had theirs break on a regular basis, and yes I’m talking hardware issues here, not software, though that did happen a lot, but I don’t blame Lenovo for this.

I was walking to class one day, and happened to look over to see a group of students outside watching something burning. I thought perhaps it was a chemistry experiment or something. After further investigation I found that it was actually one of these Lenovos, in flames, that had exploded on a student while he/she was walking to class! In addition, one year of new issued Lenovos had to have a massive battery recall, due to the fact that batteries were exploding on people. (Perhaps that’s what happened to the student, but I never heard the actual cause of the incident) Speaking of batteries though, that is probably the only thing good about these laptops, they literally had a battery life about 6 hours on normal use! Besides for that they were completely slow, and cheaply made.

Disclaimer: This comment was just on my own experiences, I’m sure others have had different experiences, but I only know what I only know. Also, I cannot claim that I am the most all knowing person about computers, but I have been using and learning about them for 19 years now (Great memories of playing on my older brother’s Apple IIe). Also, I do build my own custom gaming rigs (Desktops).

K…I’m assuming the CRT is the crystal monitors. I’ve seen those and the color is good. But what is a Huey or a Spyder? Thanks, I’m just starting to really research this and I want to get the best bang for my buck but quality is a big priority also.

A CRT is a cathode ray tube, those huge old monitors that everyone used to have back when I was your age, sonny. if your priority is processing photos, you might want to consider getting one of those beasts.

A colorimeter calibrates your computer screen to improve the color. I’ve got a Huey Pro, and it makes a huge difference when I use Photoshop to post process. Once every two weeks it demands to be attached to the monitor to sample a range of colors as displayed by the monitor, then corrects based on those readings. Then it sits next to your monitor and adjusts the display based on ambient light, which it checks about once a minute. On a CRT it’s helpful, on an LCD used for photography it’s just about essential.

If you went to Northern, it’s probably because you spilled too many Old Style’s on it :slight_smile:

Dammit dammit dammit… it hasn’t sold out yet. In for one.