Cadalyst - April 2008 - (Page 30)

ﬁrstlook By Ron LaFon HP Compaq 8710w Mobile workstation offers excellent battery life and a clean and functional design. H ewlett-Packard creates and markets some remarkably sophisticated laptops, including ones that are capable enough to be called mobile workstations. I had a chance to look at the HP Compaq 8710w mobile workstation and run it through its paces with the Cadalyst 2008 benchmark tests. The 8710w that Cadalyst received was based on Windows XP Professional, as requested, but the system is also available with either Vista Business or FreeDOS installed. The system has a very well-designed and attractive case, which measures 15.50” x 10.80” x 1.30” (W x D x H) and, equipped as I received it, weighs 7.5 lbs. The HP Compaq 8710w features a 17.0” diagonal screen that is capable of WXUGA resolutions — indeed, the native resolution is 1,920 x 1,200. In the unit I received, this display was driven by an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M graphics card, which featured 512 MB of onboard memory. The HP Compaq 8710W mobile workstation combines visualization and computational power into a sleek design with a 17” display. HP Compaq 8710w Mobile Workstation Pros: Good performance; excellent bat- tery life; clean and functional design. Cons: None significant. Price: $3,740 Hewlett-Packard 888.999.4747 www.hp.com Inside the case, the 8710w was based on an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 microprocessor that the system indicated was running at 2.40 GHz. A total of 4 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM was preinstalled, as was Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Although many options are available, this system included a 120 GB 7200 rpm SATA drive. The WHCL-certified NVIDIA video drivers used throughout the testing process were version 6.14.11.163, dated May 25, 2007. As is typical with HP mobile systems, the HP Compaq 8710w was well equipped with connectivity options, including one IEEE 1394 FireWire connection and six USB 2.0 connectors. Additional connectors included an external VGA monitor connector and both RJ-11 and RJ-45 ports, as well as microphone in, headphone out, docking connector, and the ubiquitous AC power connector. A single eight-cell lithium ion battery was included with the 8710w, and it proved to offer good longevity during the battery run-down tests. With polling devices such as Bluetooth and wireless LAN disabled and the ambient light sensor turned off, I allowed the system to discharge the batteries completely while idle — this took 4 hours, 20 minutes. With a similar setup that included AutoCAD 2008 running a loop of the new Cadalyst C2008 benchmark (available at www.cadalyst.com/c2008), the battery charge on the actively operating system lasted 1 hour, 40 minutes — very good numbers. www.cadalyst.com cadalyst April 2008 30 http://www.cadalyst.com/c2008 http://www.hp.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - April 2008

Cadalyst - April 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central The Summer of BIM Thin Is In — Large LCD Monitors Caligari trueSpace 7.5 — 3D Modeling Software HP Compaq 8710w — Mobile Workstation Autodesk Design Review 2009 — Design Viewing and Collaboration Software Getting Better — What Should You Learn? Technical Uses for Nontechnical Software AEC on Macs Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Tips Rain Down on Harry

Cadalyst - April 2008

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