*HP EliteBook 8440p/w Owners Lounge*

[willbeh]

Another question, anyone know if the 9Cell battery a lot bulkier than the 6 cell?

[Tonnie_Rocca]

I just received my HP 8440 p, with downgrade to XP.
The installation offered no other options than installing Windows 7.
But I want to have only XP on it. Where do I start from here to do that.
Thanks a lot.

[willbeh]

Another thing I found out is, if I stick to original 6 cell battery, it will come with 3 year warranty, if I change it to 9 cell battery, the battery warranty will be 1 year only. Now not sure if want to upgrade to 9 cell battery. Any suggestions? 80% of time will be at office.

[NecessaryEvil]

I'm now an owner of an 8440W.

Picked up a 3 week old i7 model off another forum for $1200.

I already had the Advanced Dock and Upgrade Bay HDD Adapter from when I planned on picking up an 8740W or 8540W w/ DC2...so it's nice to be able to use something I've had sitting in my mini-fridge for 6 months (it's not plugged in, just being used for storage and a place to put my TV). I popped the original 320GB into the adapter and put in my 160GB G2 and wiped the OS.

I'm going to use it to replace all the work-ish stuff I did with my X201 (which I'll now be selling to recoup costs), at least until the next generation EliteBook comes out, at which point it will replace my netbook as my work machine. I'm still undecided whether I'll try to sell off 12GB (4x2 matching, 2x2 matching) worth of DDR3 10600 sticks for 2x 4GB stick of 10600, or just sell off the 4x2 and put that money towards a dedicated VMware/File server and just use the laptop for my non-gaming stuff.


So far I'm quite impressed with the quality. I'd put it slightly above the Thinkpad T series (14" models), but the input system still ranks a bit below. Sorry, I want my 3rd button for easy scrolling, and the Synaptics drivers HP has don't allow left + right combined for scrolling like I've seen earlier models do (nor did it seem to have the "plug in the mouse, turn off the touchpad" feature my G73JH has).

I was surprised by how much heavier it is...but this feels like it might actually win a bludgeoning contest against a Thinkpad.

The screen's nothing special color wise, I'd say it's better than the X201, but nowhere near as good as the W510 FHD high gamut I had for a few weeks earlier this year. I do like 1600x900 on the 14" screen (at least where the alternative was 1440x900. Here I actually gained horizontal as opposed to losing vertical).

I hate the BIOS of it. Somehow it's worse than the 8710W, 6510B, and NX6310 I've used before. It's nowhere near as intuitive as the Thinkpad's is...I spent far more time than I should have clearing out the previous owner's password and user profile.


One question I have: since HP has unfortunately opted for a non-external wireless switch that I can just flick off and on when closed and docked, is there any software out there that doesn't cause a headache and still will toggle to GigE when docked and wireless when undocked?

[NecessaryEvil]

Another question, anyone know if the 9Cell battery a lot bulkier than the 6 cell?

It sticks about an inch out the back. I don't find it that obtrusive, but I've used 9 cell batteries since 2003.

[willbeh]

It sticks about an inch out the back. I don't find it that obtrusive, but I've used 9 cell batteries since 2003.

Thanks for the feedback. From your previous post, it seems that the 8440 is heavy by itself thus with the 9 cell it should add to the weight. I'm currently using T400 with 6 cell batt, also sticks about an inch out the back and find it quite heavy. I'm very use to the Thinkpad keyboard and pointing stick. I disable the trackpad on my T400. I heavily use the next & previous page button at the arrow key thus may miss it since 8440 don't have. But now will get a Logitech keyboard for the 8440p thus should not be a problem.

[Tonnie_Rocca]

Update on downgrade from W7 to XP on 8440p.
I phoned HP, they said to reboot from the XP CD, and then eliminate all the existing partitions when asked, that should do it...
That's just what I am doing now, hope it works.

[soulbadguy]

Just placing an order or 8440p, i7-640M, 8GB RAM, 160 SSD, 14" HD+, 512MB NVS 3100, 9 cell batt
It's slightly cheaper than 8440w, i7-620M, 8GM RAM, 160 SSD, 14" HD+, 512MB NVIDIA Quadro FX 380M, 6 cell

I don't do much gaming or heavy photoshop. Mostly having VM running my dev/test server. Thus decided to go for p which is cheaper with lower end graphic card but slightly better CPU and better battery.

As far as I know the difference between the p and w is only the graphic card and case color difference. Is there any other difference? The order will be place by HP this Friday thus still not too late for me to change, I guess.
Hope I make the right decision to go for p instead of w.

Dont forget that the w have a better wireless card and a better warranty... all in all the w always seems to be a better deal...

[willbeh]

Dont forget that the w have a better wireless card and a better warranty... all in all the w always seems to be a better deal...

Thanks for the info. 95% of time I do not do any graphic intensive program. Most of the time I will use for web/app server & development thus I find p is a better deal with similar hardware except the GPU & wireless. I have decided to purchase p with the 9 cell battery for longer mobility.

[BizcoBird]

Quick update. I'm wondering whether I should return this unit for a new one? I got this from TigerDirect, and I think I should be able to exchange it. For the money spent, I would think the unit should arrive in pristine condition. The scuff mark does bug me, but the delete key not laying flat is what's really annoying. I'm not sure if this is fixable or whether I should just ask for a new unit. Any advice?

Also, is anyone else experiencing the popping sound on restart/shutdown?

Well, I decided not to send my unit back. The small scuff and the slightly askewed Delete key are probably a good test of my tech-OCD.

I did solve the popping sound problem. Turns out that the problem was I didn't install the HP sound drivers -- I let Windows Update do it. Once I installed the official HP version, the popping went away. I did a clean install of Windows Ultimate, which is why I ran into this issue.

I'm liking the new system quite a bit. The only real issue I've run into is that the screen sometimes does not turn back on (it stays blank) when waking up from sleep. I'm not sure what causes this, and I can't recreate it consistently. When it does happen, I haven't found a way to get the screen to come back on. Putting the machine to sleep again doesn't seem to work. I end up having to manually power down the computer. Anyone run into this?