*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 2*

[maunakea]

Another vote for a clean install. You've just bought a building with unknown numbers of inhabitants. I personally like to vet and select every "admittee".

[Wizman]

Well, I removed the drive from the primary bay and I have THE SAME drive:
So yes, I have the 3G/s version too. But Windows identifies this drive as:
RealSSD C300 2.5

Thanks for confirming this, much appreciated. After some additional research, here is what I know and have confirmed with Micron/Crucial Technical Support:

(1) Both the RealSSD C300 2.5 SSD and the MTFDBAK256MAG-1G1 SSD installed in our 8740w's by hp are identical drives.

(2) The MTFDBAK256MAG-1G1 SSD is an OEM member of the RealSSD C300 family of SSD drives made by Micron and is referred to by Micron/Crucial internally as the "P300". Apparently, this terminology does not appear anywhere on the SSD portion of the Micron or Crucial Technology web sites.

(3) This Micron MTFDBAK256MAG-1G1 OEM-version SSD is identical to the top-of-the-line consumer Crucial Technology 256 GB Crucial RealSSD C300 (MTFDDAK256MAG-1G1) SSD except for the speed of their SATA interface. The Micron MTFDBAK256MAG-1G1 SSD is rated at 3GB/s (SATA II) versus 6GB/s (SATA III) for the Crucial Technology 256 GB Crucial RealSSD C300 (MTFDDAK256MAG-1G1) SSD.

(4) In the hp Elitebook 8740w Mobile Workstation, which has a SATA II interface, both SSDs interface at 3GB/s and have identical read/write specs. The Micron MTFDBAK256MAG-1G1 OEM-version SSD was designed to take maximum advantage of the 8740w's 3GB/s SATA II interface.

(5) hp has a terminology inconsistency in that it identifies the 256GB SSD installed in the 8740w as either the RealSSD C300 2.5 or as the MTFDBAK256MAG-1G1 in the OS supplied. hp should resolve this terminology inconsistency to help avoid confusion. Indentify the hp-supplied SSD by one name or the other...in all 8740w's manufactured, but not both!

[m8o]

i have a clean install of win7 on my machine, and it is much nicer.

Another vote for a clean install. You've just bought a building with unknown numbers of inhabitants. I personally like to vet and select every "admittee".

A little more about this. I bought a 500G Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid a few days ago, just got the drive case used to secure the drive in the caddy today, caddy arriving tomorrow, and was going to only use it as a data & swap drive. Does everyone concur who made and uses a clean install that they do not suffer the oddities of problems you read in this thread? When you made the clean install, did you use the recovery discs in any way at all (which I would think would defeat much of the purpose, but just checking)?

[HiddenUser]

Ahrgh, now I have the "boot-to-black" problem

This is the 2nd time my machine boots to black and then the display shows the "end of world" screen. I suspect the guilty is the F.09 BIOS. F.08 BIOS was better than this. Should I update to F.0A BIOS? Any clues?

In addition, I have noticed some light leakages on my screen, on the upper-left and bottom-right corners. These leakages are only noticeable on a full black background. Has anyone some leakages on his/her DC2? Thanks

[ProdTog]

I wanted to create a profile that matched the printer's default behavior thru a sampling procedure as you describe, and pass every image thru lightroom with the profile active on-screen before I sent it to the printer so what I was printing was what I wanted to see. ... So much thanx for mentioning that.

You're welcome. Make sure that whatever products you look at specifically state that they can create printer profiles, which are distinctly different than (and not interchangeable with) display profiles. Spend time to learn the proper ways of using profiles with your software, because even a slight setting mixup can result in output that is worse than it would have been just using default settings.

Have fun reading about the various devices and technologies. There's a lot of info out there, and quite honestly much of it is very opinionated (as opposed to being objective). There are strengths and weaknesses with all of the various technologies employed, so (IMHO) it is wrong to generalize and proclaim any single product "best" for all things. It really depends on what you need to get done, and of course how much you're willing to spend.

[ProdTog]

And now for something completely different...

I was using my 8740 to edit an image with PhotoShop today and noticed something that I can't recall ever seeing before.

The room I normally work in has subdued lighting, and the image in question had a bright line in it surrounded by a darker area. When I scanned my eyes across the image, the residual image I saw of the bright line became multi-colored. At first I thought it was some sort of optical illusion, but after doing it a couple more times I realized I was seeing something more specific. I actually believe I was seeing the Red, Green, and Blue levels of the white line separated as I moved my eyes.

I created this image to test this out on a couple of different displays. It was interesting to me that the effect was only visible when viewing this on my 8740's DC2 screen. I couldn't see the same results on any other monitor. The only thing I can think of as a cause would be that the display is actually refreshing the Red, Green, and Blue LEDs at different times (and more specifically, intervals which are exclusive of each other).

Note that I don't see this as a problem, but merely as a curiosity. Perhaps it's something inherent to the design of the display, and maybe this is a widely-known phenomenon that I've just never heard of before. I am curious as to whether others see the same effect, though. If you want to try this, it's simple to do:

1) For best results, turn down the lights in the room you're in.
2) Open the attached jpeg image on your display (as large as possible).
3) Focus your eyes on the letter "A", then "B", then "A" again, etc. Don't move the image, just your eyes.

The faster you move your eyes, the more pronounced the effect. But don't do it too much, lest you get dizzy...

Back to real work now!

[maunakea]

When you made the clean install, did you use the recovery discs in any way at all (which I would think would defeat much of the purpose, but just checking)?

I used only the W7 x64 DVDROM that comes with the 8740w, and not the HP drivers disk. Before doing the clean install, backup the OE C: drive (I use Acronis, which is the best for going between spinners and SSDs), download all the current drivers from HP (except the ProtectTools, HPxxx, etc., that you don't want), take the boot drive to raw (W7 likes to install on raw drives), and install W7. You can't go online at this point since the system lacks network drivers. Install the chipset drivers, storage drivers, then the other drivers, and finally go online to update W7, which also updates the GPU and other drivers. Next, I optimize for SSD, then optimize W7. I then load apps, and update the apps. Good luck.

[VisionLight]

The faster you move your eyes, the more pronounced the effect. But don't do it too much, lest you get dizzy...

OK, now I'm officially dizzy, but couldn't recreate the effect you describe. Had to try it though as I'm facinated by the way the eyes perceive light and movement. Might I suggest you hook up your external monitor to the laptop to see if you get the same effect. This may narrow down the cause to your particular screen if you do not get the same effect.

[ProdTog]

OK, now I'm officially dizzy, but couldn't recreate the effect you describe. Had to try it though as I'm facinated by the way the eyes perceive light and movement. Might I suggest you hook up your external monitor to the laptop to see if you get the same effect. This may narrow down the cause to your particular screen if you do not get the same effect.

Based on your feedback, I just tried something that seemed to make a big difference:

If I use the MDA to set the luminance up to full (210), the effect goes away. Normally I keep the luminance at 115. The "residual pattern" changes slightly depending on the actual luminance level.

So perhaps this makes more sense now... since the backlights are LEDs, I'm guessing the light level is attenuated by cycling them on and off at different intervals. And by doing them out-of-phase with one another, flicker is reduced.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it. At least until someone comes along with a better one...

[VisionLight]

This is the 2nd time my machine boots to black and then the display shows the "end of world" screen. I suspect the guilty is the F.09 BIOS. F.08 BIOS was better than this. Should I update to F.0A BIOS? Any clues?(

As I reported last week, after not getting the boot to black in F.09, the problem returned in F.0A, the BIOS that was supposed to fix it. It's only happened twice in the last 5 days, but the first time was within hours of updating to the new BIOS. This only happens on the 8740w, but has not happened on the 8540w or 6550b which received the same fix in their new BIOSs. Haven't seen the "end of world" screen on any of the machines since around July.

In addition, I have noticed some light leakages on my screen, on the upper-left and bottom-right corners. These leakages are only noticeable on a full black background. Has anyone some leakages on his/her DC2? Thanks

In a dark room with a totally black screen, my experience is that almost all LCD monitors exhibit some minor leakage. What's important is the degree. Maybe the boot to black is actually a "feature". It let's us test how muchlight leakage we actually have! (removes tongue from cheek).