Buy HP EliteBook 8770w B8V69UT 17.3" LED Notebook - Intel - Core i7

Customer Ratings:

This laptop comes certified to work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Suse Linux. It came with Windows 7 Professional and I did a clean install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 over it (bye bye Windows), and it's been running great and very very fast ever since. A note regarding Linux if you want to watch Blueray movies then this capability will mostly be gone because Blueray is "too" proprietary for Linux. I say mostly because old versions of Blueray are supposed to work when the system is configured properly, but most certainly newer versions can not be made to work. Since this laptop is meant to be a performance workhorse the Blueray matter should be of no issue of course if using Windows then you'll have Blueray capability if the Blueray player is ordered with it. Another nice feature of this laptop is it comes with the Intel Centrino N 6300 wireless card, which is a 3x3 antenna card (3 transmit, 3 receive) this means if you have a 3x3 router (like the HP MSM 460) then you'll get up to 450 mbps throughput. I get the full measure of 450 mbps throughpout but the real effective throughput is limited by the ISP provisioned bandwidth (in my case FiOS 150dn/75up mbps). Finally, a 3 year warranty is a plus considering the $2K+ cost of this laptop.

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This machine is built to withstand almost anything you through at it. The build quality and materials are exceptional. From a industrial design and manufacturing perspective, it is even nicer than a MacBook Pro.

I really like this machine, except for one issue, screen resolution. Apple has proven how beautiful and productive higher resolution displays can make even a laptop. Spending the extra money, weight, and bulk to get a 17.3 inch display should result in more room to work. Because the resolution on this machine is no higher than it is on 15 inch machines, you get a display that isn't as attractive and doesn't fit nearly as much content on it as it could with a higher resolution. This is especially important for content creators and for people that work in spreadsheets, but really it is an issue for all professional users. Apple gets this with their Retina displays, Google gets it with their Pixel laptop, and Dell gets it with their Ultra high resolution series of displays. Hopefully HP will make a higher resolution display available soon on their workstation class laptops.

The only excuse for the screen resolution on this machine is that most people are going to use it in a docking station with external monitors. I have mine attached to 2 Dell U2713HM Ultra High resolution displays. The screen resolution only bothers me when I am using this machine on the road, but then again, that is the whole reason I bought the 17.3 inch workstation.

When you are deciding on which machine to buy, I recommend you consider the screen resolution issue. A 15 inch or even 13 inch machine with similar specs and the same resolution display might save your back and shoulder some pain from lugging this heavy machine around.