HP Compaq Mobile Workstation nw9440

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Look & Feel	Excellent
Comfort & Portability	Excellent
Robustness & Durability	Satisfactory
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Very fast, reliable, does the job it's made for
Disadvantages:	Outer casing on the TFT panel could be stronger .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This is my first consumer review on Ciao, hopefully it will be of some use or guidance to any one in the market for a new laptop. As this my first I would welcome any useful tips or pointers as hopefully this will be the first review of a few as time permits.

This machine was purchased for me by my company back in April of this year (2007). Having now had the best part of three months daily usage I will share my experiences.

To start with the price....
We have an account with PC World and although they were very reluctant to move on the price of £1200 (+VAT) they did agree to include Vista and a snazzy laptop case..
I was a little surprised to fine a laptop at this end of the market was actually being supplied still with XP as standard. It goes to show if you don't ask you don't get! Remember when buying this type of equipment it pays to be a little pushy.
I do get the impression that companies assume that because an item is being purchased on a business account, you will accept the first thing that is offered.

The software....
Having pushed for Microsoft Vista, I am not so sure that it was really worth the effort. Although the system works well, it does seem to be a bit gimmicky. The first thing you need to come to terms with is the irritating conformation box that pops up every time you ask Windows to do something. At first it brought to mind being back at school and putting your hand up to ask to go to the toilet. This can be feature can however be disabled.
The only useful feature I have found so far over XP is that it turns the cards over automatically when playing solitaire!

Laptop performance....
Lets face it this machine is primarily aimed at the business market, and to the end it does perform rather well. The combination of the very fast 2.33Ghz Core two Duo processor and the 2Gb of RAM installed as standard makes this a very amicable work tool.
For every day MS Office applications the machine performs very well and remains stable. I tend to have several office and other business applications open at the same time, including Autocad.
To date no matter what demands I place on the machine, it copes extremely well with no signs of lagging or worse freezing.

Display....
The 17" TFT panel is very clear and a pleasure to work with. I have used laptops in the past where the display has a somewhat washed out appearance. The HP display in contrast remains nice and bright and produces a very sharp image.
A big benefit I have noticed with the display compared to my old laptop is the significant reduction in eye strain incurred over a long period of time.
To complement the excellent display, the laptop is equipped with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500M graphics card. This particularly come into its own when using graphics suites especially 3D applications. Rather than relying on the laptops RAM, the graphics card has its own on-board 512Mb memory.
I do have one criticism with the display in that the outer casing on the TFT panel does not offer as much protection as it should. It requires very little force to the exterior lid to be able to see pressure points appearing on the screen. In my opinion the laptop lid should have been made from a more rigid or strengthened material to offer a better degree of protection, especially as these TFT panels cost hundreds of pounds to replace.

Useful features....
Very useful is the 100Gb hard drive installed as standard. I am sure I am not on my own when I say that my hard drive does get very cluttered with all sorts of junk and files that never see the light of day. With the vast amount of storage space available, cleaning up old files becomes something to do when you have a spare hour rather than being a regular necessity.
For optical storage a dual layer DVD writer is included. I have found this to be a very quick method of backing up important files. As the DVD writer is dual layer, with the correct disks, I can copy up to 9Gb of files in one go onto one disk.
Another useful feature is a built in card reader. This allows you to instantly transfer media files from digital cameras etc to your hard drive. This is very convenient for e-mailing images without the need to carry data leads around all the time.

Communications....
A variety of communications are available from a built in dial up modem to standard LAN ports for connection to a network. The laptop has a built in WiFi aerial for even greater flexibility.
In addition a built in bluetooth adaptor is included. This I have found useful where there is no conventional internet point available. Although not a cheap or very fast option, I am able to use my mobile phone as a modem via bluetooth for emergency or urgent internet connection.

Battery life....
This obviously depends on the work load the laptop is being asked to carry out. I don't know that there is a standard "average use" in order to measure this by. However my findings are that with using e-mail, internet, Excel, Word and Corel, I can get roughly 2hrs 30mins use from one charge. I have to say that compared to my old laptop, this is quite impressive.

Summary....
In general I have found this machine to be a very good piece of kit. It is aimed for business use and from my experience it does do what it says on the tin!
As stated earlier, my only real concern is the long term durability of the TFT panel due to the rather flimsy protection offered by its casing.
Asked if I would recommend this machine, I would have to say from my experience......YES!!

Finally....
Thankyou for taking the time to read my review, hopefully it will provide a bit of an insight into the product and be of some use to potential buyers.