HP today refreshed the EliteBook w-series line-up with three new models, the 8760w, 8560w and 8460w. Built on HP’s “FORGE” design framework that’s been seen before on the P-Series, these are industrially-designed with a brushed gunmental finish, strengthened glass touchpad and HP DisplaySafe frame. The laptops meet the MIL-SD 810G military standard for toughness meaning that these laptops should stand up to the rigours of business use.
Under the keyboard, it’s Intel’s Core i7 and i5 processors in dual and quad-core variants. The 8760w is HP’s most powerful laptop with a 17.3″ screen driven by either AMD FirePro or nVidia Quadro graphics kitted out with up to 4 GB of video memory. There’s the option of three hard drives with RAID 5 support, another first for HP laptops, or “mobile workstations” as they seem to be called now.
The 8560w is the middle member of the family with a 15.6″ high definition screen, again driven by AMD FirePro or nVidia Quadro graphics, though this time the video memory is restricted to 1 GB and 2 GB respectively.
Finally, the little sister is the EliteBook 8460w, HP’s smallest and lightest mobile workstation at only 2.2 kg (4.9 lb). Sporting a 14″ high definition screen with a 1 GB AMD FirePro, it offers performance video in a “road-warrior” package.
Both the 8760w and 8560w EliteBooks offer HP DreamColor as an option. Developed in conjunction with DreamWorks Animation, DreamColor displays are professional colour managed displays using true 30-bit colour, providing over 1 billion possible colours and a very wide colour gamut. Nice.
All the laptops will be available in the US in May and will be priced from $1899, $1349 and $1299 for the 8760w, 8560w and 8460w respectively.
