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MillimeterTest Drive: HP Compaq 8710p, Part 1
Nov 12, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
My love affair with portable computers began in about 1983, when I taught myself Lotus 1-2-3 on a luggable Compaq, right there on my kitchen table one Friday night (and early Saturday morning). Other milestones include the my first Toshiba clamshell, which I used to demo fax boards on press tours back in the early 1990s, to my Dell Latitude D800, the first notebook powerful enough to replace the desktops I formerly needed to carry to various training workshops.
In truth, however, I still perform virtually all video editing on desktop computers, though I have produced the random podcast or two on notebooks. Certainly, the MacBook Pro I discussed a few issues ago (click here) is more than powerful enough for serious projects. But when HP announced the HP Compaq 8710p notebook with a Core 2 Duo Intel processor, true 1920x1200, screen and a Blu-ray recorder, I just had to have a look. In this issue, I’ll review features and usability, in the next, I’ll focus on performance.
As always, the major question for me when it comes to editing on notebooks is how much performance I lose compared to my desktops. Portability is nice, but I need to know what it’s going to cost me in time. To provide this perspective, I ran a series of tests that compared the 8710p with the HP xw4600 (Quad Core, Single Processor) and xw8400 (Dual Processor, Quad-Core Xeon) workstations. These include benchmarks with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, Encore CS3 (SD and Blu-ray production), Autodesk 3ds Max 8, Grass Valley ProCoder, On2 Technologies Flix Pro, and Sorenson Squeeze. But let’s start with a good look at the 8710p.
