That said, the keyboard is very comfortable to type on (if a little slippery), and the keys give excellent feedback. Frankly, I’d prefer it the other way around–a Chiclet-style look with a regular-style feel. Although the keys are smooth, black, and Chiclet-shaped, the bottom of each key tapers out to present a more connected appearance. If you can’t make up your mind as to whether you like Chiclet keyboards or regular ones, the EliteBook 8740w has you covered: Its keyboard is designed to offer a Chiclet-style feel with a regular-style look. Although toting this thing with you is like carrying a small child around, you can bring it along if absolutely necessary. The 17-inch laptop (I use that term liberally) measures 15.6 inches wide by 11.2 inches long by 1.4 inches deep. This is a desktop replacement, so its weight is unsurprisingly not one of its strengths–this bad boy weighs 7.8 pounds, not including its monster of a power brick. It also featured a 2-megapixel built-in Webcam, an nVidia Quadro FX 3800M graphics card with 1GB of dedicated video memory, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, and a DVD±RW drive.Īs for connections, the EliteBook 8740w is fully equipped with two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA port, an ethernet port, a DisplayPort connector, a VGA port, FireWire, a docking connector, a secondary battery connector, an Express Card slot, a Smart Card reader, and headphone/microphone jacks. Our review model, about $3000 (as of October 1, 2010), had a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 520M processor, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive (running at 7200 rpm), and Windows 7 Professional (64-bit).
The EliteBook 8740w starts at a somewhat hefty $1999.
For those of us who aren’t flush with cash, however, the prebuilt EliteBooks still offer a lot of power in an attractive package. Naturally, such a loaded model will set you back considerably (here’s a hint–the DreamColor screen alone will cost about $600), but it’s nice to have the options. You can have it configured with a Core i5 or i7 processor, up to 32GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, over 1TB of hard-drive space (or up to 256GB of solid-state drive space), and HP’s “DreamColor” screen. The HP EliteBook 8740w is a highly configurable, business-rugged desktop replacement laptop that actually looks pretty cool.
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