The Great Hardware Upgrade

The Great Hardware Upgrade

As mentioned in the 2015 end-of-year post, my/EagleSoft Ltd's main development laptop, the HP ProBook 4540s, sadly died, due to boot issues. I tried everything to fix the boot issues, but was unable to find a solution. This was saddening, because I purchased that laptop in Fall 2012 essentially for free, by using half of a one-time $1000 scholarship I earned at the community college, and because I loved the hardware dearly. Not only that, but also it died during September 2015, in the middle of my final semester at Robert Morris University and while working on a major, graded video game project, Colonial Combat. Luckily, the project was not lost (it was backed up elsewhere), and a professor was kind enough to loan me out a university laptop for the project. He extended the rental until the end of March 2016, until I could afford a new, permanent laptop, and another friend loaned me out a SATA2USB device to restore the data from the old HDD to the new laptop.

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During mid-February 2016, with time running out on the rental period and finally earning enough money, I finally decided to purchase a laptop. What did I purchase, why, where, and how much? Introducing EagleSoft Ltd's new dev/gaming machine... the Elitebook 8570w!

Although the HP Elitebook 8570w is a slightly older, 2011 model of laptop, don't be fooled; it is a very powerful machine. Technically, it is a classified as a "mobile workstation" type of laptop, meaning it has the specs of a dedicated desktop workstation computer, but in a slightly bulkier laptop form. This product line of HP laptop is a corporate product line of laptops meant for computationally and graphically intensive work for power users, especially for digital content creation and for CAD work. My particular model has the following specs. Items marked with "*" I recently upgraded, while items in bold are hot features:

Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor (Quad-core, 2.60GHz up to 3.4 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost)

Intel VT-x and VT-d (for HAV)

Windows 7 x64 Pro (because Windows 8 and 10 suck)
x4 RAM DIMM Slots, up to 32GB

*Came with 8GB installed, I upgraded it to 16GB of RAM

320 GB HDD
Military-strength aluminum laptop chasis
Graphics

15.6" LED Backlit monitor, with max resolution up to 1920x1080, with lit HP logo on back
VGA Out
DisplayPort Out
Has a NVidia Quadro K2000M dedicated graphics card

Full-size backlit keyboard

Normal keyboard layout
Numpad
Has drain hole, for spill/dust resistance
x4 actions buttons

WiFi
Mute
Internet browser
Calculator

Mouse

Large trackpad
Pointing stick
x2 sets of 3 mouse buttons (left, right, middle for mouse wheel/special, for both trackpad and pointing stick)

Fingerprint Scanner
x5 USB Ports

x2 USB 3.0 Ports
x2 USB 2.0 Ports
x1 USB 2.0/SATA combo port

x1 1394a Firewire port
Audio

Headphone jack
Microphone jack
Built-in speakers
Has Stereo Mix

SD/MMC slot
Connectivity

Gigabit Ethernet port
56k Modem port
WiFi
Built-in Bluetooth 4.0

Upgrade Bay in Optical Disk Drive Slot

Came with SATA Caddy to utilize a 2nd HDD
*I installed a BD-ROM/DVD Super Multi drive instead

SmartCard Slot
ExpressCard/54 slot

*Bought an HP Analog TV Tuner card, for capturing RCA AV

Docking Bay slot

Can connect legacy serial/parallel ports through a dock, other peripherals

BIOS

Has settings to toggle the port settings for serial/parallel ports for compatibility

The new laptop runs very smoothly, has awesome graphics, and has specs even better than the old HP ProBook 4540s. Specifically, I bought this laptop for gaming, video game development (especially CAD and programming), and digital content creation, due to the very fast processor speed, high amount of RAM, BD-ROM upgrade drive; CAD-certified, powerful dedicated graphics card; and legacy hardware support (serial/parallel port support, ExpressCard/54, and 56k modem port). The legacy hardware will be used in the future for embedded development for programming some older Microcontrollers and Microprocessors, while the ExpressCard port will be used for the analog TV Tuner card, for capturing play-throughs of video games on my older consoles (for the upcoming Nerdology YouTube channel). Back in 2011, this laptop sold for ~$1000 MSRP, but I found it on eBay refurbished for $300. Overall it has been a great deal of a purchase so far!

Pics/vids of the laptop: