New Laptop for Roaring 2020s

[EarDemon]

It was getting time to replace my 8 1/2 year old Envy that served me well. I’m starting to get my feet wet with photo, video and audio editing, and the old girl sounded like a jet about to take off just by launching Photoshop, Premier Pro would just crash due extremely outdated video card and Audition worked okay, but that idiotic Beats crap HP infused into their products in the early 2010s made some audio tasks unbearable. So between a Black Friday discount, 10% off coupon code and 11% cash back with BeFrugal I pulled the trigger on a new toy that I hope will last another better part of a decade.

HP ZBook Gen 6
17.3" diagonal UHD B-LED UWVA Anti-Glare DreamColor @ 3840 x 2160 400 Nits
Intel Xeon E2286M vPro – 2.4 GHz/5.0 GHz Turbo Boost (8 Core/16 Thread)
32 GB DDR4 2666 ECC RAM (expandable up to 128)
NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 w/6 GB GDDR6 RAM
512 GB PCIe NVMe TLC SSD
Blu Ray/DVD Burner
NFC/Fingerprint Scanner/GigE/Wireless AX/ USB A 3.1 x 3/USB C Thunderboldt x2/SD Card Slot/Mini DP/HDMI

I added a 1 TB WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD and made it my boot drive with a fresh install of Windows minus the HP crapware as well as a 512 MB Intel NVMe SSD. I might have an extra 16 GB of RAM coming soon and I have to hunt down a spare power adapter.

This thing is a beast. I love how upgradable it is and how easy it is to access the guts. This display is drop dead gorgeous with the AdobeRGB color profile. The colors pop right off the screen. I've never been a fan of matte computer monitors because they seem so dull compared to high gloss but HP does a great job with their DreamColor displays, as does Dell with their UltraSharps. 4K is great, but man it's tough working out the scaling issues, especially on older applications. I had to fine a new Remote Desktop management program since Microsoft's outdated one scaled like crap, Winamp is about the size of three postage stamps and VMs in VMWare need some tweaking. The Bang & Olufsen speakers are also fantastic, so glad crApple bought out Beats which forced HP to move on from that sham of a company and go with a real audio outfit like B&O.

I love the mobile workstation form factor, my Dell Precision 4600 serves me well at work. These laptops won't win any beauty pageants, but I happen to like the more industrial/utilitarian design. My only gripe is the moving away from snap in docking stations and the rise of thunderbolt docks.

 

[Foxbat]

Some the engineers at work asked to get the HP ZBook to replace their 17" Windows 7 notebooks. I looked over one that came in and you are correct: it's a beast!

I wish they hadn't put the eraser-head pointing device in the keyboard, though. A good multitouch trackpad makes you much more productive than trying to twiddle with the "copied" ThinkPad mouse pointer.

 

[EarDemon]

I'm surprised manufactures still use the pointing stick. For Dell, they removed them on some (maybe all?) of the Latitudes I have been buying lately but remain on the Precision's. Never really understood why they are primary on business laptops, but no one at work that I know of actually uses it. In fact most people don't even use the track pad, everyone has a real mouse. I personally can't stand track pads, and never use them. I just learned about 6 months ago that using two fingers allow you scroll up and down, apparently that's been a feature forever. Tried it once, and hated it. HP had a Black Friday sale on accessories as well and I got their Spectre mouse for about half off the normal $65. It's a rechargeable bluetooth mouse that can be paired with up to three devices plus the USB dongle, I take it back and fourth to work with me.

 

[harshness]

About the third time you wear out a trackpad, the eraser head starts looking pretty good.

 

[Jim S.]

Wow, that IS nice for an anti-glare screen!