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Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs

MTTL got paint all over its new computer this week. It's OK, though, because we Ctrl-Z'ed it and cleaned it all up. We mean, of course, that this week we got a Compaq nw8240 mobile workstation to play with and we also got our hands on a beta version of Corel Paint Shop Pro X. Sweet. Super easy install, none of that close all other applications, must reboot stuff. Unfortunately, we're going to have to reboot on the Paint Shop Pro review we wrote, since it turned out to be embargoed. We'll tell you all about it real soon. So, let's concentrate on what we can talk about, the Compaq nw8240.

I was fortunate enough to get a Compaq Evo NW800 when it came out and you've heard me rave about it over the years. It's still one of the finest laptops I have ever used and I hate to put it aside—it's got more mileage plus points than most people I know. But it lacks DX9 capability and a few other niceties.

Figure 1. nw8240's Presentation button. (Photo: Jon Peddie Research)

The clever folks at HP, however, have not been asleep at the wheel and recently released the third generation of this line, the nw8240. This is a real workstation with a FireGL V5000 built on ATI's native PCI Express x16 lane architecture and is designed to accelerate 3D workstation applications based on OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX 9.0.

And on a workstation/serious business machine, that means more than just playing games (although it is, I must admit, damn fine at that, too). However, if you want to run the latest great program for presentation, OfficeFX from Instant Effects, you're going to have to have some high-end graphics. And lest we forget, Longhorn is coming, honest.

The nw8240 is a dream and comes with built-in 802.11 b/g wireless, but sadly integrated Bluetooth is optional. However, there is 1394, three USB 2.0 slots. In fact, there are all kinds of holes along its thin edges. In addition to the communications stuff there's audio mic in and earphones out, but, sadly, no line in to exploit the integrated 16-bit Sound Blaster Pro audio with good-sounding integrated stereo speakers And there's RJ-11, RJ-45, S-video TV out, and Fast IR. And it has a Type I/II PC card slot that supports 32-bit CardBus and 16-bit PC cards, plus an integrated SmartCard reader and an integrated Secure Digital slot.

There is a "Presentation" button just above the function keys (see Figure 1) that makes its possible to open a presentation automatically and adjust the video and power settings for the desired viewing, and you can set it to automatically switch to an external display. It takes a little playing around with it to get it the way you want it and I wasn't successful. It had the annoying habit of switching the second display out of extended desktop and dropping the main display down to 1280; this is something that will have to be revisited because it would be a handy macro for a road warrior.

There's another neat button on the keyboard, fn F11, the ambient light button that when turned on regulates the brightness of the display, and that can save some watts on those long trips in a darkened airplane.

The overall dimensions are just 35.6 cm x 26.4 cm (14 x 10.4 inches), slightly wider than the n800w's 32.8 cm x 26.7 cm (12.9 x 10.5 inches), which is due to the wide format display (more on that in a minute).

The nw8240 is only 2.8 cm (1.1 inches) thick, whereas the evo n800w was 3.6 (1.4 inches.) That little over a 0.8 cm (~ quarter of an inch) really makes a difference. The keyboard is closer to the table and more comfortable requiring less hand arcing. And there's a psychological factor, too—it seems lighter when it's thinner. It is lighter at 2.6 kg by about 0.13 kg (~3 oz less than a Big Mac), but I doubt anyone could actually feel the difference.

But thinner requires clever packaging, cooling, and thin components. One of the best thin components it has is a 2X DVD+/-RW, 24X DVD/CD-RW Combo, 8X DVD-ROM optical drive. Now you can burn movies on the road and then take them back to the pirates and ask for a refund of the $2 you spent. Having a DVD in a burner is to me the ultimate in convenience. You can of course make backups, but you can also give away copies of all your pictures and any home movies you've made—you would like to see my cat doing her cute stuff, wouldn't you, or my grandson throwing up on his father? DVDs are all about sharing those special moments and now you can do it away from home.

One of the most remarkable things about this thinner workstation is the quietness of the cooling system. Anytime I taxed the n800w it let me know about it by winding up its cyclone machine and dumping very hot air out on my hand; the exhaust vent is on the right side where I use my mouse. On the nw8240 the exhaust is on the left side and so far it hasn't gotten as hot.

Figure 2. Protrusions on the right interfere with mouse movement. (Photo: Jon Peddie Research)

So HP has moved things around, most good, but one not so good. Now the audio I/O jacks and two of the USB sockets are on the right side near  where, yep, my mouse likes to hang out, and in cramped space I tend to keep Mickey closer to the machine than the protrusions will allow—life is hard here in Mt. Tiburon Labs, let me tellya.

The display in the nw8240 is great. The native resolution of the nw8240 is 1680 x 1050, which is 8.8% less than the 1600 x 1200 of the n800w. I thought I was going to die if I didn't have those extra 150 lines, but I've managed to adjust to my new level of deprivation.

The ATI FireGL V5000 has 128 MBytes of RAM (as compared to only 64 MBytes in the n800w), and it makes a difference when you're running multiple monitors. I now can get much better performance with my second screen set at 1600 x 1200 x 32 than I could with the n800w. However, I haven't been able to get the VillageTronics PCMCIA adaptor to come to life for my third display, and I really do miss that. You get used to putting things there, y'know.

The VillageTronic gurus are working on this, and most likely it's going to be cockpit error once again.

The nw8240 has a slower CPU than the n800w, and uses a 1.86-GHz Pentium M with the Centrion brand—how HP got to that with an ATI graphics and how ATI got to put their label on the machine next to Intel and Microsoft is a story I'd like to hear. The n800w has a 2.2-GHz Pentium M and bot machines come with 512 MBytes.

Performance-wise it's good, but not killer. This is not what you'd call a high-end game machine like an Alienware machine, but that's all in the choice of the GPU. Alienware machines also are equipped to run professional programs based on OpenGL like the nw8240 is.

So with that caveat I ran 3DMark05 and got the results shown in Table 1.

The results are similar to an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, as one would expect.

The performance of a system is as much perceived as actual. And running games or other programs on the nw8240 is a satisfying experience. The experience can be even better if you are willing to sacrifice a little disk space and configure your machine with a 60-GByte drive. The 40 and 80 GN drives run at an annoyingly slow 5400 RPM whereas the 60-GByte drive spins at 7200 RPM. You pick up a little noise with that higher speed, but it sure makes any accesses zippier, and especially so at boot up as XP loads all those zillions of programs and DLLs.

Next up we checked it out with OfficeFX and it exceeded our expectations. Whereas we couldn't even get OfficeFX to run on the n800w, the nw8240 had no problem at all. Transitions and animations were smooth, and the lighting and effects were great. This is the machine to use if you want to use OfficeFX for your slideshows.

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