HP EliteBook 8460p

It starts with the lid latch. Where other business laptops offer a small, flimsy latch or, worse, make you scrabble with your fingernails at a nonexistent one, the HP EliteBook 8460p ($1,239 direct) has a big, burnished button that unlocks the securely latched lid. It's the first of your daily exposures to the 8460p's solid construction and classy design.

We don't say "solid construction" lightly?like other EliteBooks, the 8460p is a business-rugged system, built to withstand military tests for shock, vibration, dust, and heat. It's not as invulnerable as fully rugged systems such as the Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 ($4,843 street, 3.5 stars) or Dell Latitude E6420 XFR ($5,612 direct, 3.5 stars), but it's built to shrug off the scuffs and bumps of travel?along with inadvertent liquid spills, thanks to a spill-resistant keyboard and drain hole in the bottom.

Against that, its sturdy construction makes the 8460p a bit bulkier and heavier than other 14-inch laptops such as the Lenovo IdeaPad U400 ($899.99 direct, 4 stars) and Dell XPS 14z ($1,299 direct, 4 stars), and it lacks a couple of up-to-date features such as Intel Wireless Display (WiDi). But it's still a handsome, helpful business companion.

Design
Compared to the basic black of, say, Lenovo ThinkPads, the EliteBook 8460p is a stylish platinum-silver slab measuring 1.3 by 13.3 by 9.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.4 pounds, with an aluminum lid, palm rest, and encircling strip that contains the ports on a black magnesium alloy base. A DisplaySafe rubber frame protects the screen, which has a tiny LED next to the webcam to illuminate the non-backlit keyboard (well, part of the keyboard) in shadowy situations.

The matte-finish 14.0-inch display offers 1,366 by 768 resolution. Though not the brightest or highest in contrast that we've seen, it delivered good detail and color. Audio from the HP's twin speakers?both mounted left of center, one on the front edge and one on the bottom?was loud enough to fill a conference room, but sounded flat.

The slightly concave, island-style keys of the 8460p's keyboard provide a nicely firm typing feel. Except for HP's bizarre keyboard trademark?small up and down arrows sandwiched between full-sized left and right arrows?the layout is fine, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys and three buttons at top right that toggle Wi-Fi, audio mute, and browser launch. The last, when the computer is switched off, opens HP QuickWeb, which satisfies impatient surfers and e-mail checkers by bringing up a Web browser plus widgets such as weather and news headlines without booting Windows.

The glass-topped touchpad is first-rate, with smooth cursor motion, tapping, and gesture control and not-too-stiff, not-too-noisy mouse buttons below?and above, with the latter pair of buttons belonging to the pointing stick located at the intersection of the G, H, and B keys. The concave pointing stick isn't quite as successful as the touchpad (or Lenovo's TrackPoints), but should please users who want a choice of pointing devices.

Features
An old-school 56Kbps modem, along with VGA and Ethernet ports, decorates the EliteBook's back edge. On the right side of the chassis are microphone and headphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports?one an eSATA/USB combo port, the other able to charge handheld devices?and a DisplayPort and Smart Card slot. On the left are two USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, SD/MMC and ExpressCard slots, and the DVD?RW drive.

A docking connector on the bottom completes the hardware connectivity roster, which lacks only HDMI. Similarly, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth check two of three boxes on the wireless shopping list, with Wireless Display, as mentioned, absent. With neither HDMI nor WiDi available, business travelers planning a big presentation with the 8460p had better rely on a VGA projector rather than an HDTV set.

IT managers will like the 8460p's Core i5 vPro processor and TPM security chip, but small and medium as well as large enterprises can benefit from the best part of the 320GB (7,200 rpm) hard drive's software preload: HP ProtectTools, a suite of utilities that steer you through security functions ranging from managing passwords to encrypting data and sanitizing (securely deleting) files. Other software found alongside Windows 7 Professional includes HP Power Assistant for managing power profiles, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, and a 60-day Norton Internet Security trial. HP stands behind the EliteBook with a three-year limited parts and labor warranty.

Performance
The EliteBook 8460p features a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M processor and 4GB of RAM. The combination won't set any speed records, but makes the HP a peppy performer for the productivity work for which it's designed.

Its PCMark 7 score of 2,065 is 200 to 300 points shy of slugging it out with the likes of the Lenovo U400 and Gateway ID47H07u, but its Handbrake video encoding and Photoshop CS5 image editing times of 1 minute 46 seconds and 3:56, respectively, are extremely competitive with other Core i5-based, 14-inch laptops, though they trail the Core i7-equipped Dell XPS 14z (1:37 and 3:27, respectively).

And though we'd be the last to suggest that a busy business traveler waste her time playing games, we must note that the Radeon HD 6470M graphics powered the HP to playable frame rates at 1,024 by 768 resolution in Crysis (38.3 fps) and Lost Planet 2 (31.3 fps). Our biggest disappointment in benchmark testing was that the 8460p balked at our MobileMark 2007 battery rundown test, obliging us to fall back on our DVD simulation test of looping a two-hour MP4 video from the system's hard disk. The HP's removable 62Wh battery lasted 5 hours and 1 minute with screen brightness set at 50 percent.

Compared with the Editors' Choice pair of the Acer TravelMate 8481T-6440A and Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5), the HP EliteBook 8460p is a little heavy and short on battery life. But even with the extra weight of its semi-rugged construction and the lack of those laptops' HDMI and WiDi, the EliteBook 8460p is a first-class business laptop. It's attractive, with a great typing and touchpadding experience, and built with security in mind.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE:
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