It’s arrived!  I’ve been waiting for a week or so (and expecting it to take longer) for it to get here.  I was very surprised when the Fed Ex truck pulled in today.   HP-EDS is moving away from the Dell Laptop’s we had and issuing new HP Laptops.  I was fortunate enough to get one of the high end models, an HP EliteBook 8530w Mobile Workstation with 4GB of ram and 250GB hard drive.  It has the T9400 processor running at 2.53 GHz.  It comes in a sleek brushed aluminum case with black keyboard and accents.  It’s also built fairly tough with a stronger case and keyboard and more durable hard drive.  I’m impressed with the overall design and like the “touch” bar that allows control of the volume, WiFi, presentation switch. 

It comes with Vista pre-installed, but I’m about to change that.  It’s definitely time to load Windows 7 (64-bit).  Oh yea, today is going to be busy.  The only question now is, do I perform an in-place upgrade or do a clean install?  Hmm, something to ponder for a bit. Right now I’ve just booted it up and it’s going through a ton of patch installations.  I would’ve thought that the COE department would update their Vista image more often so this initial setup wouldn’t take so long.  Oh well, for now it’s back to work, but I’ll be updating you soon on my experiences with this new laptop.

This is the life……