HP applies its sexy new laptop design to 1B-Color DreamColor displays

With top-of-the-line EliteBook laptops launching on Tuesday, HP is adding sexier DreamColor displays to the already sexier FORGE bodies it rolled out in its latest ProBook notebook PC series.

Originally developed with animation studios like DreamWorks and Disney for HP desktop displays, the new DreamColor screen option for HP's EliteBook 8760w and 8560w mobile workstations supports more than 1 billion colors.

That amounts to about 64 times the color capabilities of the traditional notebook PC display, contended Chris Convertito, HP's product manager for mobile workstations, during a pre-briefing on a New York City press tour.

For controlling and managing all those colors, HP is also offering a Display Assistant feature and an Advanced Profiling Solution for the EliteBooks.

Set for availability next month, the trio of mobile workstations also includes the budget-friendlier, 14-inch 8460w, along with the 15.6-inch 8560w and 17.3-inch 8760w.

Also outfitted with professional-caliber graphics from NVIDIA and ATI, along with second-gen Intel Core i7 and i5 dual- and quad-core processors, the EliteBooks are geared mainly to mobile and work-at-home use by animators, CAD designers, and others who make a living by manipulating color graphics.

"But we've also run some games on them," Convertito told me, "and they've done a great job."

Models configured with AMD graphics plus an HP Advanced Docking Station also support AMD Eyefinity technology for simultaneous operation of up to five independent displays.

The new EliteBooks also sport FORGE, a new, more elegant and durable laptop design from HP with features that include a much bigger trackpad made of toughened glass, fewer buttons to push, and I/O ports that run flush with the side panels.

The 8460w model will include only three launch buttons on its redesigned keyboard: wireless/on-off, HP QuickWeb, and volume mute. The 8560w and 8760w models will add a fourth button for a calculator.

In a new tweak to FORGE, the new notebooks are embellished with backlit "HP EliteBook" jewel logos.

The highest-end model, the 17.3-inch 8760w, will come with a choice of AMD FirePro or NVIDIA Quadro graphics, for up to 4GB of video memory.

The 8760w will also be configurable with the option of three hard disk drives (HDDs) and/or solid state drives (SSDs), plus RAID 5 support. "That's a first for HP mobile workstations," according to Convertito. Pricing will start at $1899.

The 15.6-inch 8560w, on the other hand, will offer a choice of either FirePro or Quadro graphics, for either 1GB or 2GB of video memory. Pricing will begin at $1349.

Priced at $1299 and up, the smaller and lighter 14-inch 8460w -- which weighs in at 4.9 pounds -- will be limited to FirePro graphics with 1GB of video memory.

Each notebook will also come with an upgrade bay for housing either a Blu-ray or some other optical drive or an extra HDD.

Also on Tuesday, HP is introducing two new members of its Z series desktop workstation, geared toward working with HP's standalone DreamColor desktop monitors.

Available with Intel Xeon E3 or second-gen Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 processors, the desktop workstations include the HPZ210 Convertible Mini-Tower (CMT) Workstation, priced starting at $659, and the HPZ210 Small Form Factor (SFF) Workstation, priced at $569 and higher.

The SFF model is 65 percent smaller than the CMT, said Josh Peterson, HP's director of marketing for home servers, also during the press briefing.