HP EliteBook 8460p Notebook Review

Bundled Software and Performance

Our EliteBook shipped with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, although you have the option of selecting lower-level Windows installs during configuration. HP has done a respectable job of not congesting the machine with third-party bloatware. Microsoft Office 2010 comes loaded on the system and users have the option to activate the full version or use Office Starter (you'll probably want to uninstall the Bing Bar). Roxio burning software is also included, as is PDF Complete Special Edition.

Although the ProBook is mostly clear of third-party applications, HP bundles a ton of its own software. I counted no less than 24 HP-specific programs of which HP ProtectTools is the most important. The security suite is meant to be used by enterprises when deploying notebooks to employees, among other things it centralizes security management and aids in the event of password loss or if the machine is stolen.

Another software feature, HP QuickWeb allows you access to the Internet, email, contacts and calendar at the touch of a button without having to wait for Windows to load up. This is similar to what we have seen on desktop motherboards for a while now. HP Power Assistant is similar to Lenovo's Power Manager 3 in that it lets you configure profiles and view power data about the laptop's usage and battery.

The system takes 1 minute and 2 seconds to boot completely into Windows from a fully powered down state.

We have run our standard suite of benchmark tests on the EliteBook 8460p to give you an idea of how the system performs under load. It's worth noting that Intel's Turbo Boost 2 is enabled during testing. Found in second-gen Core series processor, the feature is designed to better manage workloads by dynamically adjusting individual core speeds depending on the processing power is needed.

• 14.0" LED-backlit HD anti-glare 1366 x 768 display
• Intel Core i5-2520M (2.5GHz - 3.2GHz, 3MB L3 cache)
• 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory
• 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6470M
• 320GB 7200RPM hard drive
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)

• 13.3" HD AG LED SVA 1366 x 768 display
• Intel Core i5-2410M (2.3GHz - 2.9GHz, 3MB L3 cache)
• 4GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Intel HD 3000 Graphics (650MHz - 1.3GHz)
• Hitachi 320GB 7200RPM hard drive
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)

• 13.4" TFT 1366 x 768 display (covered with Corning Gorilla glass)
• Intel Core i5-2520M (2.5GHz - 3.2GHz, 3MB L3 cache)
• 4GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Intel HD 3000 Graphics (650MHz - 1.3GHz)
• Hitachi 320GB 7200RPM hard drive
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)

• 14.5" HP Radiance 1600 x 900 display
• Intel Core i5-450M (2.4GHz - 2.66GHz, 3MB L3 cache)
• 4GB DDR3 system memory
• 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
• Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM
• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

The iTunes encoding tests consist of converting 14 MP3s (119MB) to 128Kbps ACC files and measuring the operation's duration in seconds. For the file transfer test, we measure how long it takes to copy two sets of files from one location to another on the same hard drive. On the small files test we transfer 557 MP3s, totaling 2.56GB. For the large file, these same MP3s were zipped into a single file measuring 2.52GB.