HP Elitebook Folio review: Delivering the business goods

February 15, 2013

Business travelers willing to give Windows 8 a spin have a noteworthy option in the HP Folio Elitebook Folio 9470m. Attractively slim and lightweight, this 14-inch Ultrabook delivers an assortment of business-oriented features, including a fingerprint scanner, a smart-card slot, and a solid-state drive that boosts performance on any task involving retrieval of data from storage. The battery life, while not outstanding, should get you through a cross-country flight. The SSD, however, holds only 180GB, which is stingy by current standards. On top of that, the standard configuration’s 4GB of RAM is tight considering that the machine’s integrated graphics will commandeer some of that memory. And with a list price of $1349, the Elitebook Folio 9470m is by no means cheap. Skinny, light, and handsome The Elitebook Folio 9470m looks the part of a road warrior’s faithful companion. Encased in a silvery magnesium alloy with a soft-touch finish, it measures only about 0.75 inch thick and weighs less than 3.75 pounds (without accessories), making it no great hardship to carry in a backpack or briefcase. Flip open the lid, and you see a backlit island Chiclet-style keyboard with black keys set into a platen the same color as the case. HP provides all sorts of navigation options; my personal preference is the responsive, rubbery gray joystick set into the keyboard, but the laptop also has a multitouch-enabled touchpad with two sets of left and right mouse buttons (one set on the top edge of the touchpad and the other at the bottom). The keys are large and well spaced, but typing feels a bit mushy, and the keys lack sculptured contours to keep your fingers from slipping. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2027868/hp-elitebook-folio-review-delivering-the-business-goods.html