I got an HP EliteBook Folio 9470m at work (not my personal choice), but I though I should share my impressions.
I was genuinely impressed by the fact that this is the only ultrabook I've seen with a swappable battery. Yes!
The ultrabook in itself is fine, and the build quality is excellent. 8gb of ram, 256gb SSD, HD4000 graphics. I wasn't able to boot the latest ubuntu with EFI, but "hibrid" boot works just fine. Basically there's not a lot of hardware variation in terms of ultrabooks, so everything works more or less correctly. I was personally able to work for 5 hours on the battery (I'm a developer, so you can imagine my workload as slightly higher than average browsing).
I do have some remarks:
- The keyboard is generally good enough, but I've always found HP keyboards to be sloppy compared to ThinkPads, and this is also true for this ultrabook.
- The touchpad is ok (synaptics), but the touchpad buttons are crap, like all HP I've ever used. HP doesn't seem to get buttons. When you hear the click it doesn't mean you have clicked. Wake-up HP, I've been using elitebooks since the '90 and this HAS NOT changed!
- Not a fan of the "nipple" in the middle of the keyboard, wastes space for the key.
- Useless fingerprint scanner, like most HPs.
Both points are moot if you are fine with HPs in general, since this is absolutely equal to any other HP elitebook.
- Some problems with the latest iwlwifi driver (some panics during network scanning in the last weeks), though hardly an HP-only problem.
Comes preloaded with Windows 8, which was easy to zap. Run-time on battery between linux/win8 was equal after for me, contrarily to what other people mention. I used windows 8 for about two weeks (to give it a spin), using Visual Studio, etc. 5 hours of work on battery is the longest I've ever had so far for a laptop. Being able to have a spare battery is a big plus.
I was genuinely impressed by the fact that this is the only ultrabook I've seen with a swappable battery. Yes!
The ultrabook in itself is fine, and the build quality is excellent. 8gb of ram, 256gb SSD, HD4000 graphics. I wasn't able to boot the latest ubuntu with EFI, but "hibrid" boot works just fine. Basically there's not a lot of hardware variation in terms of ultrabooks, so everything works more or less correctly. I was personally able to work for 5 hours on the battery (I'm a developer, so you can imagine my workload as slightly higher than average browsing).
I do have some remarks:
- The keyboard is generally good enough, but I've always found HP keyboards to be sloppy compared to ThinkPads, and this is also true for this ultrabook. - The touchpad is ok (synaptics), but the touchpad buttons are crap, like all HP I've ever used. HP doesn't seem to get buttons. When you hear the click it doesn't mean you have clicked. Wake-up HP, I've been using elitebooks since the '90 and this HAS NOT changed! - Not a fan of the "nipple" in the middle of the keyboard, wastes space for the key. - Useless fingerprint scanner, like most HPs.
Both points are moot if you are fine with HPs in general, since this is absolutely equal to any other HP elitebook.
- Some problems with the latest iwlwifi driver (some panics during network scanning in the last weeks), though hardly an HP-only problem.
Comes preloaded with Windows 8, which was easy to zap. Run-time on battery between linux/win8 was equal after for me, contrarily to what other people mention. I used windows 8 for about two weeks (to give it a spin), using Visual Studio, etc. 5 hours of work on battery is the longest I've ever had so far for a laptop. Being able to have a spare battery is a big plus.