Mobilemark 2007 Battery Test Download
Battery life tested using MobileMark 2007 and Windows 7 operating system. Battery life will vary depending on the product configuration, product model, application. Feb 23, 2012 Double-take, gape, gawk, ogle, ooh and ahh: That's what we did when first seeing the HP Envy 17 (2012)'s ($1,484.99 direct) screen. What HP calls a.
- Pros
USB 3.0 only. SSD-based. Anti-glare screen. Dual pointing devices. Backlit keyboard. Has Windows 7 downgrade rights. Full size Ethernet. User replaceable battery. Fully IT serviceable. WiDi compatibility.
- Cons
No touch screen. Windows 8 user interface awkward with touchpad, only semi-usable with pointing stick.
- Bottom Line
The HP Elitebook Folio 9470m is one of the first Windows 8 corporate notebooks on the market. On one hand, it's a speedy and slim ultrabook, on the other, you'll probably want to 'downgrade' to Windows 7 once you take it out of the box.
IT folks are just starting to evaluate Windows 8 for use in business, whether they support a 20-person shop or a 20,000-employee enterprise behemoth. The HP Elitebook Folio 9470m ($1,349 direct) is aimed at the corporate shop, where tens or thousands of identical laptops are rolled out to users en masse. The HP Folio 9470m ($1,349 list) is one of the first business laptops we're seen with Windows 8 installed. It maintains a link to your company's Windows 7 past with driver and downgrade support in case you don't think your mainline workers are ready for Windows 8. Good thing, as the Folio 9470m has problems with the touch-optimized Windows 8 operating system, problems that need some ironing out before your users are ready for a non-touch Win 8 system.
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Design and Features
Like most ultrabooks, the Folio 9470m is thin (0.75 inches) and comes sans optical drive. With a 14-inch 1,366-by-768-resolution widescreen and 13.5 by 9 inch for its other dimensions, it really follows the business laptop playbook closely. It has a matte and brushed aluminum look, with a standard black plastic bottom. Since some of your business users will never give up their pointing stick for a trackpad (and vice versa), HP includes both pointing devices on the system.
You can turn the trackpad off with a quick double tap to the upper left corner, in case you want to use the pointing stick exclusively. But beware; turning off the trackpad makes Windows 8 even less user friendly, at least the main Windows 8 Start screen (aka, the interface formerly known as 'Metro'). You'll need to remember which 'hot corner' brings up screens like the Charms bar, the application switcher, and the application list. Zooming into the screen and scrolling through the tiles felt like it required much more effort using the pointing stick. With the trackpad, you can bring up the charms bar and other functions with single, two, and three finger swipes.
We found that you may have to get used to the setup, since the trackpad is recessed into the keyboard deck by a few millimeters. Bringing up the charms bar took more than a couple of swipes before we found the right technique. The glass trackpad is recessed a bit in part because the system includes physically separate mouse buttons for both the pointing stick and the trackpad. It's a little easier to bring up Windows 8 interface on systems with single-piece trackpads like the Lenovo ThinkPad Twist and the Acer Aspire S7-391-9886. The Acer S7-391-9886 and Lenovo Twist have another feature that makes them more useful than the Folio 9470m: their touch screens.
Car Battery Test
While you can navigate the Windows 8 Start screen with the pointing stick or the trackpad, it's so much easier to navigate on a system with a five- or ten-point touch screen. Just the effort to swipe the news app from one side to another while reading felt like it took two to three times more effort. It's almost a fatal flaw if you've ever used Windows 8 on a touch screen before using it on the Folio 9470m. The backlit chiclet-style keyboard has a decent feel, though the keys are flat and less comfortable compared with the contoured keys on the Lenovo Twist or on the business ultrabook Editors' Choice, the Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1.
The system comes with three USB 3.0 ports, as well as a DisplayPort, Ethernet, smart card reader, fingerprint reader, Kensington lock port, and a VGA port. Fitting for a business system, the system's 180GB solid-state drive (SSD) comes with very little pre-loaded software. The system comes with about 140GB free, which means you have lots of room for all your local files like Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and spreadsheets. 180GB isn't quite enough for a graphics arts user, but you could supplement storage with an external USB 3.0 hard drive.
The system sports 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi to connect to either 2.4GHz or 5GHz wireless networks. The Folio 9470m comes with a three-year warranty, par for a corporate oriented system like this. The Folio 9470m interfaces with HP Elitebook docking stations, and is full serviceable by your IT staff, from the removable batteries, to the hard drive/SSD, to the system memory, and the screen.
Performance
The Folio 9470m's Intel Core i5-3427U processor, 4GB of memory, and SSD combine to give the system respectable performance on our benchmark tests. The system's PCMark 7 score of 4,699 points was average for an SSD-equipped ultrabook, which is significantly faster than a hard drive-based system like the Lenovo Twist. That said, the Folio 9470m and most of its ultrabook brethren lagged behind the mainstream ultrabook Editors' Choice, the Toshiba Portege Z935-P300, which approached 5,500 points on the PCMark test. The Folio 9470m put in a good showing at the multimedia benchmarks, including Handbrake video encoding and our Photoshop CS6 test.
On the more important battery rundown test, the Folio 9470m returned a good five hours and thirty-six minute battery life. This was ahead of the four-hour Lenovo Twist, but an hour behind the Acer Iconia W700-6465, a slate tablet that leads the pack with a 6:34 battery life. The Portege Z935 potentially has a longer battery life, as it got a 7:34 score on the MobileMark 2007 test (potentially, because MobileMark has a different workload than our new battery rundown test).
The HP Elitebook Folio 9470m has a good base of hardware, particularly if your business is planning to continue to use Windows 7 for the next year or so while your development team evaluates Windows 8. However, this is not the system to buy if you're jumping into Windows 8 with both feet. The awkward controls while in Windows 8's main screen means that your mainline users will gripe quite a bit when presented with the new interface, leading to decreased adoption. Better to grab one of the systems with a touch interface like the Acer Iconia W700-6465 or the Lenovo ThinkPad Twist if you're going with Windows 8. Otherwise, more traditional systems like the Toshiba Portege Z935 and the Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 make more sense if you're sticking to Windows 7.
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
Check out the test scores for the HP Elitebook Folio 9470m
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the HP Elitebook Folio 9470m with several other laptops side by side.
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HP Elitebook Folio 9470m Ultrabook
Bottom Line: The HP Elitebook Folio 9470m is one of the first Windows 8 corporate notebooks on the market. On one hand, it's a speedy and slim ultrabook, on the other, you'll probably want to 'downgrade' to Windows 7 once you take it out of the box.
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There's been a lot of debate, mostly influenced by AMD, about how Bapco's MobileMark 2007 unjustly represents battery life on laptops.
AMD's argument is that the industry should adopt a similar battery reporting style as cell phones and digital cameras, where there's an active and a standby score. The company has a valid gripe, but even so, MobileMark is still the best test out there.
• Release the brakes and slowly begin backing into the turn. 
• Turn the steering wheel when you see the front car's back bumper.
Bear in mind, MobileMark is an industry benchmark test created by Bapco, a consortium that's headed and funded by Intel. Some of the biggest PC names also sit on this panel, including HP and Dell, and they provide tons of input as to which applications should be included in the benchmark test. Even though AMD is part of this consortium, its input is probably underappreciated, since the majority of processors that run on these laptops are made by Intel.
AMD is basically saying that MobileMark 2007 tests the equivalent of the standby time in cell phones. That's a little unfair. Granted, the laptop is using roughly 10 percent of the system resources and there are idle times during the test that brings CPU utilization down to nil. But while the test is made up of various business applications and emulates a day in the life of a business professional, the usage scenarios eat up as much battery life as surfing on the Internet all day.
Thing is, that is exactly what most people do with their laptops. They check their Facebook accounts, compose e-mail, write blog posts, and chat on IM. Although some users may be listening to music or watching videos—tasks that eat up 50 percent to 80 percent of the average CPU, and subsequently battery life, most people don't use all of the CPU's power for extended periods of time.
AMD is proposing an active test, in which a gaming benchmark test like 3DMark06 or an HD video would be looped until the battery runs out. Thing is, almost no one does that.
Few people play games for three or fours hours straight on a laptop, and if they do they connect to an AC adapter. After all, CPU speeds would typically throttle down and impact gaming performance. Looping an HD video is more realistic because users can get immersed in a movie or a video. But again, this doesn't represent the typical day in the life of a user.
Sure, Bapco should to address this lack of an active component by introducing applications like iTunes, Windows Media Player, and looping Web pages filled with JavaScript and embedded videos. But that doesn't mean the current test is invalid.
Put simply, MobileMark 2007 is the best test out there. It uses commonly used applications, such as Adobe products, Apple's Quicktime, and Macromedia's Flash. AMD suggests giving two sets of battery scores, a low and a high rating, but this is no better than saying this laptop gives you two to five hours of battery life. We need a definitive score that addresses active and standby times because there are just way too many battery workload scenarios out there. Right now, there is no other recognized standard test available to reviewers.
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We at PCMag.com use Bapco's MobileMark 2007 as our battery test, but with some adjustments to make it more realistic. We don't crank down our display brightness settings to 20 percent, despite what Bapco recommends. We do lower it halfway, though, acknowledging that our readers understand that display brightness will impact battery life.
We also leave wireless radios on, because unless you're on an airplane, a typical user would want to leave WiFi on.
Perhaps most importantly, MobileMark allows us to test consistently. It offers a fair comparison of battery life across the swath of laptops on the market, at least for the scenario BapCo has created. Of course it could use improvement, but right now MobileMark is the fairest battery test on the market.