I've written about my experiences with my EliteBook 8560w a few times. Two other guys in the office also got 8560ws around the same time I got mine. They both run Windows 7 (I know! The horror! :) and have the AMD graphics option. Overall, nice machines, but there's one little gotcha:

HP's 27" IPS monitor, the ZR2740w, refuses to be driven by the AMD chipset, with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, over DisplayPort. We and HP have no idea why. I can plug my 8560w with NVIDIA graphics and Debian 6 into the ZR2740w, restart X (so it detects the monitor correctly instead of thinking it's my ZR2440w), and BAM!, I get the full 2560x1440 pixel glory.

My office mate has been on the phone with HP support for hours trying to get this fixed. So far, no dice. And we're not the only ones with issues.

It boggles my mind why this isn't a plug-n-play type operation. Especially if an NVIDIA card, on 64 bit Linux (Debian Stable no less!), can drive the monitor just the way it is supposed to be driven. HP's really disappointing with this one.

Side note: My ZR2440w and the ZR2740w are both "anti-glare" type monitors. There's a coating on the screen to disperse the light and make it matte. My ZR2440w has a pretty nice coating, I don't really notice it. The ZR2740w coating is much easier to notice, solid colors on the display look off, just not the solid single color I'd expect, almost like they're shimmering. I'm not a huge fan, but it's probably just something to get used to. I wonder, are other 27" panels with anti-glare the same? Or is HP's anti-glare somehow different than, say, Dell's?

UPDATE 20120111 4:00pm - HP's now saying it's an ATI driver issue and that ATI will have an updated driver by the end of January.

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Published

11 January 2012