Branding Productivity Purchasing

HP Probook 4445s

If you’ve been following my blog you’d know that my dv3 is currently in the hands of the service center waiting to get some repair work done. During the interim however I cannot be without a working machine and while out looking for one I chanced upon this; a notebook belonging to a line of HP notebooks so geared towards business that it isn’t supposed to be sold commercially: The HP ProBook 4445s.

probook etching

There are a variety of reasons why this is not part of their commercial offerings but using one first hand makes me think otherwise. The machine starts out at a minimum of 14” and the profile is anything but slim which makes it quite interesting because you can see all of these ports crammed into thinner profiles in today’s computing standard and makes using a ProBook seem like an experience with more classic machines.

4445s label

Configurations are plenty for this line as the profile is able to accommodate professional cards such as the Quadro and the Fire, this particular one is powered by AMD’s A8-4500M with a Radeon 7640G, which I read is a little bit better than the GF610. The basic configuration has 4GBs of RAM and only 500GB storage, I didn’t perform any upgrades to it because the shop didn’t have the necessary modules; there is also only FreeDOS on it so you’d need to furnish it with an OS yourself.

keyboard

The keyboard is full sized and very tactile which makes typing on the device a very comfortable experience. It is also finished with some form of matted plastic which does not carry fingerprints, far better that that found in their Pavilion line up. The trackpad also has physical left and right buttons which i truly believe should be how trackpads are designed (at least for the PC); these are very responsive and doesn’t require a lot of pressure to trigger.

left side

On the left there are 2 USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, LAN, VGA, the vent, AC, and the Kensington lock port.

right side

On the right are 2 USB 2.0 ports and the DVD drive and if you’re wondering what its resting on, that’s a mosaic tile catalog, a very sturdy elevator here at home which I often use so pardon me for that.

dual displays

You can see above that I have it on a dual monitor setup, something which I haven’t done with any of my other previous notebooks… if this were a 15.6” version then these two would line up perfectly but the 14” isn’t so bad. They share the same resolution which gives me a working resolution of 2732x768px, with the HDMI port I could probably extend this to three but I don’t have the monitor or the table space to try it out with at the moment.

Having used the notebook for a day after setting it up the whole night prior I’d have to say, despite quirks of installation because of the USB 3.0 ports, that this is the most comfortable notebook computing experience that I’ve ever been on. The audio isn’t top notch like that of their beats equipped offerings but it has enough volume to get the content across. If there was anything I didn’t like about it is that the screen comes off a little too white for my taste, there are calibration options in the AMD Vision Control Center but I haven’t gotten around to that yet. From now on this will be a test of endurance which I’m pretty confident this machine would pass.

A highly recommended steal for 10 pesos shy of 26,000 especially for enterprising minds who wouldn’t mind carrying something with a little bit of heft to it should you decide to take it out of its business environment.

About the author

Mark O.

Mark is an architect and artist who endeavors to design most anything that requires a little bit of thought into it.

Although writing is not considered a primary focus, a little too much time can yield many thoughts that are just begging to be written down.

Armed with a trusty array of content creation devices and surrounded with a continuous flux of technology and life, herein lies those that are fortunate enough to have been given presence through a little bit of movement and a whole lot of iterations.

14 Comments

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Leave a Reply to Paul Cancel reply

    • Hi Paul, a Linux no not yet, I’ve gotten this as primary back up for my earlier system so it had to be on parallel everything hasnt explored others since

  • I installed win8 pro 32 bit but the usb 3 isnot working,. i already intalled the drivers/. when gaming, the laptop becomes hot and it suddenly hibernates,. i dont understand,. i hate it when it hibernates suddenly,.

    • Sometimes when it gets hot there is such a thing as thermal protection which could be the cause of the hibernation but it should tell you once you boot it up again that it had to hibernate because it overheated.

      I dont know why USB 3.0 isnt working for Windows 8.. you might need to go through the support website to find out if there is support for that but it should be supported through a driver or on the OS itself.

      Hope that helps

  • Bought this laptop 3 days ago..FINGERPRINT SCANNER AND FACE RECOGNITION ROCKS..works great with DOTA 2 in HIGH settings..my only complaint is the LCD..it’s not as vibrant compared to some acer laptops.you will have to tilt the monitor to get the exact colors..if you watch from an angle you wouldn’t have a clear picture…

  • Hi Just got this laptop today. Just want to say This was offered to me at the store, googled it, saw your review and it helped me a lot. So thanks! Not sure if I got a steal but had it for 16k. 🙂