HP’s new ZBook mobile workstations announced, look good for Windows 8 development work

Some hardware news, but with a software twist: HP yesterday announced new computers, along them with an interesting series of workstation class laptops, the ZBook series.

For serious software development work, I myself prefer Intel i7 processors for their raw processing power: it really makes a difference when you run Visual Studio 2012 and build and test complex projects. Now the new ZBooks offer fourth-generation Intel Core processors, i.e. the Haswell microarchitecture. This update should bring the same power with fewer watts, meaning the laptop battery should last longer.

I'm currently looking to update my current HP laptop, so chances are I might end up getting a ZBook 15. This machine looks very nice for my purposes at least, except for one thing: there's no touch screen, which is unfortunate. But otherwise, it looks like a solid piece of machinery for Windows 8/Visual Studio software development work, especially if on the road like I am most of the time. It should also later have a super-high-res QHD+ screen with 3,200 × 1,800 pixels.