About four months ago I
swapped my Windows-bootcamped iMac for a new HP Z1 workstation that HP were kind enough to let us test drive.
First
impressions were OK – it's a neat all in one matt black machine, and although not as shiny and pretty as my iMac, it's a really nice looking pc. The 27 inch ips display is stunning.
I've been using the Z1 for a few months now and as a Windows workstation i have to say that i definitely prefer the it to the iMac.
Performance wise, the Z1 is packing a quad core Xeon processor with 8gb ram and a 2gb Nvidia Quadro graphics card, which is probably a bit better than the i5 processor, 8gb ram, and Radeon graphics card in the Mac. It's a great machine on the occasions we decide to play a few games in the office.
One area where the Z1 excels is in it's upgradability. I've added a solid state drive to mine and now it beats the iMac hands down. Windows 8 boots in a matter of seconds and everything feels nice and snappy. On the bootcamped iMac it's around 15-20 seconds boot time and can occasionally feel a bit sluggish.
I ran PC Mark 07 on both machines. The iMac scored 3205 and the Z1 with ssd scored 4940.
Obviously it's not a fair comparison. The iMac is running a bootcamped installation of windows on a sata hard disk, whereas the Z1 is a real windows installation on a solid state drive. Unfair maybe, but i know which one I'd prefer to work on.
While it's not a laptop, it's very portable for something that's so powerful. I recently used it on an R&D project (Real Weather) as a server, and I it was really useful to be able to just pick it up and plug it in where we were setting up.
Performance wise, the Z1 is packing a quad core Xeon processor with 8gb ram and a 2gb Nvidia Quadro graphics card, which is probably a bit better than the i5 processor, 8gb ram, and Radeon graphics card in the Mac. It's a great machine on the occasions we decide to play a few games in the office.
One area where the Z1 excels is in it's upgradability. I've added a solid state drive to mine and now it beats the iMac hands down. Windows 8 boots in a matter of seconds and everything feels nice and snappy. On the bootcamped iMac it's around 15-20 seconds boot time and can occasionally feel a bit sluggish.
I ran PC Mark 07 on both machines. The iMac scored 3205 and the Z1 with ssd scored 4940.
Obviously it's not a fair comparison. The iMac is running a bootcamped installation of windows on a sata hard disk, whereas the Z1 is a real windows installation on a solid state drive. Unfair maybe, but i know which one I'd prefer to work on.
While it's not a laptop, it's very portable for something that's so powerful. I recently used it on an R&D project (Real Weather) as a server, and I it was really useful to be able to just pick it up and plug it in where we were setting up.
