This Just In: HP ProBook 5310m

We've looked at quite a few CULV laptops of late, including our CULV roundup. HP's ProBook 5310m is CULV with a twist: it doesn't have to be a CULV laptop, as regular CPUs are also available with significantly more performance on tap. Worth particular note is that the ProBook 5310m is a business laptop rather than a consumer model, which means there's a matte LCD option for a change. (And there was much rejoicing….) HP launched the 5310m late last year, so it's lost some of its shiny newness, but the ProBook still gets a lot of areas right.

The ProBook 5310m comes with an aluminum cover and palm rest, though the LCD bezel remains glossy. This is a very thin and light laptop—less than an inch thick and weighing in at 3.8 pounds. We really like the spacing on the keys, and the keyboard has been comfortable for use in limited testing. The default battery is a bit thinner than a AAA battery and the standard configuration ships with a 4-cell 41Wh battery good for up to ~6.5 hours of mobility (testing still pending). An optional $20 upgrade gets you a 6-cell battery, which should boost battery life quite a bit. Most of the other features are the same as other CULV laptops, but the 5310m does ship with a DisplayPort output instead of the common VGA/HDMI output.
There are a few potential gotchas you should be aware of before taking the plunge, perhaps the biggest being that there's only a single SO-DIMM slot, so getting 4GB will incur a price premium. We'd like to see 4GB options with 64-bit Windows as well; at present, you're going to have to install a 64-bit OS separately if that's what you want. Like many other CULV laptops, the 5310m uses Intel's GMA 4500MHD IGP—good for working in standard Windows applications, watching most movies, and not much else. But then, it's doubtful anyone buying this type of business notebook is going to have gaming as a high priority. Finally, we expect to start seeing CULV versions of Core i5/i7 start showing up (at last!), and while prices are likely to be higher they should also provide better performance. Hopefully we'll get one for review sooner rather than later.

We've got a bunch of other laptops to look at in the near future, including some new AMD-based models, but if you're looking for a thin and light 13.3" laptop the ProBook might have what you're after. The preconfigured models are the way to go, as pricing is much better. If you want a CULV Celeron SU2300 (1.2GHz 1MB L2), you can find the 5310m for just $607 online. That will get you 2GB DDR3 memory and a 160GB 7200RPM hard drive—there's no optical drive on the 5310m. An upgraded model with a Core 2 Duo SP9300 (2.26GHz 6MB L2) will run $759; it also bumps the HDD up to 320GB 7200RPM. The preconfigured models ship with Windows 7 Professional 32-bit (with an XP downgrade if you want it).
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Apple's 15-inch Core i5 MacBook Pro: The One to Get?

If you've followed our Mac coverage over the past year you know I've been telling everyone to wait until Apple brought Arrandale into its MacBook Pro lineup. The time has finally come and this week Apple updated its entire MacBook Pro lineup.

While the 13-inch models still sport Core 2 Duo CPUs, the 15 and 17-inch models now ship with your choice of Core i5-M or Core i7-M processors. In a somewhat unexpected twist, all of the new models ship with discrete graphics courtesy of NVIDIA's GeForce GT 330M.

Intel gets to sell Apple some chipsets again and NVIDIA gets its GPUs in the new systems (possibly making even more money than before). But do you all benefit? Read on to find out!

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ASUS G73Jh: Today's Top Gaming Laptop

ASUS has made it a goal to increase their retail presence in the mobile market, with an eye on becoming one of the top brand names. There's no doubt that Dell, HP, and Acer continue to sell more laptops overall (especially if we leave out the Eee PC netbooks), but walk into any Best Buy, Office Depot, etc. and you're likely to find quite a few ASUS laptops for sale. They have everything from entry-level netbooks and laptops through long battery life CULV designs and a bunch of midrange offerings. At the high-end, you'll probably have more luck finding ASUS laptops online, but the ASUS G73Jh definitely makes such a search worthwhile.

The G73Jh is of the "bigger is better" variety of gaming notebooks, but it's not quite up there with the giant 18.4" offerings. Instead, ASUS has dropped down to a slightly smaller 17.3" chassis, but they've still packed in a lot of compelling hardware. Do you want to play games? How about getting the fastest current mobile GPU, and unlike the latest NVIDIA mobile solutions you get DirectX 11 support! The Radeon Mobility HD 5870 is a potent little chip, and it matches up nicely with the 1080p display. Sure, it pales in comparison to the top desktop GPUs (it's really based off the 5770 "Juniper" core with 800 Stream Processors as opposed to the 1600 Stream Processor "Cypress" core), but short of multi-GPU solutions like SLI and CrossFire, you won't find a faster notebook graphics chip.

Matched up with the GPU are a supporting cast of components that are powerful in their own right. For the CPU, the G73Jh-A2 that we received for review includes a quad-core i7-720QM (1.6GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz). The notebook uses an HM55 chipset, so support for i3 and i5 processors is also available and we expect to see other SKUs down the road. Thanks to Turbo Boost, the only dual-core CPUs that should clearly offer better single-threaded performance are the i5-540M and i7-620M, but for multi-threaded loads even the "low-end" 720QM bests all of the dual-core options. Besides 1TB (2x500GB) of storage and the other typical accessories, ASUS also stuffs a full 8GB of DDR3 memory into the G73Jh. It's interesting to note that they do this via four SO-DIMM slots, so potentially you could put 4x4GB in the system but ASUS officially lists only 8GB support.

The only serious omission (for some) is a Blu-ray drive; other models are likely to include such a drive, but costs are going to go up. If you want Blu-ray support, you might find it easier to just add your own for $100. For those that want it, eSATA, ExpressCard, and FireWire support are also missing, and unlike the N61Jv there's no USB3 port either. Digital content purveyors will be disappointed but if you're just after a mobile gaming solution the missing items aren't likely to matter.

When you add everything together, the G73Jh—particularly the A2 version that includes a nice mouse and backpack—is an excellent value, provided of course that you're interested in a gaming laptop. This thing is a beast to lug around, and it won't fit in my standard 17" laptop bag, so you'll want the ASUS backpack if possible. Availability is perhaps the only sore spot, with stock disappearing rapidly at most of the online vendors we've monitored. As such, a few sites are bumping up the price… and still selling out. (Newegg, we're looking at you and your $1750 A2 model.) The MSRP for this particular configuration is supposed to be $1600, and if you shop around you can probably find it at that price or slightly less, but as with any popular model you may need to work a bit to find one.