Jeff wood, worldwide product manager for the HP workstation business recently welcomed a group of tech journalists, including yours truly, to their HQ in Fort Collins, Colorado. Wood proudly commented how there are many 30+ year HPers, including himself, who have been with the company at the facilities in Colorado. The Fort Collins Colorado workstation crew dates back from the RISC Unix days, and on to virtualized environments and proudly they have outlived Sun, SGI and others in the competitive workstation industry. The company is now a leader with their Z product line.
Performance, innovation, and reliability is the Key for HP, particularly as it has been pointed out that every element of your life is touched by an HP workstation in some way – Your clothes, food, transportation, infrastructure, school etc… Think software companies, oil and gas, tech. Wood credits the company’s success to delivering on time and having confidence, this via an unrivaled quality standard where the desktop workstation quality testing has improved 13 percent year over year, whereas the mobile workstations enjoy a whopping 21% year over year improvement. While on-site we were treated to an impressive tour of the company’s R&D facility where product testing is conducted by dedicated, trained engineers in what can be viewed as an impressive NASA-like, futuristic testing facility. All the company’s hardware can be engineered, designed, built, and tested on-site with rigid testing of electrical capabililties, physical design, and environmental constraints – it truly was an amazing site! Having seen the site first-hand it is easy to see why many business partners and technology providers, like AMD, Intel and others are located nearby in this busting technology hub on the Front Range.
The impressive facilities exist in order to help support the design and development of technologies in a space where customers demand their workstations stay up and running, mobile workstations support users who demand thin, light, and rugged hardware yet high/fast performance is also critical.
And so, the new products in the Z series of workstations: The new additions to the portfolio include: HP Z840, Z640 and Z440 desktop workstations, and the new HP ZBook 15 G2 and 17 G2 Mobile Workstations – recall, the HP Z Desktops and HP ZBook Mobile Workstations are built to address the constraints of compute-intensive industries, including media and entertainment, graphic design, CAD, architecture, photography, manufacturing, finance, healthcare, scientific imaging, and oil and gas exploration.
- The new HP Z840, Z640 and Z440 desktop workstations feature the latest Intel® Xeon®(1) processor product family, and NVIDIA® and AMD professional graphics options.
HP Z840 workstation tower - The new HP ZBook 15 G2 and ZBook 17 G2 Mobile Workstations take advantage of powerful processing, including optional Intel quad-core processors and NVIDIA® Quadro® and AMD FirePro™ professional graphics that are ISV-certified.
HP Z Series mobile workstation
System SPECS and comments:
The Z440 is ideal for product design, the Z640 is the most versatile machine, ideal for video editing and production, while the Z840 is the ultimate high end workstation, ideal for science and earth sciences and related industries (think oil and gas). The Z440 Z640 and Z840 have all been redesigned with a complete new chasis. Inside users will be treated to the latest intel processor architecture along with the newest cards from Nvidia and AMD along with a faster DDR4 memory architecture.
Z440 features:
An ideal balance of price and performance ideally suited for architecture and mid range entertainment and media designers. The Z440 sports integrated front and back handles with a new industrial design chasis, less than 7″ width… an ideal solution for those racking needs. Other cool features include: Rear power button and LED and Up to 128 GB system memory support!
Hp Z640 workstation features:
Ideal for health care and other imaging processing houses crunching large image products, the Z640 provides: 4 usb3 ports on front {one is a charging port}, rear power supply, 6 USB ports, two audio ports, handles. The unit is a completely tool free for system maintenance and inside you’ll find 2 processors, maximum versatile, scalable, premium experience with all the latest technologies inside including processor, storage, graphics…
Z840 workstation features:
The Flagship workstation for the power user, heavy computational intensive… Or perfect for those who want their friends to think they are a power user! Users will be treated to: Two handles, crack mountable, top panel removal, rear power, eight bulkhead slots, a removable power supply, Up to 1 TB memory support and even 2 tb when 128 gb DIMMs available! Supports up to 8 2.5″ storage bays…
HP workstation event by the numbers…
- 1939 – Interesting to hear that HP takes its roots back to 1939 as an engineering services company working on a contract for Walt Disney Studios on the movie, Fantasia.
- 6 – The company’s 6 letter fight song – Invent
- $9 Trillion – Amount of $$ transactions the technology helps process each day
- $3 billion – Funded R&D
- 75 – Celebrating 75 years in business
- 30 – Workstation group has been in Fort Collins, Colorado for more than 30 years and ships more workstations than every competitor
- Desktop workstation quality improved 13 percent year over year, mobile workstations 21% Y.O.Y
- The Z book workstations recently grew 28% year over year
- The Z 440 workstation is Ideal for product design. Z640 is the most versatile, ideal for video editing… Z840 is the ultimate high end workstation, ideal for science and earth sciences, oil and gas.
- Thunderbolt data transfer rate is 4X faster than USB3
- WOAH… Up to 3 terabytes storage expandable in the Zbook 17
- Handy… HP recently released a new 14″ USB display at just $169, perfect for road warriors and for toting around to sales calls or events.
See Photos from the HP Z workstation site visit
See more:
The HP Z Workstation Family Gets More Powerful, Expansive, and downright Impressive! – HP Z Desktops and HP ZBook Mobile Workstations are built to address the constraints of compute-intensive industries, including media and entertainment, graphic design, CAD, architecture, photography, manufacturing, finance, healthcare, scientific imaging, and oil and gas exploration. The new additions to the portfolio include: HP Z840, Z640 and Z440 desktop workstations, and the new HP ZBook 15 G2 and 17 G2 Mobile Workstations
Shop for Z series workstations at HP
Price and availability
- The HP Z440, Z640 and Z840 Workstations are expected to be available worldwide beginning in late October. Estimated U.S. pricing starts at $1,299, $1,759 and $2,399, respectively.
- The HP ZBook 15 G2 and ZBook 17 G2 Mobile Workstation are expected to be available worldwide in late September. Estimated U.S. pricing starts at $1,499 and $1,749, respectively.
