Unlimited Christmas cash to burn? Checkout the HP EliteBook 8440w

This is one of those blog posts about hardware that makes you go hmmm.  For those of us that spend an inordinate amount of time installing Microsoft products, traveling, and demonstrating capabilities to customers, there are several virtualization maxims.  You can never get enough RAM in a laptop.  You can never have to much disk space.  Disks are never fast enough.  You can never get enough CPU or GPU horsepower in a laptop. 

If you manage to overcome some of the hurdles, the machine that does it won’t be small, thin, or light.

HP apparently has other ideas on the matter.  If you’ve got the money, they have an interesting solution.  Behold, the HP EliteBook 8440w.  I’m linking directly to the specs for the machine because I could not believe them the first time I saw them.

Here’s what you can get on this little mean machine if you are so inclined.  An Intel Core i7-840QM Quad-Core Processor, 16GB of DDR3 PC3-10600 RAM, 256GB SSD storage, a 14” 1600x900 native resolution LCD screen, and a Blu-ray drive (writable BD-R, BD-RE, BD-ROM).

You can of course opt for a 500GB primary drive, and a 500GB drive in the upgrade bay if enclosed portable storage is your thang.

What’s the baby going to cost?  Well, if you have to ask you can’t afford it.  But a loaded version of the above is going to set you back about $7700.  Yea, those 8GB DDR SoDIMMs are about $2200 each.