The HP Z1 Workstation

“HP Workstations are, without a doubt, the best, most powerful, and most reliable workstations* on Earth, and one we readily recommend to clients”
John Obeto II, CEO, Logikworx.

I had to get that little piece of housekeeping out of the way.

Last month, I had the privilege of attending the 2012 HP Global Workstation Event in Las Vegas, Nevada, where Kiley S., of Edelman informed me upon arrival and registration that I would be blown away by the new HP workstation offerings in the offing. That answer was in response to my question, “Will you be raising the bar again?”

A high bar, no less.

At the meet-and-greet later that evening, every HP staffer I spoke with basically said the same: the new products were more capable, and would impress me.

What made me more intrigued was

The 2012 HP Global Workstation Event
The Vdara Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, February 14, 2012

Jim Zafarana runs the HP Workstation group, and he led off with the video below.

HP Z1 Workstation Intro video from John.Obeto on Vimeo.

© 2012 HP

I was stunned!

We were all stunned!!

STUNNED!!!

Spontaneous clapping broke out…

…which was a surprise, because the audience was completely composed of hardened pros used to working with workstations of all caliber.

An AIO** professional workstation!

 

 

 

Then we all got a look, both at the system, and at the specs.

HP Z1 Workstation technical specs

  • 27" diagonal IPS LED Backlit HP Widescreen Monitor (2560 x 1440) with up to 1.07 billion colors supported (through A-FRC technology) and 2 MP 1080p webcam
  • Your choice of CPUs : Intel® Xeon® E3-1280 (3.50 GHz, 8 MB cache, 4 cores), Intel® Xeon® E3-1245 with Intel HD Graphics P3000 (3.30 GHz, 8 MB cache, 4 cores), or Intel® Core™ i3-2120 with Intel HD Graphics 2000 (3.30 GHz, 3 MB cache, 2 cores)
  • 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Unbuffered SDRAM
  • Internal drive bays for one 3.5" or two 2.5" Internal drives
  • SATA (10000 rpm): 300 GB - 600 GB; SATA (7200 rpm): 250 GB - 2 TB; SATA SSD: 160 GB - 300 GB;
  • Optical drive: Slim slot-load SATA Blu-ray writer; Slim slot-load SATA DVD+/-RW
  • Graphics: Integrated > Intel® HD Graphics 2000 or P3000; Entry 3D > NVIDIA Quadro 500M (1 GB); Mid-range 3D > NVIDIA Quadro 1000M (2 GB); NVIDIA Quadro 3000M (2 GB); High-end 3D > NVIDIA Quadro 4000M (2 GB)
  • Ports: 2 USB 3.0, 7 USB 2.0 (3 internal), 4-in-1 media card reader, headphone, microphone, 1 IEEE 1394a, 1 DisplayPort, 1 RJ-45, 1 subwoofer – yes, subwoofer! – 1 optical S/PIF, 1 audio line in, 1 audio line out.
  • 400-watt, 90% efficient power supply

It was truly unprecedented innovation!

In concert with the engineering that went into the system, the expandability and affordability of the HP Z1 means that workspaces that are cramped can still have a quiet, powerful and expandable state-of-the-art workstation utilizing a heretofore unseen all-in-one physical form factor.

This is big. Correction, this is huge!

We hastened to take photos and talk to product managers.

More information on the HP Z1 Workstation is here.

Please note that all this time, there was still another product(s) under wraps that was going to be revealed the next day, and for which we were embargoed until March 6, three weeks away!

* Puget Systems’ Brett Nordquist (@Akula on Twitter) disagrees with that statement, and is determined to challenge any system on this planet for that title.

I will work to make that happen.

** AIO: all-in-one

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