The AbsoluteVista.com HP xw6600 Review
I have had a copy of the HP xw6600 Personal Workstation for review at the Orbiting O’odua for nearly a month.
The xw6600 is one of the smallest form factor dual-socket workstations on the market today. A product of HP’s over quarter-century of experience in workstations, this system came with an ultra quiet tool-less case*, dual quad-core Intel Xeon 5450 CPUs, and 4GB of DDR2-667 FBD RAM. This baby also came with a Quadro FX1700 with a whopping 768MB.
I reviewed the xw6600’s suitability to task in the following usage scenarios:
- Content creation, using Pinnacle Systems Studio 12 and HD content, and
- Several virtualization tasks.
Digital content creation
One of the common uses for workstations is in digital content creation.
For this test, I used photos from a Canon XTi DSLR, a small, animated movie I had created using Reallusion iClone v2.1, some LumaPix creations, and HD content shot using a Canon HV20 HD camcorder. I also took several sci-fi scenes ripped from a DVD. Bringing it all together was Studio 12 from Pinnacle systems.
I imported all content in Studio 12 and created my HD movie, and started the conversions. I made copies of the movie, started CyberLink PowerDirector to convert the movie to Blu-Ray, Windows Movie Maker to convert the movie to Zune, and Studio 12 to make a DVD conversion simultaneously!
This system did not hiccup, nor did it slow down. Responsiveness was immediate despite the (relatively) small amount of RAM (4GB).
Virtualization
I tried a new tack with virtualization on this system. I decided to temporarily run virtualized production environments in the xw6600.
I set up a Windows Server 2008 VM and installed Infor-Med’s innovative Praxis EMR (electronic medical records) program for a clinic here, moving their entire production database to the VM. I had all users work through that VM for an entire day.
I also set up a Windows Home Server on another VM (thanks, Mauricio Freitas**). I then started streaming video content to several systems on the network using Webguide.
I ran these two VMs simultaneously.
Again, I was not surprised at the responsiveness I got from the xw6600. It just worked great.
Simultaneously with all these tests, I used the xw6600 daily as my remote management console for the MSP applications we use at Logikworx, in addition to being my daily system
Conclusion
This is one well-designed and engineered system. Performance over a range of usage scenarios was snappy, and predictable. I enjoyed using the xw6600 for a variety of tasks.
Because of the excellent performance of this system, we are giving it the AbsoluteVista.com Business Ready award.
* The xw6600 is the quietest desktop/desk side unit I have ever encountered, bar none!
** Mauricio Freitas is the editor-in-chief of Geekzone.co.nv, New Zealand’s top IT website and web destination. Mauricio’s was the first instance I know of someone using WHS in a virtualized environment. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Mobile Devices.