It used to be pretty hard to install ESXi on HP Laptop but since 6.0 VMware made it pretty easy to do so. below is what I did on my ZBook 15 G1 laptop.
The hardware
It's a whole flash ESXi setup with three SSD drives:
Back in version 5.5 it has issue with the Intel Giga ethernet but now much easier :) The board really has enough power to run a home lab using vSphere, only one thing missing would be VT-d...