REVIEW: HP nc6000 Laptop

Recently, after about 2 months of constantly looking on eBay, I purchased a HP nc6000 laptop from a guy in Whitechapel, London. Here’s the spec:

Intel Pentium M 1.60ghz with 2mb Cache
512MB of 400mhz DDR RAM
40GB Hard drive
DVD-ROM/CD-RW
14.1” XGA TFT screen
Approximately 3 years warranty left

All for the princely sum of £400. The complete spec. and current retail price (£1600), can be found here

The only thing this laptop is missing is the integrated, Intel 2200 54Mbps Wi-Fi card. I thought I could purchase this afterwards and install myself, but HP being the annoying bastards they are, have put a BIOS lock on all aftermarket internal products. To purchase the same "HP" unit would cost about £60, whereas on eBay it is £25!!

Alas, I had to settle with buying a Buffalo 54Mbps PCMCIA card from PC World for the dirt cheap price of £12.47.

The key selling point for me about this laptop, is the 14.1” TFT screen. After scouring the web, very few laptops come with a 14” screen…they all seem to be 15”. Whereas in the past you would have to pay an extortionate amount for a 15” screen, you now have to pay a premium for a 14” screen!! The problem with bigger screens, is that you obviously end up with a bigger, less portable laptop.

The 3 year business warranty as standard was also a key selling point, as if the need be, I could sell the laptop on in a few years with the warranty still remaining!

A word on Centrino:

When I first started looking into buying a laptop, I focused my search on Centrino laptops, thinking that it was a type of processor that Intel manufactured. However, I soon realised that the term “Centrino” is simply a brand name. For a laptop to be labelled a Centrino it must contain the following:

Pentium M processor
Intel Wi-Fi chip
Intel Ethernet Chip

As a result, you pay a premium for this brand name and Pentium M laptops being equally as good, have a cheaper price tag. However, these laptops are harder to come by, as manufacturers have realised that the Centrino brand name sells.

In my own opinion, the Centrino brand name is a cunning and successful way for Intel to make vast sums of money out of the majority of the public. So now you know…just buy a Pentium M laptop, they are just as good and you’ll be happy with the few hundred pounds you will save!


Performance:

This being the first laptop I have owned and one of the few I have used overall, it is difficult for me to judge the performance. However, being a laptop, the actual demands that the system is required cope with is substantially less then a desktop. For instance, processor intensive games, 3D modelling application, etc shouldn’t be run on a laptop like this.

However, for the purpose a laptop is needed for; office applications, surfing the web, playing movies/ mp3s, this is perfect. The added bonus of an integrated SD card slot means that you will be able to quickly and conveniently be able to transfer digital photos from your camera.

Additional peripherals purchased:

USB 100m Bluetooth dongle: £8 from eBay
Buffalo WLI-CB-G54L Wi-Fi card: £12.47 from PC World
Belkin 2 port KVM switch: £20 from eBay
Holux GR-230 Bluetooth GPS Receiver: £36 from eBay

Total spend including laptop: £476.47 including all postage costs. My budget was a maximum spend of £500, so I’m well chuffed!

Incidentally, the Bluetooth GPS unit is for Satellite Navigation when I have the laptop in my car. I’ll post results of it soon when I get it up and running…still deciding on what software to use.

Overall:

I'm glad I did my research and spent such a long time scoping everything out trying to get the best bargains, because at the end of it I have saved a few hundred at least...let this be a lesson to you all, impulse buying never pays off!!

+nicks