Feature packed unit, but how long will it live?
Written: Jun 24 '06 (Updated Jun 24 '06)
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Pros: Comfortable to use, handy-dandy connectivity and features
Cons: Some individual components unreliable, below-average compatibility with optical media
The Bottom Line: Hopefully Compaq has improved the quality of internal components by now. If that is the case, this feature-packed laptop will more than meet your needs on the road.
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| towwang's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Compaq Business nc6000 (PG401UA) P... |
In this review I will try to give a quantitative rating to various aspects of the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq “NC6000” laptop computer, including: ergonomics, features and connectivity, compatiblity, performance (speed, battery life) and durability. This review is based upon 22 months of usage experience with this product.
[Physical characteristics]
The NC6000 is a business-class product, with features well beyond those found on sub-US$1000 laptops. Its box came with:
1)NC6000 laptop computer
2)AC adapter / battery charger
3)Software installation CDs
4)Manual and quick-start guide
On a first glance, you will notice the NC6000 is packed with plenty of connectors and buttons (beyond those on the keyboard of course). Its physical design follows the philosophy of “pack as many components in as little space as possible”, as opposed to making components swappable or removable. Typically this makes a laptop more sturdy and handy-dandy (as in, you avoid saying “Oops, I forgot to bring component XYZ with my laptop”), but will limit expandibility. Notable features of the main unit are:
1)Combo drive: a Toshiba SD-C2612, 8x DVD reader plus CD reader (24x) / writer (24x)
2)Wireless network adapter: Agere driver "ar5211.sys", 802.11 a/b/g compliant
3)EtherNet network interface: Broadcom BCM57xx, 1000 Mb/s wired
4)Bluetooth wireless interface: SMC IrCC
5)Hard disk: Toshiba MK6026GAX, 60 billion bytes capacity
6)Graphics adapter: ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
You can find more complete specifications at:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11794_na/11794_na.HTML
[Ergonomics]
The keyboard is well laid out in the QWERTY fashion. Although the keys are tightly packed together, they retain a reasonable top-area for your fingers to hit accurately. Even though the height of the unit restricts how far down the keys can travel, I found all keys to be comfortable to press, and quite responsive. (I did find a reliability problem though, described in the durability section.) The directional keys are placed on the lower right corner of the keyboard, and retain the inverted-T layout found on desktop keyboards. Score = +10.
I found the 14” LCD monitor to be very pleasant; it is bright enough to watch movies (where a large brightness range is very important), while at the same time the display of windows for office applications did not seem overtly bright. Viewing angle is quite good; average sized adults sitting on either side next to the main user holding the laptop will have no problem seeing the screen clearly. The maximum resolution is an adequate 1024*768. Score = +10.
The presence of extra buttons to operate various hardware components is a plus for people on the go. As mentioned previously, being able to quickly turn on and off the wireless network interface is very useful on airplanes or to ensure network security. Buttons to increase/decrease/mute the speakers will be appreciated by the user and people in the vicinity who may or may not want to (or even should or should not) hear the audio. There is also a button to turn on/off video output through the S-Video jack, in case you are hooking up the NC6000 to a TV set for presentations. Score = +10.
There are two pointing devices on the NC6000; they are active at all times under Windows NT 5.1, and can be used simultaneously: the Touchpad, and the somewhat rarer “Pointstick” (basically a short analog joystick) to operate the mouse cursor. Even an external USB mouse can be connected, and all 3 used at the same time! Score = +10.
The AC adapter / battery charger is a black box with cables on both ends; one goes to the wall socket (and does not obstruct multiple sockets) and the other connects to the back of the NC6000. This allows for very flexible placement of the AC adapter, and total cable length is at least 8 feet. Score = +5.
The weight of the NC6000, with DVD drive and battery installed, is 5.423 lb (2.460 Kg). Neither heavy nor exceptionally light by today's standards.
[Features and connectivity]
With the presence of wired gigabit EtherNet, wireless 802.11g, and BlueTooth, this machine is a very connectivity-friendly workstation. Score = +20.
Moreover, given the dual USB 2.0 ports, parallel and serial ports, PC card and SD card ports, the NC6000 deserves even more points. Score = +10.
The combo drive can read DVD-ROM discs, and burn CD WORM (“CD-R”) and rewritable discs (“CD-RW”). This makes backing up and storing large amounts of data convenient and easy. The tray will actually hold on to the CD or DVD once you press down the disc onto the tray, so you can safely insert and remove discs while the unit is in a tilted position. Score = +10.
There is no floppy disk drive in the main unit, however. It is available either through the docking station, or by connecting an external drive via parallel or USB port. Score = -5.
The audio chip is the dreaded Analog Devices “SoundMax”. It provides only 2-channel stereo, but on this laptop it works without hiccups, unlike in my previous review of the Dell Optiplex GX280. There is supposedly an SPDIF digital audio interface on the docking station, but none on the NC6000 itself. Score = -10.
A built-in S-video TV-out connector lets you send your display output to a TV set or monitor, at a maximum resolution of 800*600. All normal windows displayed properly on my TV set, but I could not figure out how to make overlay images (e.g. the image of a movie inside the Windows Media Player) appear on the TV instead of on the LCD monitor. Probably the display software that came pre-installed is misconfigured. Good for presentations, useless for multimedia. Score = +5.
The system BIOS setup is quite thorough and sophisticated, with menus to re-arrange the booting order of mass storage devices, set and enable security passwords, enable/disable particular devices, plus the standard clock/calendar and system configuration information displays. Finding the correct key to enter into system setup was difficult, because the boot-up banner disappears very quickly. Score = +5.
[Compatibility]
We have plugged in a wide variety of devices into the many connectors on the NC6000, including USB mice, USB and parallel-port floppy disk drives, external hard disk, flash-based USB “thumb drives”, audio output to home stereo, microphones for IP telephony, and more. We have not encountered a single compatibility problem among all these connectors. I will give a few points not because I expected problems with the NC6000, but because the third-party components were of varying quality and standards-compliance. Score = +10.
The wireless network interface, made by Agere, successfully connected to 802.11b (11 Mb/s) and 802.11g (54 Mb/s) networks, with and without WEP encryption. Aside from rare connection drops, which may have been caused by external interference, the Agere component worked quite well. The "Atheros" client software for Windows sometimes was not consistent at detecting networks (even some with decent signal strength) however. Score = +5.
I did find a major deficiency in optical media compatibility however: the combo drive does not read DVD-R discs reliably. All too often, if I asked Windows to copy a large amount of file data from a DVD-R, burned by my BusLink DVRW412RD to the hard disk, the combo drive would begin reading files correctly, but after 100 MB or so, it would hang, until Windows finally reports a read error and aborts the copy operation. Score = -20.
[Performance]
I did not run actual benchmarks on this laptop, but mainly relied on informal tests such as compressing files, playing high-resolution videos and games (and reviewing frame rates), and moving data on and off the hard disk.
The unit I tested has a 1.5 Ghz Pentium-M processor, and came with 512 MB of memory. It packs plenty of processing power, and had no problems whatsoever with video clips and other small computation tasks. Tests that involved disk I/O in combination with number crunching (WinRAR, Par2, etc.) suffered because the hard disk was the bottleneck. Score = +10.
The 60-billion byte hard disk that came in the NC6000 felt sluggish, especially in sequential transfers of large files. This is partly due to its slow 5400 rpm rotational speed. Copying files larger than 100 MB, it consistently took about 25% more time than 7200 rpm PATA and USB (WD1200B) disks I compared with. Score = -10.
Coupled with the slow hard disk, the 24x maximum speed for reading CDs also made apparent the slower performance of the combo drive, compared to regular 52x CD drives, such as the Asus CRW5224A or even the older Mitsumi CRW-480ATE. Score = -5.
Battery life does redeem the NC6000 from the above shortcomings in performance. I typically could get about 4 hours of continuous use (including 5 minutes of “risky-use” while the battery alarm is beeping) on applications that moderately access the hard disk and CD/DVD drive (i.e. they read around 1 MB from storage every 10 minutes). I do believe the manufacturer's claim of 5.1 hours of continuous use on a full battery charge is attainable if all you're doing is typing or reading a document. Score = +10.
[Durability]
After using the NC6000 for almost 2 years, I have concluded the unit is of good build. The test unit has never been dropped or subjected to excessive shock (and I do not plan to perform this test any time soon!). It has been on quite a few business trips, transported in a rolling mini-suitcase with adequate padding.
In spite of connecting and disconnecting various external devices frequently, no parts (connectors, covers and the monitor hinges) have come loose, no contact points have developed corrosion, and the body of the unit does not scratch easily. Score = +20.
The keyboard has exhibited a sporadic problem: on two occasions some keys malfunctioned and would not respond. At first I thought it was an electrical contact or debouncing problem, but upon plugging in an external USB keyboard, I found that the same keys that did not respond on the embedded keyboard also did not respond on the external keyboard. This casts suspicion on the internal circuitry, perhaps the keyboard controller chip. Strangely, after a few hours (and a few reboots), everything returns back to normal. This is nevertheless a serious issue that limits the estimated useful life of the product. Score = -20.
Just as I was finishing this review, the LCD monitor developed an entire row of dead (always lit) white pixels going across the width of the monitor. Score = -20.
[How I score]
In all likelihood, readers will have different criteria as to what aspects are more important than others in a laptop computer, so I will try to make this review more useful in the general sense by assigning scores and weighting to each aspect. Readers will then have the choice of applying their own weighting to each score, in order to judge the quality/fitness of this product for each reader's personal tastes/criteria.
All scores range from 0 (poorest) to 100 (best). All individual aspects start with an “exactly average” score of 50 out of 100. A feature that is particularly well done or useful will increase the aspect's score, and something that is poorly designed or implemented will lower the score.
[Tallying the scores and conclusion]
I feel that notebooks are:
1)Used a lot under less-than-comfortable environments: airplanes, airports, crowded meeting rooms or classrooms. Therefore ergonomics gets a 25% weight.
2)Not expandable/upgradable, so you want the most features you can pack into the little box. Features weighted at 20%.
3)Limited in the choice of hardware and software you can run with/on it, so compatibility=15%
4)You can't expect high-performance and long battery life at the same time. Performance=15%
5)Durability tends to be inversely related to ergonomics (e.g. physical weight) and features, but should not be overlooked in a quality product that “must be there with you”, so its weight goes up to 25%.
The scores are therefore:
(Paste this table into a text editor with fixed-width font)
Aspect Score Weight Weighted score
------ ----- ------ --------------
Ergonomics 95 .25 22.5
Features 85 .20 17
Compatibility 45 .15 6.75
Performance 55 .15 8.25
Durability 30 .25 7.25
------ ----- ------ --------------
Total 1.00 62.00
There are 4 columns above, but the Epinions web site is compressing adjacent spaces, so readers will unfortunately have to re-align the columns to see the above table properly. Epinions gets a -10 right here. :)
Since Epinions asks for ratings of 1 to 5 stars, I will use a linear scale, where a total score of 0 to 20 gets 1 star, 21 to 40 gets 2 stars, and so on. The NC6000 therefore receives 4 stars, but this rating should be interpreted in the context of my scoring system.
Overall, the Compaq division of HP must have put a lot of thought into packing all the features into the NC6000 laptop, and designed the main body of the unit quite well, both for sturdiness and comfort of use. Unfortunately there was not enough quality control over the individual components (combo drive, keyboard controller, LCD) to ensure the longevity of the system, and for this reason the system rates poorly in durability and compatibility.
[Revision history]
2006-06-24 Written by and copyright Tow Wang 2006.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1900
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
towwang
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Member: Tow Wang
Location: California; U.S.A.
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
Rabidly passionate about computers and electronics!
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