Design
In redesigning the nc6230's case, HP seems to have taken some cues from one of our favourite corporate thin-and-lights, the IBM ThinkPad T series. HP ditched the nc6000's silver accents in favour of an all-black design, though the case, at 315 by 28 by 257mm, remains about the same size. The nc6230 appears slimmer, however, due to a slanted front edge -- a design element also found on the ThinkPad T. At 2.45kg (2.81kg with the AC adapter), the nc6230 is slightly lighter than the nc6000 and about average for the thin-and-light category.
The nc6230 features two pointing devices: an eraser-head pointing stick and a square touch pad with a handy strip along its right edge for scrolling through documents and Web pages. The touch pad and the pointing stick each have a set of rubberised mouse buttons, which we found particularly agreeable to touch.
The broad keyboard features a desktoplike layout with oft-used keys, such as Delete, clustered in the upper-right corner and an isolated arrow pad in the lower-right corner. While we liked the layout, we found the keys a bit noisy. A row of six useful buttons sits above the keyboard, giving you a quick way to turn wireless connectivity on and off, control the volume and launch applications.
Features
HP offers a long list of components to customise the laptop. Our nc6230 test unit featured a nice array of components: a 2GHz Pentium M 760 Sonoma processor, 512MHz of average-speed 400MHz memory, an ATI Mobility Radeon X300 graphics chip with a standard 64MB of VRAM, and an 80GB hard drive spinning at a brisk 5,400rpm. Our model also included a 14.1-inch display with a high 1,400x1,050 native resolution, a Broadcom 802.11a/b/g mini-PCI Wi-Fi card, which does not support Intel's Sonoma technology, and a useful CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive in a hot-swappable bay.
For a fairly demure thin-and-light, the nc6230 includes a full selection of ports and slots. Highlights include three USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, an S-Video-out port, audio in and out jacks, a Secure Digital card reader, and one Type II PC Card slot with an integrated smart-card reader. HP includes a Trusted Platform Module that's soldered on the laptop's motherboard; it encrypts and stores secret information that can be accessed only with a key code that you establish.
The company's ProtectTools software also comes standard on every system, helping to protect the laptop against network and data hacks. Our test unit came preloaded with Microsoft Windows XP Professional, but as with most corporate notebooks, the nc6230 does not ship with a productivity suite. DVD-viewing and disc-burning tasks are handled by InterVideo WinDVD 5.0 and Sonic RecordNow 7.0, respectively.
Performance
Like most of the Sonoma laptops that we have tested, the nc6230 didn't earn revolutionary scores in our mobile benchmarks. However, it sped a few points past the Dell Latitude D610 and even further beyond the ThinkPad T42, which featured a slower 1.8GHz Dothan PM and older 32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chip. Unfortunately, in our battery-drain tests, the nc6230 ran out of steam early, calling it quits after 196 minutes -- almost an hour before the Latitude D610 and the ThinkPad T42.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo MobileMark 2002 performance rating |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo MobileMark 2002 battery life in minutes |
System configurations:
Dell Latitude D610
Windows XP Professional; 2GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X300 64MB; Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 80GB 5,400rpm
HP Compaq nc6230
Windows XP Pro; 2GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon x300 64MB; Toshiba MK8026GAX 80GB 5,400rpm
IBM ThinkPad T42
Windows XP Professional; 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 32MB; Fujitsu MHT2040AH 40GB 5,400rpm
Edited by Justin Jaffe
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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