HP NC8000 Review

by Gary Quigg
(Auckland, New Zealand)

I searched for and bought this business laptop secondhand to fulfill certain requirements I needed for my business. I needed a laptop with a good screen resolution for creating floor-plans on-site, which requires being about to see a lot of detail on-screen.

This version comes with a high-res screen option (1400 x 1050 pixels) as well as a twin-battery option, although I have not gone for that.

I had it upgraded from about 40G to 160G hard-drive. It has a 1.7GHz Processor and 2Gig of RAM, so it can handle even applications like Photoshop if pressed into service on the road (I do real estate photography as well as floor-plans).

On the plus side it is pretty robust, the keyboard has a nice feel to it. It has a number of inputs on the rear, including: parallel, serial, s-video, vga etc. The wireless is excellent. On the negative, it is heavier than more modern laptops, but that is the only downside I find.

Keyboard is excellent
Touchpad - average
Speakers - above average

Speed/performance is average but pretty good considering the age.

I would recommend this to a friend as it can be purchased for about $400NZ in New Zealand which is very cheap.