HP Compaq nc4200 Review

With the Compaq nc4200 from HP we’re dealing with a notebook that’s been targeted for the business user. HP is a respectable and known company that’s covering a broad line of users with their range of products. Whatever your business needs are you can most likely find a corresponding HP notebook. You might want to go ultra lightweight and increase your portability or prefer big screen capabilities and the performance to back it up with an nc8230 notebook instead. Either way HP has an assorted array of business notebooks for your pleasure.

When taking a look at the notebook you’ll notice it has a more robust and thorough design giving it a more distinct business feel. It looks like it could take a punch without breaking or malfunctioning though I wouldn’t recommend testing it! The wrist padding is also very smooth and soft and it heats up to a comfortable level making it nice to lay your hands on. Another good feature of the nc4200 is its user friendliness when it comes to the various internal ports it’s being shipped with. Wherever there’s a port or plug you’ll find a descriptive logo on the upper side of the keyboard making it easy to know which plug should go where.

The notebook weights 1800 gram with an included 400 gram battery but excluding its 500 gram power supply. It measures 28.5 cm wide, 23.5 cm deep and 3.5 cm tall.

Processor	1866 MHz Mobile Intel Centrino M 750
RAM	512 MB DDR RAM
Harddrive	60 GB HD – 5400 RPM
Optical Drive	None
Graphics Chip	Intel Graphics Media Accelerator with 128 MB shared RAM
Display	12.1" XGA (1024x768)
Communication	V.90 modem, 10/100/1000 Mbit Ethernet, IEEE 1394 FireWire, 802.11 b/g WLAN
Battery	Li-Ion
Operating System	Windows XP Pro
Pointing Device	Touchpad w/ scroll-wheel
Weight	1800 gram
Other	Card Reader
Price	$ 1,935

Link to HP's specifications

The HP Compaq nc4200 comes with a standard keyboard despite its small physical size. On other slightly bigger models we’ve seen buttons with odd shapes and sizes that have tried to fit into the smaller chassis. It can be a bit irritating that some of the buttons stray from what you’re usually used to. Therefore it’s nice to see that HP has been able to retain a regular sized keyboard with the nc4200 notebook. There’s also been room for a few hotkeys at the top right side of the notebook. These include a button for the HP Presentation mode as well as a mute button and a button for either lowering or increasing the volume of the only speaker.

It would appear that the keyboard of the nc4200 is fine at first sight but if you take a closer look you’ll find some mishaps. The F1-F12 buttons are a little smaller than normal though it’s only natural when the notebook itself isn’t that big. But the F1 button in particular as well as the F2 button to a certain extern seems a little too used. When pressing the F1 button it definitely feels like it’s going halfway through the notebook! I don’t know if we’ve got our hands on a much used notebook for testing were the F1 button has been used excessively or not but even so it should be able to endure it.

It might not be the most used button in the keyboard but it’s still too weak and subtracts from the overall impression of the otherwise fine quality. Another slight concern is the Escape button. It feels like it’s attached to some kind of elastic band making it hard to press down. You might have to press the Escape button a little harder a few times before it’s being registered. Don’t know why they’re chosen to separate the Escape button like this but it certainly seems like a bad call to me. Other than these few hiccups the overall quality of the keyboard is very fine.

Full size | Medium size

Full size | Medium size

Full size | Medium size

The Compaq nc4200 from HP is shipped with a small 12.1” display which isn’t much these days when everything seems to be focused about big widescreen notebooks. Luckily there’s just enough room for your programs as it has a native resolution of 1024x768 which is still pretty common today. You can easily adjust the brightness of the monitor via keyboard hotkeys making it just right for your viewing pleasure. Though it’s worth noting it doesn’t go from brighter to darker but only from bright to dark in smaller incremental steps leaving you with fewer options to choose from.

Apart from the glowing LEDs on the front there’s only a single infrared port. The back of the nc4200 features a broader array of ports than its big brother nc8230 does. To the left there’s a USB 2.0 port that’s well placed for connecting the notebook with an external DVD drive. There’re also the standard modem and LAN ports which makes up the first set. The second and last set of ports on the back is placed at the right side and contains the power plug, an external VGA port as well as a S-Video Out port. To the left in the back there’s the now almost mandatory security feature of a Kensington lock and it’s being followed by a big ventilation fan. After a small gab there’s a WLAN on/off button being followed by another USB 2.0 port for easy connectivity. Rounding things off there’s a button for the HP Info centre and finally a power on switch.

The latter needs a little explanation as it’s not a regular button for powering up the notebook. With this notebook HP has opted for a switch placed on the front left side of the chassis instead of the more traditional placement of a button on the upper side of the keyboard. You simply boot the computer by flipping the switch with your finger. It’s actually very easy to do so and in fact it might be a little too easy to do.

You could accidentally hit the switch without knowing which would boot the computer and drain the battery for no particular reason. Most often it’s not going to be a problem when compared to the more typical and hidden placement of the button but you should think an extra thought before throwing it around in a bag if it should boot by accident. Also on the forefront to the left is a single speaker leaving the notebook with no kind of stereo sound setup.

To the right on the front are two jacks for headphone and microphone support in addition to a USB 2.0 port. Finally at the back there’s been room for a PCMCIA port that’s sitting above a card reader that only supports Secure Digital.

3 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x Card Reader (Secure Digital only)
1 x RJ-11 jack
1 x RJ-45 jack
1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
1 x Line-In jack
1 x Line-Out jack
1 x DC-in jack
1 x 32 bit Type II PC Card slot
1 x Extern monitor port
1 x S-Video Out
1 x Kensington Lock

Full size | Medium size

Full size | Medium size

Full size | Medium size

Full size | Medium size

The noise level of the Compaq nc4200 from HP can be divided into two categories. The first is the one when the power is plugged and the second when it’s unplugged and running solely on its battery. When the power cord is plugged the fan is humming and spinning from time to time. It’s too loud to be silent and it can be a little irritating from time to time when the fan takes a spin for odd reasons. But when you’re on the go and the power is unplugged it seems radically different. Then it suddenly changes to be quite silent and you don’t really notice the fan or any other noise.

It’s natural that the overall power level is slightly lowered when running unplugged to preserve battery life though it stills packs quite the performance leaving me wondering if it’s due to something else than just the downgrade of computational power. It’s certainly much quieter and almost silent when unplugged which is only a really nice thing when you consider the fact it’s so portable and capable of running on the battery. A little shame though that it’s not as quiet when plugged but I guess you can make it quiet too if you fiddle a little with the power saving schemes to make it work the way you want it to.

The Compaq nc4200 from HP comes with a load of manuals, guides, documents, warranty papers and the works in languages you wouldn’t even know existed! It can seem a little over the edge with warranty papers in languages spanning from A-Z in the alphabet instead of a few localized versions but HP is certainly on the good side when is comes to supporting their products. Of more general interest there’s an international “Getting Started” manual in English as well as a localized version making sure first time buyers can use the purchased notebook. There weren’t any software or driver CDs with the package. Instead HP had focused on using preinstalled software and a built-in recovery utility to restore the entire system if needed be.

When it comes to warranty issues HP is in a strong position since they offer one full year on the battery and a superb three-year warranty on the notebook! That’s a very long warranty period indeed and HP is counting on their quality products to live up to their reputation. They’ve also got hotline support over the phone or via email. If you fancy support and warranty HP seems to get you covered.

The overall performance of the Compaq nc4200 from HP is very good in both office and business applications. Its MobileMark performance score is quite good when considering its very fine battery live and its SYSmark score is only second of the Zepto Znote 2314W which has a speedy 7200 RPM hard drive. It’s definitely a good purchase for any businessman looking for a solid performance and wants the work done on time.

Superb! It’s utterly mind-boggling to see how many hours this baby it able to sustain. It’s almost frightening when it goes on and on for hours of unplugged pleasure and even more impressive when it can do so under heavy load in a workbench scenario! It packs just about five straight hours when working with various tasks in demanding office applications and it's just shy of six hours when reading on the web. This is truly a portable notebook and an honourable feat in itself to preserve the battery this well. With a little tweaking I’m sure it can go the full six hours and even if it can’t it’s still more than adequate for even the most demanding users!

The only department were it’s "lacking" is when it comes to the DVD playback. There it’s just hitting the three hour mark and even though it’s somewhat less than what we’ve seen from the nc4200 it’s still a very fine result. My guess would be it has something to do with the external drive that’s draining the battery a little quicker though it shouldn’t diminish the value of the splendid battery life of the HP Compaq nc4200.

Utterly unplayable! In those two short words the 3D performance – or lack thereof – can be described of the Compaq nc4200 from HP. This isn’t due to any internal mistake of the notebook but merely the fact that it’s configured with an integrated Intel “Extreme” Graphics chip. I’m even surprised it could start yet alone run the 3DMark03 and 3DMark05 benchmarks! Naturally this notebook isn’t targeted at gaming or intensive 3D applications at all due to its poor performance. So if you’re looking for a capable gaming notebook this it not it and neither is it intended for that particular segment.





All tests results are available here.

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The HP Compaq nc4200 notebook leaves a very good impression on the whole. It may have some slightly minor issues but they’re more than compensated for by its benefits. The notebook isn’t meant for gaming but instead on being lightweight and easy to transport for the businessman. With that in mind it does an admirable job with a powerful performance and a phenomenal battery life! Its small size isn’t an issue either as the keyboard is pretty standard and the keystroke is good. It also weights just below two kilo which isn’t much either and the only thing it might lack is a DVD drive. The drive can be bought separately and once the notebook is installed and configured it’s a very valuable purchase. I can only recommend this notebook to any that wants many hours of unplugged connectivity on the go!

+
Lightweight, three-year warranty, good performance in office applications, fantastic battery, fairly quiet when unplugged
–
Absent 3D performance





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