Advice needed re: used HP ProBook 6550b purchase

I have the opportunity to buy a ProBook 6550b (WZ303UT) for around $200 from a business that is upgrading all its notebooks. Any advice on what to look for would be appreciated. I'll be taking a look at it on Mon., Feb. 25th.

According to the model #, this one has a Broadcom wi-fi card in it. I once had a much older model of HP business notebook and I remember that the BIOS had a whitelist which prevented me from using any "non-approved" wi-fi card. Can anyone tell me if HP is still doing this whitelist thing? I would like to use my Intel 6200 card, if possible since the Broadcom card has some limitations that I want to avoid. I know that other models of the 6550b actually come with the Intel 6200 card.... but I'm assuming that they are HP branded in the firmware. My card is generic... bought from NewEgg a few yrs ago.

 

The 6550b is a very good choice, I sell many 6450b , 6550b and 6545b and these are true business class notebooks.

You are talking about whitelist, this is still valid for all HP laptops in the ProBook / Elitebook line.
So you have 2 options:
- Buy a "hp" 6200 or 6300 card (look for elitebook ones)
- IF your BIOS has NOT been upgaded to F.20 or later, you can remove whitelist with BIOS MOD. Anything after F19 is now RSA protected and you CANT rollback bios update.

The 6550b supports any CPU in the 1st gen Core I (ex. i3-380M, i5-540M, i7-740QM, ...)

 

Intel 6200 802.11 a/g/n WLAN module (518434-001) is oficially supported, the 6300 is not in the list, it may not be supported...

 

Thanks for the info - - very helpful. Giving you a rep. However, the seller has decided not to sell his "fleet" of hp notebooks. He is delaying his upgrades due to slow business at present.