nc6400 mini review

I just got my nc6400 today. Ordered from macmall yesterday, delivered to my door less than 24 hours later. Really impressed by the speed of shipping.

Specs:
Description: Smart Buy nc6400 Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHz Notebook Intel
Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHz, 4MB L2, 1GB 667MHz DDR2, 80GB 7200rpm SATA,
Multibay II DVD+RW DL, 14.1" WXGA, TPM, SmartCard Reader, Fingerprint
Sensor, Gigabit NIC, 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth, Win XP Pro
Quantity: 1
Price: $1,589.99

Packinging was secure, box had a couple nicks on it, but no damage to the interior. Box came with the laptop, battery, charger, a quick start guide and a couple other misc paperwork.

Build Quality:
I was suprised at how solid the notebook feels. Theres little to no flex and it is light enough to carry around in one hand comfortably as well, the charger is also compact. The keyboard is comfortable to type in, and the ports are labeled and easy to find.

Screen:
The WXGA screen is bright and readable, even at lowest brightness on battery. Videos play well with no noticable ghosting. The backlight seems brighter on the bottom, but you only notice it on a totally black screen. The viewing angle is best when the screen is tilted back a bit vertically. The horizontal viewing angle is good enough for 2-3 people to watch at once.

Heat and noise:
So far the laptop has been cool to the touch, the vents on the left and back blow out air and there's one on the bottom for an intake. The hard drive makes some noticable noise when downloading constantly (I'm downloading a 600mb file now.), and is quiet otherwise. I was able to operate the notebook on my lap without any troubles.

Battery:
With the wifi on and doing light typing/surfing tasks, I get an estimated battery life a little over 4 hours. Then I turned on a couple torrents maxing out my connection, and was playing a video and multitasking a couple other applications and got a little over 3 hours. It seems fine for day to day use. The battery seems to charge very quickly when plugged in - under an hour it seems.

Gaming:
Haven't had a chance to try this, but this laptop is mostly for school so I'm not expecting any miracles here.

Overall:
The machine is solidily built, has a nice range of features and came at a great price (comes with a 3 year warranty.) No frills as its a business laptop (the default install was quite clean for an oem). The 14" widescreen form factor is a great comprimise between size and weight and I don't think I'll have much trouble carrying it around.

 

Thanks for the info. I know there have been some complaints about the screen on the nc6400, but yours is good?

 

What kind of battery is that? 6-cell, 9-cell?

 

My screen seem fine. The battery is the 6-cell.

 

Lucky you. There have been some horror stories about the screen

 

Could someone pls elaborate as to what the horror stories are? I posted about my nc6400 lcd problem which I thought was unique. Also, I thought the problems were only with the WXGA+.

Thanks.

 

My understanding was that the problems were with the WXGA+ in researching before I bought this notebook. I have the WXGA and it is great. Sounds like almost all 14" WXGA+ screens suck big time right now (at least everyone that I considered).