HP Compaq Business Notebook Nx9005
Product Type: Hewlett-Packard laptops
Newest Review: ... rarer, and pretty much all the bases are covered by the combo drive. I guess you may want a DVD-R drive but bear in mi... more
HP NX9005, Superb all round Notebook
HP Compaq Business Notebook Nx9005
Member Name: monkeywarrior
Product:
HP Compaq Business Notebook Nx9005
Date: 06/06/04, updated on 06/06/04 (4664 review reads)
Rating:
Advantages: Good price, Good ergonomics, Reasonable spec
Disadvantages: On-board graphics a wee bit dodgy, A little plasticky in places
INTRODUCTI ON
Well I'm sitting here writing this review on my new hp Compaq nx9005 laptop which I'm well pleased with. I settled on this laptop after a fair bit of research into laptops at around the £800 mark. I was very impressed with this machine's specs and also the excellent reviews I'd read of it. I picked it up on the brilliant ebuyer.com for the bargain price of around £810.
SPECIFICA& #84;IONS
Processor: AMD Athlon XP-Mobile 2400+, a great processor which has the distinct advantage of being designed for laptops. Thus it is cooler and less power-hungry than its desktop counterparts. This helps the laptop reach an excellent running time on battery of around 4hrs with light use.
Memory: 256mb DDR Ram, which is more than adequate for most tasks. Unfortunately 64mb of this is shared as video memory so this is something that perhaps could do with improvement.
Hard Drive: 30gb, relatively small I suppose but as far as laptops go it's about average. My desktop PC has a 12.7gb drive and I'm only just reaching crisis point with its capacity after about 5 years. I guess if you're gonna be doing broadband downloading you might want to consider larger but in my opinion its just right. Also it's very fast so accessing programs and loading the OS is speedy.
Disk Drives: DVD-Rom and CD-RW combo drive, Floppy disk drive. Well that covers all the bases. Backwards compatibility with the floppy is useful and getting rarer, and pretty much all the bases are covered by the combo drive. I guess you may want a DVD-R drive but bear in mind this is only an £800 machine.
Vide
o/Sound: 14.1" TFT-LCD screen, 64mb shared graphics memory, on-board sound. The screen is bright and colourful though it does look a little blurry to me at times, this may be more to do with the video card performance than the screen itself mind. Sound quality through the built in speakers is predictably pretty poor but not so bad through headphones.
Connectivity: Headphone socket, microphone socket, phone line connection for the V.92 56k modem, PS/2 port for mouse/keyboard, 2x USB ports, network connection, S-Video (TV out), parallel port for printer, serial port, monitor connection and 2 PCMIA card slots. Think I got everything there, its pretty well equipped in this department.
Software: Minimal software is supplied; Microsoft Windows XP home comes pre-installed along with rudimentary DVD playing and CD burning software. These are also provided on CD. Thats about it!
ERGONOMIC& #83;
This is a pretty nice looking laptop, primarily silver and black. When closed, there is a large hp logo on the back of the screen. This is one area in which the plastic feels a little flimsy but otherwise it feels pretty solid. The screen is opened by the usual sliding catch on the front. It is quite weighty but not prohibitively so. Its about standard for a fully featured 14" screen model I guess.
When open, you're presented with the large matt black screen and little else on the top half. On the bottom, the speakers are behind a mesh grille at the top which looks classy but again feels slightly flimsy. The keyboard is a pretty standard layout, with the power button and 5 customisable hotkeys at the top. The keyboard is reasonably solid and responsive and doesn't feel to
o flimsy like some laptops can. Below here is a switch for turning the touchpad on and off followed by the touchpad itself which is large, responsive and features a very handy scrolling panel on the right. Two large buttons below for clicking purposes are below this followed finally by indicator lights on the front. Volume controls are on the right with most connections on the back. Expansion bays etc are easily accessed behind screws on the bottom.
Upon powering up, you're greeted by a variety of very flashy looking blue indicator LEDs. These make the laptop stand out just a little and make it look a bit more classy. I especially like the way the power LED fades in and out when in standby.
One slight complaint as far as ergonomics are concerned is the mains power connection. Unfortunately this is very easy to knock out whilst working on the machine and gets very annoying. It would be much better to have some sort of method of securing this in place.
PERFORMAN& #67;E
The system boots rapidly into the XP OS and comes very nice and clean thanks to little 3rd party software already installed. Its basically a blank canvas for you to work with and is all the better for it.
Internet performance is pretty standard, as is network performance. It'll be happy to accept wi-fi but you'll need a PCMIA card and suitable network for this. It's reasonable at multi-tasking, I've had several internet browsers open at the same time as office apps and not had any problems with slowdown.
Battery performance is especially good, I have used it several times for 4 hours or more in a single stint, very impressive.
One thing it did seem to struggle with is video on CD-rom and graphics-heavy prgrams - I guess you could p
ut this down to the slim provisioning on the graphics front. However it managed fine playing DVD-videos on full screen. I've only had it lock up on me once and I think this was more the fault of Windows Media Player than the computer itself.
The system moves into standby or hibernates very rapidly, allowing you to pick up where you left off in a matter of seconds.
It's practically silent during use, except when the fan in the top left corner kicks in and even then its just a quiet whir. It doesn't get particularly hot unless it's been on for ages.
CONCLUSIO& #78;
All in all, having used many different machines, I'd say this is an excellent laptop for the money. It's stylish, ergonomically sound and well specified. Apart from a couple of minor gripes, I doubt you could do a lot better for the money.
Well I'm sitting here writing this review on my new hp Compaq nx9005 laptop which I'm well pleased with. I settled on this laptop after a fair bit of research into laptops at around the £800 mark. I was very impressed with this machine's specs and also the excellent reviews I'd read of it. I picked it up on the brilliant ebuyer.com for the bargain price of around £810.
SPECIFICA& #84;IONS
Processor: AMD Athlon XP-Mobile 2400+, a great processor which has the distinct advantage of being designed for laptops. Thus it is cooler and less power-hungry than its desktop counterparts. This helps the laptop reach an excellent running time on battery of around 4hrs with light use.
Memory: 256mb DDR Ram, which is more than adequate for most tasks. Unfortunately 64mb of this is shared as video memory so this is something that perhaps could do with improvement.
Hard Drive: 30gb, relatively small I suppose but as far as laptops go it's about average. My desktop PC has a 12.7gb drive and I'm only just reaching crisis point with its capacity after about 5 years. I guess if you're gonna be doing broadband downloading you might want to consider larger but in my opinion its just right. Also it's very fast so accessing programs and loading the OS is speedy.
Disk Drives: DVD-Rom and CD-RW combo drive, Floppy disk drive. Well that covers all the bases. Backwards compatibility with the floppy is useful and getting rarer, and pretty much all the bases are covered by the combo drive. I guess you may want a DVD-R drive but bear in mind this is only an £800 machine.
Vide
o/Sound: 14.1" TFT-LCD screen, 64mb shared graphics memory, on-board sound. The screen is bright and colourful though it does look a little blurry to me at times, this may be more to do with the video card performance than the screen itself mind. Sound quality through the built in speakers is predictably pretty poor but not so bad through headphones.
Connectivity: Headphone socket, microphone socket, phone line connection for the V.92 56k modem, PS/2 port for mouse/keyboard, 2x USB ports, network connection, S-Video (TV out), parallel port for printer, serial port, monitor connection and 2 PCMIA card slots. Think I got everything there, its pretty well equipped in this department.
Software: Minimal software is supplied; Microsoft Windows XP home comes pre-installed along with rudimentary DVD playing and CD burning software. These are also provided on CD. Thats about it!
ERGONOMIC& #83;
This is a pretty nice looking laptop, primarily silver and black. When closed, there is a large hp logo on the back of the screen. This is one area in which the plastic feels a little flimsy but otherwise it feels pretty solid. The screen is opened by the usual sliding catch on the front. It is quite weighty but not prohibitively so. Its about standard for a fully featured 14" screen model I guess.
When open, you're presented with the large matt black screen and little else on the top half. On the bottom, the speakers are behind a mesh grille at the top which looks classy but again feels slightly flimsy. The keyboard is a pretty standard layout, with the power button and 5 customisable hotkeys at the top. The keyboard is reasonably solid and responsive and doesn't feel to
o flimsy like some laptops can. Below here is a switch for turning the touchpad on and off followed by the touchpad itself which is large, responsive and features a very handy scrolling panel on the right. Two large buttons below for clicking purposes are below this followed finally by indicator lights on the front. Volume controls are on the right with most connections on the back. Expansion bays etc are easily accessed behind screws on the bottom.
Upon powering up, you're greeted by a variety of very flashy looking blue indicator LEDs. These make the laptop stand out just a little and make it look a bit more classy. I especially like the way the power LED fades in and out when in standby.
One slight complaint as far as ergonomics are concerned is the mains power connection. Unfortunately this is very easy to knock out whilst working on the machine and gets very annoying. It would be much better to have some sort of method of securing this in place.
PERFORMAN& #67;E
The system boots rapidly into the XP OS and comes very nice and clean thanks to little 3rd party software already installed. Its basically a blank canvas for you to work with and is all the better for it.
Internet performance is pretty standard, as is network performance. It'll be happy to accept wi-fi but you'll need a PCMIA card and suitable network for this. It's reasonable at multi-tasking, I've had several internet browsers open at the same time as office apps and not had any problems with slowdown.
Battery performance is especially good, I have used it several times for 4 hours or more in a single stint, very impressive.
One thing it did seem to struggle with is video on CD-rom and graphics-heavy prgrams - I guess you could p
ut this down to the slim provisioning on the graphics front. However it managed fine playing DVD-videos on full screen. I've only had it lock up on me once and I think this was more the fault of Windows Media Player than the computer itself.
The system moves into standby or hibernates very rapidly, allowing you to pick up where you left off in a matter of seconds.
It's practically silent during use, except when the fan in the top left corner kicks in and even then its just a quiet whir. It doesn't get particularly hot unless it's been on for ages.
CONCLUSIO& #78;
All in all, having used many different machines, I'd say this is an excellent laptop for the money. It's stylish, ergonomically sound and well specified. Apart from a couple of minor gripes, I doubt you could do a lot better for the money.
Summary:
