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I bought the NC8430 about 2 months ago and have used it daily since. Most of my applications are typical office/business use, such as Microsoft Office (2007), Adobe Photoshop CS (avid digital photographer), Autodesk QuickCAD, and some proprietary software for image processing/conversion. I have owned and used a number of other notebooks, and have managed corporate notebooks (MAC and PC) as well.

My NC8430 is equipped with the Intel Core Duo T2500 with 2G of DDR2 PC5400 RAM, 160G 5400rpm Western Digital SATA drive, dvd+/-RW optical drive, 15.4 antiglare, wide view screen at 1680x1050, ATI x1600 with 256M dedicated RAM, touchpad with pointing stick, fingerprint reader, smart card reader, sd/mmc reader, pc card slot, and an external extended life battery. XP pro is standard, and the notebook is Vista compatible. Oh, HP provides express upgrade to Vista Business free (well, almost free – there is a shipping/tax charge of under $20). Expected shipping is end of 1/07.

The case is very business-like, metal composite top, laminate palm rest, recessed touch pad, a solid latch. The magnesium frame prevents twisting and the dark gray color looks very professional. The display hinges are solid, ports are well arranged, and the latches that hold various items (battery, drive, etc) are all secure. Like most new HPs, all ports are identified on the top surface.

The screen is bright, no dead pixels, and the matte antiglare is great. The viewing angle is not as great as the brightview screens, but enough that several people can view the screen at normal distances. The contrast is good, the photo display is very good, and the colors seem rich and true. There is no ghosting, no light leakage, and the overall screen illumination is very even.

The keyboard has very large markings – looks a little odd, but is great for older users and in dim (airplane) lighting. The only thing I do not like is the location of the delete key, which is three in from the top right rather than the first key. The touch pad has a dedicated scroll area (clearly marked) and the buttons (3) work smoothly. The pointing stick is one of the large, textured concave head type rather than the typical nub, and provides excellent control. The three pointing stick buttons work equally well, and despite being just below the space bar, they are not easy to accidently push. Unlike the consumer grade HP/Compaq keyboards, the business class notebooks, like the NC8430, provide better travel and response.

Processor: The Intel T2500 is quite capable of running XP and Vista (the upgrade is free) and although it will not run 64 bit Vista, it is quite adequate for my needs. In real world applications, you should not see much difference between the Intel T2xxx vs the T7xxx core 2 duo processors. Combined with the ATI x1600, you have some serious heat to remove, and HP did their homework and kept the top of the computer cool and for us right handed people, put the exhaust on the left side.

Battery life seems very good, about 3 hours with power control enabled using just the standard battery (about double with the external extended battery – not the ultra, which is much larger). Combined, I get about 4 hours with maximum performance settings and full brightness. I suspect that reduced setting would result in a 5 to 7 hour battery life.

Wireless performance is very good, with 802.11 abg plus Bluetooth, you can be well connected. In my case, the router is in the basement, my office on the opposite 2nd floor, and I can still connect at full speed. I have not tried the Bluetooth as I do not have any blue tooth devices.

The location of the USB ports (3) works well for most, with two on the right (facing the computer) and one on the left. The dvd r/rw drive burns at 8x with most media, and is located on the right also. The audio jacks are on the right side with the usb ports, and a serial, yes serial, port is on the upper right side (hey, if you have a GPS unit, this could be one of the last notebooks with a serial port built in). The card slots are on the left, all stacked near the front, with the video (s video and ieee 1394), network and modem ports on the left as well. The top mounted speakers frame the keyboard and produce reasonable sound. The audio control is via three buttons located above the keyboard, mute, volume down and volume up. There is also a control for turning off the wireless, switching external/internal displays, and a programmable button too. The power switch is in the upper left. Oh, the auto dimmer sensor for the screen is located on the inside front LCD panel and works fine (but I prefer to manually set mine).

The bundled software includes 60 days of Norton Internet security/antivirus, but is not installed by default. You need to invoke the HP info center tool to install the application. The restore partition takes up almost 6G, but you can repair windows upon boot without destroying applications or data – worth keeping unless you upgrade to Vista. If you make a set of restore DVD/CDs, you can delete the partition, but it will take longer to restore. Of importance is the limitation that you can only make one restore set that includes the system.

Installing memory, larger hard disk, and even the PCI cards is all done without drama. The hard drive is shock mounted, and HP provides further data security options to secure all or part of your files and drive. The fingerprint reader is fabulous. Those who understand what it can do will use it. You can setup your system to allow login with the fingerprint reader (and/or smart card) and the system will remember passwords/logons for internet sites, along with any applications that require validation. Great time saver and a definite must have once you have tried one.

Although you do not get any CDs, HP does have them available. Since this is a business class PC, you get much better support, and you also get a 3 year warrantee as standard. The HP site (business) is easy to navigate and you can update your drivers and applications easily. The manual that comes with the unit is above average, and the full maintenance guide is available for free download as well.

All in all the NC8430 is a great buy. It has enough processing power to run business and CAD applications, and a GPU that runs most games very well. While not billed as a gaming machine, the x1600 puts it up near the top for all HP notebooks (actually, this is an HP Compaq notebook). The cool keyboard and top surface is rare these days, and the quiet fan does not disturb those nearby either. So far, this has been the best balance of performance, battery life, and appearance of any notebook I have seen.

Wayne

PS Almost forgot, there is no web cam (great for those working in secured facilities) and there is no express card slots (not an issue for me – I have none).

Hou much can you sale it for?

I picked up an NC8430 recently s well. One with a Core 2 Duo T7200 2Ghz CPU.
This thing rocks.
The best thing, is I am abe to undervolt it down to .9625 volt at maximum speed, and the fans turned down.
It stays at a solid 67C, and teh fans don't go over 35% of maximum speed.

I bought my nc8430 in early september 2006. I'm from the UK and it cost me £800 but the one I got included a free 3 year warranty, a wireless mini optical mouse (Idon't use it I prefer a full size mouse as it is my main computer, I am a student living away from home) and some anti virus software (Again I don't use it and prefer AVG). At £800 and being a student this thing was a very big investment for me. The specs are T2400 (1.86ghz), 1 gb RAM, 80gb hard drive, super dvd dual layer re writer or something , windows xp professional ati mobility x1600 256mb.

Considering the amount I spent on it, it could be quite easy for me to feel that it has been a let down but 9 months after I purchased it and I am still amazed by it. It has been a top qaulity buy. I'll get the negatives out the way first as they are few and far between and very minor. Firstly the first mouse button for the point stick, stick on my model. Not a problem for me as mainly I use a mouse and then if not I use the touch pad where all my buttons work fine. Secondly if you do have a mouse mat on the right of the laptop it may get in the way when opening the dvd drive. End of negatives

As for the positives, there are alot. Although £800 was alot for me, compared to similar spec models at the time it was a good £300 below the competition at least and I really can't imagine them being as good as this has been.
It has a funky finger print reader which works very very well. As it is a business laptop essentially it is very durable and very well made, this is perhaps what surprised me the most. It is very well made. The keyboard is great and very comfortable and the touch pad and pointing stick work superbly too. The screen as has been said is bright and colourfull. Does what a screen should do! On some games however it does blur a bit as I gather all LCD screens do. Wireless works very well. The microphone also works very well (A bit of a theme going on here). It has pretty much all you need from a laptop. I have run out of storage and have just ordered a 320gb external hard drive which will stop that problem and will also be a good backup for important work. Speakers are good but I already had 2.1 JBL creature speakers (Also very good!) so I use those when I'm not on the go. Handles games very well. Recently bought flatout2 and it runs amazingly on this laptop. It handles football manager (soccer to you Americans reading!) 2007 very very well even when I enable absolutely tonnes of countries with a huge database. So that means it handles processing well. What about graphics. Well although it is a business laptop the x1600 is no slacker. Counter Strike, Oblivion and Battlefield 2 all run very nicely with great graphics (although maybe not full).

I make it sound like the most reliable thing in the world however I did have a problem a couple of months ago. It was probably a virus but everytime I turned it on it turned off straight away. This is where HP's backup partition worked wonders for me. I restored my computer and although I had to reinstall some programs and applications again I kept ALL of my files which was the important thing. Very good so I can't even complain about that. I would reccomend this laptop to anyone out there on looks, reliability, durability and performance.

I'm curious to know - those of you who have had this or similar HP models (nc8430, nw8440, etc) How have they held up over the year? Anything (esp screen hinges) loosened up? Still solid? After much consideration I have decided on the nc8430. I'm interested in how they hold up over time.

I'd like to second everything said in Wayne's review. My NC8430 arrived this past week and after a few days use, I can certainly say that I am very impressed by this notebook! Mine too arrived with a perfect display. No stuck or dead pixels anywhere. viewing angle is very good. Brightness is also very good and has a good range from low to high. Pixel response is well above average of notebooks I have experience with. Build quality is what I remembered from working with a few NX series last year. Nice and solid, no creaks. Display hinges are solid and don't produce any creaks when the display is moved. I've noticed a little bit of play in the display, maybe about one degree but it doesn't seem like anything is loose. I like the markings on the top deck for the ports on the side. Fingerprint reader works great - in fact it works much better than the one on my T43 work laptop. The whole machine performs beautifully and it doesn't get too hot, even for extended lap use running normal everyday applications. The left side does get a tad warm when running cpu/video intensive stuff such as games or demos. Fan is audible but it isn't too loud. I like the port placement and the serial port was a key item in deciding on this model - I have to connect to routers and switches occasionally and this is perfect. The only complaint I have on mine is CD-audio ripping is slow - seems to only go at 1 to 2x making for a long wait. I can live with this since I have a desktop that reads much faster, but we're down to nitpicking here. The sound is better than I expected and, for laptop sound is quite good. Keyboard feels great, no bending, and I like the feel of the keyboard deck under my palms - nice surface. Dedicated button for toggling wireless and bluetooth on and off is a nice bonus as is the LED indicating sound is muted. I like that! HP has used LEDs exactly where needed to add the at-a-glance indication they were made for. I also plugged my wonderful little Sennheiser PX-100 headphones into the headphone jack and enjoyed a couple of hours of music listening. I'm also happy to report that the audio quality at the headphone jack is top notch. I did not experience any of the buzzing while running on battery that others have. Video performance is impressive and the machine is very responsive in applications. Wireless performance beats the pants off of my old notebook and seems a bit better than that of the work T43. I live in a loft on the 3rd floor of a 4 floor building and there is a deck up on the roof. I am able to get very good signal to my wireless access point and work/play up on the roof when the evening weather is good. I got right at 4 hours out of the battery on the first cycle down after a full charge. I did fully cycle the battery as is always recommended. Charge time is very good. I didn't time it but it doesn't take exceptionally long to recharge the battery.

The only real negative, and this is nitpicking here, is the display has slight play, maybe one degree. The display stays where you put it and doesn't 'bounce' much, just has slight play. It's not as tight as the Thinkpad displays, but the screen itself is better than those on the T60 15.4s we have around work.

A note to Wayne - your comment on the delete key. It is three in from the right because this is standard navigation key layout. Take a look at a standard 104 key keyboard and note the nav keys - same as on the NC8430. I actually like this as it feels very natural to me - I've worked with 101 and 104 key keyboards for many years and prefer the standard layout. I simply cannot get used to notebooks with vertical nav key layout. I agree completely with the rest of the review. You hit it spot-on. This is a great notebook!

Here are the important specs on mine:
Core 2 duo T7400 processor at 2.16ghz.
4GB of RAM
100GB 7200 hard drive (Fujitsu)
Dual Layer DVD/CD supermulti burner. (Toshiba-Samsung)
Intel A/B/G wireless and Bluetooth
WSXGA display. (1680x1050)
I got mine with Windows XP. Yes I know this won't take full advantage of all that RAM. (I was originally planning on going with a T7200 with 2GB ram but this T7400 with 4GB was only $100 more. How could I pass it up!) When I finally do have to go (kicking and screaming) to Vista, I've got plenty of horsepower and memory to make it happy.

I'm a very satisfied new NC8430 owner!

nice review(s) thanks!

Just a quick note on my slow CD ripping issue - This ended up being a defective drive. I called HP support to report the issue while travelling. A replacement drive arrived where I was staying the following day. Kudos to HP for good support and prompt response, even got a follow-up call a week later to confirm the replacement drive had solved the issue. The new drive performs much better.

Sorry for reviving an old thread but...

The warranty expired on my NC8430 last month, and just a couple of weeks after it expired, the machine suffered a motherboard failure somewhere in the power circuit.
The laptop will boot and run (most of the time) when on AC power, but will not boot or run on battery. I tried a known good battery from another NC8430 and the problem stayed with the computer.
Through the 2 year life of the machine, It had warranty replacement of two DVD drives, two AC adapters, one display inverter, one bluetooth module and one wireless card. Then the warranty expires and it failed again three weeks later. I have since replaced this laptop with a Dell Latitude D830. I work in field IT and having a good solid business grade laptop is mission critical for what I do.

How have you guys' machines of this model fared over the years?

Hi NgtFlyer,

I also have the exact same NC8430 with no battery function but all ok on AC power. Carefully disaasembled and found motherboard "cooked" at DC in jack location. No choice but to purchase replacment motherboard. I am currently searching for a good used one. New from HP are rediculous in price.

If you are willing to sell yours for parts, please let me know. I am not done tinkering with mine and if price is right, I would like to aquire yours for parts that I do not have. Need bluetooth module for this unit. Also have 1.83 T -5600 would like to upgrade to T 7600.

If I were you, you could try HP for warranty as you have had more repair under warranty with this one, you could argue that it was a lemon from the get go. I acquired mine used, so not being the original registered warranty owner I have no recourse. You do. Make some noise and you may luck out. HP had alot of issues from what I have read with these Duo Core 65 nm Merom related to heat and power failures. I think the DV series wqere recalled.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

TJ

p.s. I am located in Toronto Canada. I will pre-pay for shipping costs etc etc.

I saw some boards on-line (including eBay) that go between $170-$250. How about looking for a used working machine and swap out the board?

cheers ...