HP/Compaq nc6230

I recently received a huge pile of my money as arrears,and I will be spending a lot of it to buy stuff that I have resisted myself from owning,for too long. As a part of this plan I recently bought a laptop. When I went shopping online for laptops, I had something specific in my mind. I wanted a laptop that was unique in it's own way, has a good look and feel, be a good buy, and more importantly be portable.After
shopping around for a while I went ahead with the HP NC6230 notebook series. HP released this notebook at the start of the year 2005, in February. The NC6200 series was release as a direct competitor to the IBM's T series of business line notebooks. Here is a short review of its features in comparision with its competitors

Specifications
Intel Centrino 1.86 GHz processor 60 GB HardDrive Intel 2200 Pro/Wireless BG Wireless Connection ATI X300 Graphics Card 14.1' TFT Display Monitor 512 MB RAM Dimensions - 12.4 x 10.1 x 1.04 - 1.31 in Weight - 5.2 lbs CD-RW/DVD-ROM 24X Max Speed Microsoft Win XP Pro 3-cell Lithium Ion Battery(very sleek compared to competitors) 3-year HP Standard Warranty $1399.00 at CDW (lowest price, dated).This is pretty much a standard configuration for all the notebooks in the business class, except the price. HP seems to have priced it pretty low compared to it's competitors. At the time of this review, the price of an IBM T43 with the same config was a whopping 1750$, a significant price difference to me.
Video & Audio
The audio is pretty good keeping in mind the size and purpose of this laptop. The video graphics are of very good quality. One of the reasons I had a little leniance for this laptop was it's graphics card. My main purpose of using a laptop was doing some professional programming at home and some PC gaming. The ATI X300 card does some justice to PC gaming on light and slick laptops.
Look & Feel
The product has been wrapped in a standard metal and plastic case. The top portion is a dark metallic grey and the bottom is predominantly black colored plastic. Opening and closing the screen is pretty smooth without any creeking noises. The keyboard layout in pretty much standard. One thing I really love about this laptop is the Touchpad Scroll Zone, which lets you scroll up and down any folders, web pages. As I am writing this review, I have to do a lot of scrolling up and down to see what I have written. This feature has made my life easy, something I hate about other laptops. Full marks to HP on this one. The battery pack is pretty slick.
Performance
This is one area that I have not thoroughly tested. I am using it to build some Microsoft.Net applications for now and it is pretty fast so far, ofcourse I have a RAM upgrade to 1GB which also matters. I will know more about this, as I keep using it more and more.
Comfort
The laptop sits pretty good on my lap and gets heated to a bearable level, unlike it's hulk counterparts(dell comes to my mind first, I know some peolpe will hate me for saying this). Typing and browsing experience feels good.
Baddies
The wireless connection is a bit screwed up. I read about this in another review and the user pointed out to a driver fix that intel had released. I used the fix and the wireless connection works good now, except for a few small hiccups now and then, but I'll take that for the other goodies that I get.
Verdict
Comparing the price, the features, the performance and the looks I would be willing to suggest others, this laptop is a good buy and worth the price.