HP nc6220 - quiet!

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:17 pm

I recently bought one used HP nc6220. It is based on a Pentium M 1.73GHz, 512MB ram, 40GB Hitachi HD, a 14" screen and DVD-combo drive and weighs in at around 2.2kg (4.4 pounds).

I have to say that in idle, I am very surprised. It is almost dead silent, only a faint 20dB-ish woosh from the hard drive that is very non-obtrusive. The fan seems to be spinning so slow that I cannot hear it over the hard drive.

Loading it up to the maxmimum will make the fan increase in speed, but not in short and hypernervous bursts as other notebooks. It becomes audible, but very benign in character. The optical drive is, as all optical drives I've ever encounterd, loud. The moving of the optical lens (?) is what is mostly heard as a loud and fast "eeek, eeeek".

It also has very good battery life, around 3,5-4h with general office application and surfing using the WLAN. Watching videos will leave you with about 2-2,5h.

I really love it. It had a great bild quality and the keyboard is one of the best I've used. Really sturdy and responsive. The trackpoint is nowhere near as good as the ones on Thinkpads so I am not using it (it has both trackpoint and trackpad).

I choose this laptop over the IBM X-(30-32) or T-series because of one major flaw in their design. They lack S-video out which was absolutely essential for me.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:20 pm

Thanks for the report! Quiet notebooks are often hard to find these days, since many manufacturers either (a) don't turn off the fan at idle, or (b) like you've said, turn it on in bursts when needed.

Have you checked what kind of temperatures your system runs at?

disphenoidal · Post by **disphenoidal** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 7:00 pm

Out of curiosity, do you know how quiet those IBM laptops were? I was thinking of getting a thinkpad in the near future.

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:21 am

It runs at about 35C at idle, full load i would guess around 50-60C (using NHC stability check).

I don't have any information on the IBM laptops since I've never owned one myself and it was a while since I even used one. Check the thinkpadforums and see what people there think about it. It should be fairly quiet atleast (not using Acer-style fan bursts that will even wake a sleeping person!)

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:13 am

I have an X22 and they are very quiet. Well, the original (old) drive was a bit noisy, but I replaced it with a Samsung and it's very quiet now.

The CPU fan is not ordinarily running in my usage. Under sustained load it will start up but I don't find it to be noisy. Sorry I don't have any dB numbers.

I find anything in the X20-series to be adequate for my needs after upgrading RAM to 512 megs (max is 640 megs) and putting in the Samsung 5200RPM drive. It'll come out of hibernate quickly, play HR-HDTV divx files without problem, and is generally just a nice little unit. You can find them pretty easily on EBay for cheap now. There's also a great website linked off Thinkpads.com, http://forum.thinkpads.com/ where ThinkPad devotees support each other. I just picked up a single-bid bundle of 3 X23 units off EBay for $320 that I'm going to refurbish and parcel out to family members. They came from some corporate lease, so the hard-drives were removed but I would just replace those anyway so I don't care.

The X31 and X32 are the most capable semi-recent units but pricier because of it. Dunno about S-Video capability though. You can probably find some info at http://www.thinkwiki.org/ or the forums.

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 11:05 am

None of the Thinkpad X-series has S-video and only one of the T-series (I think it is either T41 or T42) that has got S-video out as an option.

That was a major deal breaker for me and the reason why I went with the HP.