HP ships 'super 3G' laptop in UK

Vodafone has added HP's Compaq nc6400 notebook to the list of laptops it offers with integrated HSDPA - 3G Broadband, as Vodafone calls it. HP's machine joins portable PCs from Acer, Dell and Lenovo.

The laptop ships with a Vodafone 3G SIM card in the box and the carrier's Connection Manager utility pre-installed. Buyers will need to sign up for one of Vodafone's data-centric airtime packages costing £25, £45 and £95 a month respectively. The cheapest bundles 250MB of data transfer each month, with the rest costing £1 a meg. The other two are 'unlimited' in the UK - ie. subject to the usual 1GB-a-month 'don't take the mickey' policy.

At this stage it's unclear whether the HP machines are untethered and can be used with any carrier's HSDPA network, as is the case with Dell's 3G notebooks.

The list of nc6400 models, on the other hand, is as along as your arm, with prices ranging from £949 to £1,550. Versions are available with a range of Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors, hard drive capacities, memory configurations, optical drive set-ups - too many, in fact, to list here, so pop over to the HP website if you want to see them all. ®

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