NFS: Hot Pursuit friends from different platforms

Definitely; the differences between the cars isn't as obvious as more sim-oriented games like FM3 or NFS:Shift, but they do handle/drift/accelerate noticeably differently; there were a couple challenges I couldn't get past until I unlocked a higher powered vehicle.

Deactivating my WLAN Card solved the problem.

I'm running the game fine on my Alienware M11x with an Intel U7300 at 2x 1.73Ghz with 4Gb RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M at maximum resolution and full details, so I don't think it's your processor/RAM/motherboard.

But when I first installed the game, I had bad problems with FPS drops. It was like the game nearly stopped (2FPS or less) every 60 seconds, and after a few seconds more, everything was fine again.

So I started to diagnose the system (quite like proposed by blesh) and found a Windows service that detects performance, and from there worked out the solution. It sounds strange, but works on a M15x as well! It seems the scan for available access points is what causes the game to lag, especially when you're not connected.

Maybe this bugfix will solve your problems too!