$4,750 Laptop From 1997: HP OmniBook 800CT
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- 166MHz Pentium MMX CPU! 48MB RAM! Windows 95! Sound Blaster compatibility! All in a slim, lightweight 1997 system that cost... $5,000 or so, yikes. Let's dive into the quirky Hewlett Packard notebook computer that was once their top of the line subnotebook - the Omnibook 800CT model F1360A
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00:00 I love mid 90s subnotebooks
00:28 The OmniBook 800 from 1996
00:51 Enter the Intel Pentium MMX
01:46 Business, business, business
02:37 Ultraportable and subnotebook PCs
03:07 Overview of the 800CT features
06:10 All the accessories and peripherals
07:28 Running Windows 95
08:50 Preinstalled software, HP programs
10:29 LHX Attack Chopper
12:04 Graphics chip, ESS AudioDrive
13:12 Tyrian 2000
14:48 Function key functionality
15:37 Duke Nukem 3D of course
17:16 POD with MMX Technology
18:59 FIFA Road to World Cup 98
21:07 It has quirks but I love the Omnibook
#LGR #retro #computer #hp #90s - Věda a technologie
That's a shockingly good LCD for 1997. Nice and bright, and barely a hint of ghosting to be found.
Thats because its a TFT. The ghosting display was DSTN tecnology :)
Very good uniformity, but I would expect that for the price lol.
@@RocketRenton Got that right, if I had paid that much for a computer of any kind back in the day, and I did not get the best of the best on offer then return time it would have been!!
@@RocketRenton Back then the price difference between a Dual Scan and a TFT screen could be well over $500.
Its also a shockingly price for it
I miss the days when you'd see a single laptop per year and it would blow your mind
It’s true, a dang Sasquatch sighting would be less thrilling than seeing the latest full color notebook in the wild.
Very True 😊❤
@@LGRlast time i was so surprised was when some dude played Doom 2016 on a switch in the metro. I was like what kind of phone is that and then i saw joycons.
I think through the new emulators , it's possible by now . Also , I can make doom 2 look like doom 2016 .if you hadn't looked from close , you could think it is the original
@@AndroidFerretUltimate Doom through Eternal all have Switch versions
I'm such a sucker for laptops. The barcode at 2:12 reads "hugefarts", if anyone was wondering. Stay classy, Clint.
This brings back memories. I worked at the HP manufacturing plant in Corvallis, Oregon back in the mid-90s. When I started, the OmniBook 600 series was in full swing. One night we got a bunch of new parts for a new system - the 800 series. I’m going from memory here, but I think we built 16 units from start to finish. Of those, 10 were still working at the end of the manufacturing process. Those 10 went into a burn-in chamber where they were subjected to temperature and humidity changes. After 24 hours, only five of them were still alive. We put them on a cart and as we were wheeling them back to the engineering team, the remaining five stopped working. So, yeah. For the prototypes, it was a 100% failure rate. The engineers worked out the bugs and we built a bunch more. I had the pleasure of testing some of the first production units. And yes, we tested them by playing Duke Nuke’em 3d for hours on end.
Wow I actually know some people who work at that plant! Small world
LGR: bringing union workers of the most niche tech together since 2006. @@swimmerkat3965
Corvallis represent! Go Beavers!
Oregonian who lives thousands of miles away now... Thank you for posting. My friends dad worked there when we were kids. Thanks for sharing
That’s crazy they built a plant in Corvallis of all places. Such a small town for that!
Videos like this really underline how much money my family would spend on laptops in the 90s and early 2000s, and how brave they were to let any child within 10 feet of something that cost more than a used car.
Ohhh yeah, I wanted a tiny portable so badly as a kid, even though we couldn't really afford or justify one of any size. That pop-out... Mouse? Is fascinating
I still want one, man. I want that GPD full laptop with track pad and keyboard so. Fecking. Bad. The idea of travelling with something so tiny and useful is just so wonderful to me as a writer.
I coveted the late 90's Viao line-up when I was in Highschool, but couldn't swing the eye-watering price.
My folks did splurge on a subnotebook for me as a graduation gift; I wound up with the Fujitsu Lifebook B112, a fascinating little piece with an 8.4" touchscreen.
I lived in Korea in 2006/7 when the UMPC concept launched, and gave serious consideration to dropping a ton of won on something from Samsung or Raon Digital when I saw them in tech shops. Or better yet, the OQO model 2 that LGR reviewed a while back--but that one didn't enjoy the same local market price adjustment since it was from the 'states.
@@TheMadAfrican1 I bought one on AliExpress that was 390$ with an Intel N100, 12 Gb ram and 512gb storage. It works really well but the layout might be a bit of a problem if you typed on it for a while. The trackpad is a little optical sensor thing that works good enough.
I remember a fair number of laptops in the late 90's had trackball mice attached on the side --- that was a nice alternative to the trackpoint nub
That mouse... Is one of the most adorable tech things I've ever seen in my entire life.
It looks cheesy and cheap but I woulda loved it --- I never liked those trackpoint nubs that were popular in the 90's
That pop out mouse is cool, I wish they still made those. Imagine what we could do with modern technology and an idea like that.
Have you seen the Lenovo legion go's vertical mouse? I thought that was pretty clever.
USB has sort of rendered those mice moot, though.
@Code7Unltd not really. Track pads still exist despite the availability of USB mice. This pop out micro mouse would fill the role of a track pad; a built in backup piece
@@GameprojordanLenovo and Dell still offer the trackpoint on many models of their laptops, so no need for a pop out mouse that's likely to get broken. A trackpoint with the middle button on a laptop for scrolling when you can't use a mouse, or forgot to pack it is a godsend, as most trackpads to this day still suck with edge, or 2 finger scrolling.
I remember some HP and Dell laptops having a built-in media remote during the era when Windows Media Center was a thing.
Oh man my mom worked for HP and had one of these and I messed with it a lot. Had no clue it was so expensive. Played a lot of Solitaire with that little mouse.
In retrospect it's a really nice form factor for the time.
It looks surprisingly modern for a laptop of its age
The tiny mouse is so cool! I love that the button for it is the little cartoon mouse, it's adorable. Guess even for a business computer they could have a little whimsy, rather than it just saying "mouse" or showing an actual computer mouse or something.
Any device from any era with a button that, upon pressing, shoots out a peripheral is 10 out of 10 in my book. I really loved the pop-out CD drives back in the day.
I just love this form factor. Most people nowadays dont understand. They say: just buy a tablet with a keyboard, but it's not the same thing!
Ikr? & Sometimes if not most of the time I do use & have fun playing on my new toy my tablet my mom got me & as a fellow otaku & as a fellow weeb myself & as a fellow person of culture myself sometimes I do use retro crush app on my tablet for old anime even though I prefer physical media of what I love & I prefer physical media of my hobbies 😂
@@eaglelord9898 Hate to be the asshole here, but number one, punctuation. Get some. Second, what the hell does being an otako and weeb have to do with this shit? Are you the type that enters a conversation to steer it toward a topic you like? Because, what you just did was a social sin. Outta here, monkey!
If there were any tablets that are actually computers instead of toys, that would help.
@@renakunisaki I understand & I call my tablet my new toy as a nickname unless you know better nickname I should give it as a fellow otaku & as a fellow weeb myself & as a fellow person of culture myself feel free to let me know ahead of time
@@renakunisakithat's what the surface lineup is. And various super small 2 in 1 laptops. The 12in latitude 2 in 1's are about the size of this machine just with tiny bezels.
My first computer! THOUSANDS of these came off lease in 2000, I begged for a computer for my 11th birthday and found a reseller on eBay with hundreds of 800ct's. Computer, docking station, three batteries, cd rom, floppy and maxed out ram for $200. Talk about Moore's law, three years later and these were CHEAP. Mine was the 133 non mmx, but it was totally fine. Popped a desktop 56k modem into the docking station (it took one full size card) and spent years on the palace and even the beginning RuneScape. It was horrible for that lol. My main board died but last year I was able to get a replacement computer from the omnibooks store on eBay. Guy is a godsend, he has everything. Ironically, found out he may have been the guy I got it from originally!
It's amazing how quickly laptops depreciated. Three years old and I got an entire maxed out system for peanuts.
Also, the batteries still work!
Thank you for sharing, this is exactly the type of thing I love hearing about in terms of how people ended up with them!
My Mom was issued one of these by Hewlett-Packard back in the day when she was getting her degree in Computer Science for the company.
After the HP/Agilent split, she was able to keep the Omnibook. I used to play Warcraft II and Red Alert on it. I loved the little pop-out mouse.
Love that the barcode at 2:13 says hugefarts, keepin it classy Clint. 👍
Crazy prices, I struggled to find a laptop that was $9000 in today's marketplace. Heck, i looked at an Acer gaming laptop in the mid-2000s and that was only $3000, which was still premium priced but already $1750 less not even a decade later
Even more nuts is that the OmniBook was intended for business purposes in '97, so basically just transferring and creating documents, email, calculating, etc. Nowadays, you could just get a Chromebook today for $250 and do the exact same functions AND more. $9k today could get you the top-of-the-line tech with plenty to spare.
@projects6610 it was pretty common to sell these high end computers as business machines and I can only assume it's because only people with corporate accounts or the ability to write off expenses were spending close to ten thousand on a laptop
Compared to things like a Sun Workstation $5000 was a bargain. Looking at today's prices I did find a £3950 new Macbook.
A custom dell Alienware with the most expensive options can get up to that much.
@@projects6610 But the Omnibook was a top-of-the-line tech notebook back then and basic creating documents, spreadsheets, emails etc.. was still a relatively new concept in a era where pen and paper was still a popular and accepted way to communicate. So your comparison to a Chromebook should be really be a cheap school calculator.
Great video. Used to work for HP and surely can confirm what you're assuming at 9:00 about the computer belonging earlier to HP. That bunch of COE named folders was the stuff they pushed for all their managed laptops before Compaq merger.
Thank you for confirming!
Amaaazing. My dad worked for HP and saved one from from the e-waste pile, and daily drove it for a while. The pop out mouse was a buck-wild design and worked pretty well
I'm using a HP from 2015, it's been brilliant, the fan sadly is shot but it's cheap to replace of Aliexpress but it can't be upgraded to Win 11, have had to change the thermal paste 2x, but it's been rock solid, it's an ex business model made of solid aluminium.
I look at the stuff now, and it's horrendous, you can bend it so easily with force, everything is so thin and fragile.
Sad how the quality of products has been thrown out of the window and most now made end up in e-waste as they can't be fixed due to no part availability either supplier side or just no parts out there.
@@RocketRentonI agree. I'm a huge fan of right to repair and one thing that severely disappointed me was seeing a vast majority of phones not having user replaceable batteries. I know it's partially due to making phones more waterproof but most of it is greed by companies who make them.
Same with laptops with processors soldered to the motherboard. No more easy upgrades of the processor.
@@RocketRenton That isn't true, I've deployed Windows 11 on HP PC's from 2014. You may have to install it manually with a flash drive or DVD if they won't let you do it automatically. I know the TPM requirement may be coming in the future, but its not here yet. You have to step up to a ZBook to get something decent, everything is ultra thin now.
I worked for HP at the factory that built those laptops when they were building that particular model. The speaker always sucked. The model you are showing is DEFINITELY used by an employee. ALL those start menu items with the COE prefix are a corporate installed package used internally by HP. I believe most folks upgraded these to Win 98 SE when it was available. IF I recall correctly these had PCMCIA hard drives. The 300s and 425s did. Those 3com PCMCIA net cards were okay but the dongles kind of sucked and got broken A LOT. The better card was the XIRCOM RE and RBE series which were dongle less.
Hey I appreciate the insight!
This mouse mechanism is a cunning solution I would love to see today again! Also note these cute little details that they actually really put a mouse icon there. This display also seems to have aged well.
I worked in omnibook support @ HP for almost 10 years during this period. That in built mouse was always my favourite. The support on these was "empowered", in the golden era where you could just ship people a replacement part if they wanted to do the repair themselves, or send a technician to them just about anywhere in the world.
I worked for Acer computers support in 1999 and it was still like that, I used to ship hard drives to remote islands or just sent a tech through the system. If the customer had the part we would guide them through the phone, once I guided a 92 year old lady through a ram change those were the times!!!
I think LGR is the most relaxing and calm retro tech reviewer, these videos are the type of videos to fall asleep to.
0:46 Stunning reading how many fundamental features of Office came with '97! Almost as is competition in that space made things better... though that VB and Outlook integration were, obviously, designed to create incompatibilities with other vendors' software.
2:13 I know Clint must of had a lot of fun making those ID Cards.
LGR on a Friday morning makes for a GREAT day! Thanks Clint!
1.20am Saturday morning here - maximum day great-ening!
Jesus... those prices... When it comes to power to cost ratio... my Alienware X17 R2 would have cost only about $1,500 in 97. Shows just how much costs have come down and power has soared. I can only imagine what would have to be in my laptop for it to cost over $9,000. IT'S OVER 9000! lol
I am once again thanking you for keeping up with subtitles on your content. It's so rare to have CZcams videos with subtitles these days
My pleasure, I find them quite important!
05:00 this mouse boggles my mind. Such a cool feature
I about jumped out of my chair when you launched POD. It was one of my first games. I think I still have it on CD somewhere... Thanks a lot, now I'm going to be digging through the basement
Find it and play it !!!!!!
If you don't find the disc then the re-released version on GOG.com is optimized for play on modern PCs, highly recommended!
My mother had one of these when she worked for HP. It was fking awesome.
I recall the cool mouse widget needing regular replacement.
I loved these laptops. The pop out mouse worked really well. Our executives liked these or the Compaq 4/75 CXLs because they had a cool motorized dock , trackball near the screen and reliable as a freight train. These omnibooks were pretty cool. There was another made by DEC, I think, that had expansion shims you could add to the bottom. If you wanted a cd player, or extra battery, you'd buy the shim and add it on. Think it was a DEC HiNote Ultra. Clint, if you find one of those, it would be a cool review.
Ooh I am unfamiliar with those, I'll have to keep an eye out.
The DEC HiNote Ultra is no comparison to the Omnibook range. The DEC is more a slim light weight laptop with a full palmrest. The Omnibook is much smaller and compact and more a sub-notebook.
I have one of those 486 Compaq laptops with the trackball on the screen... I love it. The figure8 AC power cord plugs right into the back of the laptop, doesn't even need an adapter.
The battery still works for about 20 minutes too.
I remember this as a kid in the 90s. This was the Lamborghini of laptops.
This was really enjoyable to watch . Very impressed with the performance of the laptop .
I love that little pop-out mouse.
I wish they still made those, I hate track-pads.
Try good trackpads, like the ones on Macbooks, it might change your mind.
@@BrawndoQC Nope
@@BrawndoQC I never liked trackpads --- used them for over 20 years and they never grew on me
It's true. I had a 2016 12" Macbook and it was the first laptop I'd ever used where the trackpad made a mouse feel unnecessary.
@@gummboote I have used a macbook, I just disagree.
Especially for gaming.
What, I'm gonna one-tick a bunch of karambwans with a trackpad? Naaaaaaaah
I’ve been curious about this laptop for ages, i’m so happy to see you cover it!
13:32 excellent channeling of early 70s Doctor Who sound and visual there!
Decent laptop for its era when there were plenty of cheap inferior products out there ready to dupe the uninformed. I really liked the pop-out mouse too, never seen that before. Great work as ever Clint 👍
As a kid, I prayed for a tiny portable I could play with all the time.
I got one, but it wasn't what I expected.
the flesh is weak
YES 3D acceleration!
The Barcode on your badge reading "hugefarts" was a nice touch!
Bless you sir for continuing with this content. It really has a charm that's been lost across most of CZcams.
Much love, thanks for the hundreds of hours of free entertainment!
Clint it's so refreshing to see this HP OmniBook 800CT , These were Newish when I worked in the PC Repair shop , I remember using one to Travel and Use MSN Messenger from a Hotel Room in Texas in 2000 on Dialup and was able to keep up with my friend who was on a Wifi connection and He was Impressed that Computer could do what it did and it even did Video , the frame rate was lousy but the commuters round it down to the slowest connection , What a joy to Use :) QC
Thanks for including metric units as well 🤗 Greetings from Europe!
I have one of these, I also have the docking station which has an ISA/PCI slot in it. Interested to watch the rest of the video, only a couple mins in so far!
Always love your videos about old PCs and laptops, Mr. Clint. It makes me better about my own 7yo craptop lmao.
Jokes aside though, genuinely love these. Thank you.
This video really made my night! Thank you !
it's such a pleasant looking thing. It really does help how much of the lid the screen takes up, makes it look just that bit cleaner.
Love your content! and thanks for helping Adrian!
I know it is only a coffee but i really think you are doing a great job. “Be excellent to each other.”
My father worked at Raytheon in the late 90's and he was given a company laptop. I couldn't tell you what brand it was or what specs it had, but I distinctly remember it being several inches thick and him telling me it was worth about $3800 at the time. Naturally, I begged him to let me install my Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Driver game onto it so I could play a computer game on the couch. That laptop is probably long, long gone, but that Hot Wheels game disc still works on Windows 10 today :)
Always loved reviews of these ridiculously priced notebooks from 90s 👍
It's crazy anyone would pay $4-5,000 for a laptop back then --- but I think $2,000 was about the average price in the late 90's
i love this form factor for laptops. it just looks so dense and well designed.
Man these were fun, we would sneak disks in and install shareware on them. Loved the keyboards on them!
Also shoutouts to HP for actually filling out their DMI tables back then.
You found a gem there Clint! I remember these, my uncle had one and I specifically remember the mouse that popped out. Genius! All these years later, leave it to you to do an excellent video on it!! Thank you kind sir!
Thanks for watching, I'm glad you enjoyed!
Since 2012 I've always enjoyed these videos of super-laptops from yesteryear.
16:50 your parody voice of Duke Nukem is a pure gold!
The AOL mouse pad with emoji guide is excellent! What a funny relic!
Emoticons, even! All text-based from before emoji took over :-)
damn that thing is cool as hell, and its in such great condition with all those peripherals?? great find.
Always love the intros of this channel
Eyy I had one of these. I got it from a ham radio swap meet, long after it was obsolete in the late 00s. Amazingly the battery was still good. I even got the external CD drive. I was the only kid in high school with a laptop.
Loved the thing, especially the little mouse. Really cleverly designed. The bar has conductive stripes embedded in it like a digital caliper does. As the bar slides in and out there's an inductive pickup that runs the x axis and buttons. The y axis is a similar system on an internal cradle pushed up and down by the bar. Therefore there's no direct electrical connection to the mouse.
I had installed Damn Small Linux on it so I could do modern-ish things on it. I noticed the bad scaling at the time as well, me and my friends said it went beyond pixelated, we called it "blockulated." It even briefly controlled the school woodshop's CNC router.
Thanks for the memories!
I remember this being on display in Microcenter when I was a kid. There was a smaller laptop next to it, but I have never been able to find out what it was, despite extensive research.
I have absolutely no interest in technology but this guy's videos are so cool and chill I just relax and watch them with no idea what he's talking about
"Mouse eject button" is not a combination of words I would have said belong together until today.
As a lover of little bitty laptops, I have lusted after one of these since they came out. Great coverage, as always!
2:25 Clint, with all the wonderful videos and the hard work you put in, I always knew you were Some Guy.
this design is very cute, absolutely love it. very cool little machine overall
Oh my. When you pulled that strip of icons out. What an amazing idea.
The keyboard color scheme is sick af.
Thanks Clint it always amazes me how those prices where back in the day and to see those specs now in comparison.
I had one of these and loved it!!
I really miss Windows 95's pixelated UI. The visuals were so simplistic but so effective in conveying whatever message they needed to. Plus the icon design was top notch.
"Corpo"; love that expression! And I agree, the Omnibook is delightful! There's just something about tiny vintage laptops. Thanks for covering this in your usual thorough and delightful fashion!
Thank you for blessing us with another strange subnotebook video
Thanks for reviving the memories of me on the commuter train doing business and business like things. Unfortunately, I didnt do any gaming. Just used it mostly as a word processor.
That looks pretty capable for it's form factor in the time, like really good. I feel like you understated it, Clint.
Love the design of this mini-notebook! The screen and keyboard look so good for its time.
I grabbed one of these very things very recently and haven't even gotten around to playing with it yet; thanks for reminding me
Can confirm I was a corporate customer of these machines in that era. (We went with Toshiba) Those laptops were still rare (every kid having one in a backpack was not the case), and considered state of the art computing.
I can remember going into a Starbucks in 1999 and never seeing anyone sitting at a table with a laptop or Macbook --- they were just too expensive for most people
Only yuppies had them, same with cell phones. Once they went sub-$500 then you started seeing the teenagers with them - but only the tech obsessed nerdy ones. @@tommitchell4570
@@tommitchell4570 Starbucks didn't have wi-fi until 2002 and even then their wi-fi didn't become free until 2010, so I'm sure that didn't help. If Starbucks stops providing wi-fi now 80% of people will stop bringing their laptops, maybe more.
love that you can see it's usage miles by the thumb rubbing off the Win95 sticker, i guess it's where the thumb would be if you were to move the laptop a bit or adjusting the angle on screen
I'm watching this on basically the modern version of this laptop! This is such a cool form factor in both retro and modern computers.
Right, like the HP USB Format Tool that is still circulating the web for when dd overwrites your partition data! 9:26 Another amazing video by Clint on something we all would have like to have when we were growing up!
Always a great day when Clint uploads.
In case you were wondering, the barcode on Clint’s ID at 2:24 is a Code 128 barcode and it reads “hugefarts” 😂
I remember when my dad brought home his ThinkPad's from work in the mid 90's and he would let me mess with them, and this computer/video brings back memories of my first experiences with laptops.
Impressive panel, and ES18xx audio chipset for really great SB compatibility and audio quality, impressive for a business machine for sure! ^^
My very first laptop was a second-hand Toshiba Libretto 100ct with maxed-out RAM and 8.4gb HDD in 2002 - and I overclocked the Pentium 166 to 233mhz too. This HP clearly has a better screen and keyboard but I really loved the screenside-located pointing device in the Toshiba. I'll always have a soft spot for early subnotebooks!
This was actually my 2nd laptop. My first was the Omnibook 300, monochrome 386. I loved the little pop out mouse, but I was a kid back then. I remember hooking it up to my external Zoom 14.4 modem and downloading all the floppies for RedHat 4.2. I got it installed and working along with a copy of Applixware that I installed and used for the remainder of high school. I had no idea how lucky I was to have a Dad that enabled and encouraged me to be a computer nerd. Thanks for covering this one, it brought back a ton of memories for me.
That mouse looks gimmicky, but fabulous!
What a great idea! An X Y belt drive? Awesome.
I love these little 90's note books, and I love LGR coverage of them.
Great stuff.
That popout mouse really got me.
My dad had one of these. For what it was, it was very well built. It's also the laptop i played a game on that i can't find anymore, yet have very fond memories of. Having Aphantasia... i can't even remember what it was like. I just "remember" i loved that game, especially the starting sequence with the main menu. Weird, ain't it? :))
used to buy them up and upgrade, minor repairs, on them back in 2006 or so when these were unloaded on fleabay for dirt cheap but still had usable life in them for real work to be done.
Had closed captions on, you got me to google what Ultraportable Jazz music was
That thing looks amazing! I would buy a modern laptop if it looked like this.
I really chuckled at the barcode in 2:15, that says "hugefarts"! This is the kind of easter egg I wanted to find
the pop out mouse is the coolest bit of oddware I've seen
That sweater you are wearing looks so hecccing comfy!
At this point in my life I was trying to get XFree86 configured and get X to start. It took me a couple of years. Ahh Slackware.
Really glad I held onto my 800CT - I used it a lot when I was in the Air Force in the early 2000's
Such an interesting little powerhouse of a laptop. I don't remember where I got it from but I have a 600CT lying around which I think came out a few years before the 800. Though the mouse is present, sadly, for some reason someone has cut it off. I've never had a charger for it so I don't know if it works. I don't know what do with it but you can have it if you want. Also, lovely to see you play FIFA 98. One of the few games I still have in its original big box.
@2:23 I knew there had to be something hiding in that barcode and I was not disappointed.
Just can’t let a good barcode go to waste.
I made a ridiculous girly high-pitched noise when the tiny mouse popped out
Always love your Duke Nukem impressions! 🤩