HP OmniBook was a range of

laptop A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

personal computers created by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

, introduced in 1993. The range was discontinued following the acquisition of

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

by Hewlett-Packard in 2002, with the

Compaq Presario Presario is a discontinued line of consumer desktop computers and notebooks originally produced by Compaq. The Presario family of computers was introduced in September 1993. In the mid-1990s, Compaq began manufacturing PC monitors as part of the ...

HP Compaq The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

, and

HP Pavilion HP Pavilion is a line of consumer-oriented laptop and desktop computers produced by HP Inc. It was introduced in 1995 by Hewlett-Packard. The name is applied to both desktops and laptops for the Home and Home Office product range. The Pavilion ...

laptops succeeding the OmniBook line.

Models

* OmniBook 300 (F1030A/F1031A/F1032A) * OmniBook 425 (F1033A/F1034A/F1036A) * OmniBook 430 (F1035A/F1037A/F1038A) * OmniBook 500 * OmniBook 510 * OmniBook 530 * OmniBook 600 * OmniBook 800 * OmniBook 900 * OmniBook 2000 * OmniBook 2100 * OmniBook 3000 * OmniBook 4000 * OmniBook 4150 * OmniBook 4400 * OmniBook 4500 * OmniBook 5000 * OmniBook 5500 * OmniBook 5700 * OmniBook 6000 * OmniBook 6100 * OmniBook 6200 * OmniBook 7000 * OmniBook 7100 * OmniBook XE2 * OmniBook XE3

Notable models

OmniBook 300

The HP OmniBook 300 (OB300) is a "superportable" laptop released in 1993 as one of the first notebook computers in the OmniBook line. It weighed only 2.9 pounds and measured 1.4 × 6.4 × 11.1 inches. It is powered by an Intel 386SXLV processor, featured a full-size keyboard, a pop-up mouse (The same pop-up mouse was also used in Omnibook 800

, and a 9-inch VGA screen. Due to storage limitations, the OmniBook 300 included both

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro (comp ...

and

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...

pre-installed in ROM, which was and still remains unusual to this day. It had two

PCMCIA The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was a group of computer hardware manufacturers, operating under that name from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), i ...

slots for additional memory, modem, network cards or other peripherals. One of its outstanding features was a technology known as "Instant On". It was sold in three storage configurations: no mass storage (F1030A at ), 10MB flash memory disk (F1031A at ), or 40MB hard drive (F1032A at ). Compared to the hard drive, the flash memory disk reduced the weight and storage capacity but increased battery life. It came with slimmed-down copies of

MS-DOS 5.0 MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

and

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

. The "International English" version of the OmniBook 300 used

code page 850 Code page 850 ( CCSID 850) (also known as CP 850, IBM 00850, OEM 850, DOS Latin 1) is a code page used under DOS and Psion's EPOC16 operating systems in Western Europe. Depending on the country setting and system configuration, code page 850 i ...

(rather than the more common

code page 437 Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacri ...

) as

hardware code page In computing, a hardware code page (HWCP) refers to a code page supported natively by a hardware device such as a display adapter or printer. The glyphs to present the characters are stored in the alphanumeric character generator's resident re ...

References

Sean McCreary Sean, also spelled Seán or Séan in Irish English, is a male given name of Irish origin. It comes from the Irish versions of the Biblical Hebrew name ''Yohanan'' (), Seán (anglicized as ''Shaun/Shawn/ Shon'') and Séan (Ulster variant; angliciz ...

{{HP HP subnotebooks Discontinued products

Models

Notable models

OmniBook 300

See also

References

External links