The Digital HiNote was a series of laptop computers manufactured by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

(DEC) from 1994 until 1998 and by

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 ...

from 1998 until 2002. It was generally positively reviewed by technology journalists. The series consisted of the VP and Ultra models which were based on the

i486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. The i486 was introduced in 1989. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the ...

Pentium Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and P ...

Pentium MMX The Pentium (also referred to as P5, its microarchitecture, or i586) is a fifth generation, 32-bit x86 microprocessor that was introduced by Intel on March 22, 1993, as the very first CPU in the Pentium, Pentium brand. It was instruction set com ...

and

Pentium II The Pentium II brand refers to Intel's sixth-generation microarchitecture (" P6") and x86-compatible microprocessors introduced on May 7, 1997. Containing 7.5 million transistors (27.4 million in the case of the mobile Dixon with 256 KB ...

. After Digital was acquired by Compaq in 1998, the series was phased out.

History

Digital introduced the HiNote brand of laptops in November 1994 as a successor to their

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...

laptops marketed under their DECpc brand. The HiNote was introduced simultaneously with the Venturis brand of

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

and towers, which similarly replaced those form factors of x86 computers that bore the DECpc name. The initial lineup comprised a full-sized laptop simply named the HiNote and a

subnotebook Subnotebook, also called ultraportable, superportable, or mini notebook, was a marketing term for laptop computers that are smaller and lighter than a typical notebook-sized laptop. Types and sizes As typical laptop sizes have decreased over t ...

named the HiNote Ultra; Digital later separated the two sub-brands by designating the former as VP units. Digital offered the initial lineup with either monochrome or color passive-matrix LCDs or color

active-matrix Active matrix is a type of addressing scheme used in flat panel displays. In this method of switching individual elements (pixels), each pixel is attached to a transistor and capacitor ''actively'' maintaining the pixel state while other pixels are ...

LCDs, 33 MHz Intel 486SXs to 50 MHz 486DX2s, and a

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...

capacity between 120 and 340 MB. The standard HiNote included a built-in 3.5 inch floppy drive which could be removed and fitted with a second

lithium-ion battery A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also s ...

pack in its place, while the drive for the Ultra was external only. Both the original HiNotes proper and Ultras included built-in

trackball A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball to position the o ...

s as its pointing device of choice. Technology journalists singled out the HiNote Ultra for its sleek industrial design and modularity, which attached the lithium-ion battery to the back of the laptop with a latching mechanism instead of being inserted in the bottom case as was customary for laptop designs. This battery could be rotated to prop up the Ultra at a position more comfortable for typing for long periods of time and allowed it to accommodate the external 3.5-inch

floppy disk drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

underneath it when placed on a desk. It weighed 4 lb (1,8 kg) and measured only an inch (2,54 cm) high. Digital advertised on television the Ultra's thin and light stature by pulling it out of a

manila envelope A manila folder (sometimes manila) is a file folder designed to contain documents, often within a filing cabinet. It is generally formed by folding a large sheet of stiff card in half. Though traditionally buff, sometimes other colors are used to ...

—an approach replicated by

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

nearly 15 years later, when it advertised its

MacBook Air The MacBook Air is a line of ultrabook computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. It consists of a full-size keyboard, a machined aluminum case, and, in the more modern versions, a thin light structure. The Air was originally position ...

in 2008. When

acquired Digital in June 1998 for $9.6 billion, they left the design intact but changed the name to Armada 6500. The HiNote-based series was phased out in 2002. Technology writer Brooke Crothers wrote on '' CNET'' that its discontinuation was ironic considering that the HiNote received high industry accolades and was "one of the best notebook designs ever and one of the technological gems that Compaq inherited from Digital Equipment."

Models

References

External links

* Archived legacy product pages provided by

: *
HiNote VP 500 line
*

*
Digital HiNote Ultra II disassembly and repair

Running Linux on the HiNote Ultra 2000
in '' The Peacemaker'' on Starring the Computer {{DEC hardware Computer-related introductions in 1994 HiNote Subnotebooks

History

Models

References

Further reading

External links