The Omnibook 300

In 1993 HP produced what can arguably be considered the grandfather of the modern netbook, the Omnibook 300. Also voted one of PC Worlds greatest PC's ever - not that I endorse their opinions in any way shape or form!

For the day, this packed a lot of technology into a small form factor: 16.3 x 28.2 x 3.6 cm, 1310g. Compare this with the EEE PC at 16.5 x 22.5 x 3.5cm, 900g.

386SXLV 20MHz Ultra low Voltage processor
2-6MB RAM
10MB Flash disk (12V Linear flash to begin with, CF/PCMCIA compatibility later) but it could hold 3 such cards
OS/Apps in ROM (DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1/Word/Excel)
640 x 480 16 Level grayscale 9-inch un-backlit display
Built in fax-modem
Serial, parallel, IR ports
Real instant on - static processor architecture could be stopped mid-clock-cycle and the RAM self-refreshed

...and the HP "paw" mouse which I rather like. To the extent that I have had the Omnibook 600's and 800's that succeeded it, too.

But the killer - 9 hours battery life from a 1600MaH 4.8v NiMH battery pack. At a pinch you could also drop in 4 AA alkalines too (or modern NiMH AA's for nearer 15 hours!)

A bit of calculation shows that this thing draws less than a watt. I have a portable book-sized solar panel that is rated for 2.2W. Hmmmm.

BTW, the 3 linear flash cards (Sundisk SDP10's) I have - which have no wear levelling or error correction - still work fine, 15 years on. Admittedly, they require a PCMCIA 12V supply which tends to cause modern Cardbus slots a bit of apoplexy but probably indicates that the bits are fairly soldily written. ROM-based DOS/Win 3.1 doesn't exactly pummel the drives with writes either.