Good company workhorse
Written: Jan 19 '01 (Updated Jan 19 '01)
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Pros: Dual pointing devices, relatively light and thin for an all-in-one, drive bay.
Cons: Flimsy docking door cover
The Bottom Line: Solid company laptop and possibly very good for personal use as well. But it's looks aren't very inspired and basically it's just another run of the mill PC laptop.
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| kenshin27's Full Review: Hewlett Packard OmniBook 6000 (F2150WT) PC Noteboo... |
This review is on the HP Omnibook system that I got at work. Equipment and configuration is as follows:
HP Omnibook 6000 F2079KT Model
600Mhz Pentium III w/Speedstep
256MB RAM (128MB standard, 512MB max)
6GB EIDE hard drive
14.1" TFT screen
24X CD-ROM
ATI M/M1 graphics controller w/ 2X AGP and 8MB VRAM
Microsoft Windows NT4 Workstation
Port Replicator
This is a solid-looking "corporate" laptop and is the first HP computer I've ever used. The specs aren't the best of its series since it is a company model after all but it's more than adequate for the programming/web work that I do. Let's see, where to start....
The case is pretty decent. "Two-tone magnesium" is how it was described on HP's site. The magnesium only comprises a thin layer of the top cover and it's two-tone grey and silver which is just perfect for corporate settings. =p It's only 1.26" thick though which is nice and averages a little over 5 lbs which is pretty darn good for a machine of its size and capabilities. There is a modular bay facing the user on the lower right side allowing you to switch between a floppy drive (included) or a CD-ROM or DVD drive. Hot swappable which is always a plus.
The 14" screen looks very nice and bright and the unit I got has no dead pixels which is excellent. The laptop has 2 PCMCIA slots on the left side towards the rear and built-in modem and 10/100BaseT Ethernet right near the left back edge which is a very nice place to have them. My Sony VAIO has the Ethernet port located near the front on the right side which can be inconvenient at times. The rear panel consists of just one USB port, a VGA port, a serial port, a parallel port, a PS/2 port, and a big PCI docking connector. The docking connector port is rather peculiar in that it really can't be easily opened unless you were pushing it into the dock which has a slight projection that forces the two panels covering the port open. However if you're too rough with docking it, the panels pop off easily and need to be slipped back in. Hopefully without losing the little spring that provides some recoil action for the panels. The right side of the machine has an audio out, audio in, and line out jacks along with an infra-red port and volume control. Overall pretty good port/jack placement on all sides of the machine.
The keyboard is full-sized and is pretty comfortable to type on. Better than my VAIO keyboard but slightly less responsive than my Powerbook keyboard. The arrow keys are placed a little bit lower than I'm used to so I often wind up pressing the up arrow when I really want to go down. Plus they cram the page up/page down, home/end, ins/del buttons in the top right corner of the keyboard which takes a while to get used to. There's also a Function key that for some odd reason they decided to put _between_ the left Control and Window keys. I think it would have made more sense if they had placed the Function key on the far left followed by the Control and Window keys instead. There's also a slight defect in the unit that I received where the D key is hypersensitive at times. Basically I can just place my finger on the D key and it'll think it's been pressed down when it actually hasn't. Can be very annoying at times especially when the laptop is closed and in its dock. I've tried removing the key and putting it back in but they don't seem to snap out easily. At least my prying has "desensitized" it to a degree.
This unit has two pointing devices; the trackpad, which I'm more used to, and a pointer. There are two sets of mouse buttons; one on top of the trackpad (for when you use the pointer instead), and one in the normal position below the trackpad. The pointer is actually pretty convenient and didn't require as long to get used to as I had originally expected. Both devices are pretty responsive and hasn't caused any problems.
The lithium-ion battery is located on the bottom and provides about 3 hours worth of power. The bottom also has a card-sized recess where you can slip in a business card in case your machine gets lost. First time I've seen this and thought it was a nifty feature although a bit questionable in usefulness.
The port replicator works ok although it only gives you an extra USB and mouse port. Docking the unit takes a little while to make sure you're doing it right but once you get it down it's not a problem.
Overall this Omnibook is a very solid contender and definitely should work well in a corporate environment. It's list price is about $2900 which I think is rather pricey considering that that only gives you a 6GB hard drive and CD-ROM drive instead of DVD. Although it does come with standard 3-year warranty and service which is very nice.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 3000+
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 501-600
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
kenshin27
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Member: Ben C
Location: NJ
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 17 members
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