Introduction
Hewlett Packard has a reputation for high quality products and the Omnibook XE follows in the same vein. Although the Omnibook is a little on the heavy side the build is excellent.

The Omnibook XE was supplied with a power adapter and telephone cable. Windows 98 was pre-installed but we did not receive a Windows 98 CD or restart disk, although we were informed that these would normally be included.

The documentation is excellent, very readable and concise. A Card supplied with the notebook called "Your Omnibook at a glance" shows every element of the Omnibook with a plan of the system showing where all the ports are located etc. The reverse side gives easy to follow set-up instructions and where to call for support. A warranty card with an offer to extend the warranty period is also included.

First Impressions
The Hewlett Packard packing, consisting of one box inside another was adequate for the normal rigours of the heavy-handed couriers. It was however very bland and gave no indication to the contents of the box apart from one label. This is not a criticism, in fact it's probably a good idea when valuable items such as the Omnibook are in transit and less attention is then paid to this box.

As mentioned earlier the Omnibook is heavy, several people commented immediately upon picking the notebook up. Those same people also commented on how very good-looking product is.

The front of the Omnibook has a set of separate controls for operating the CD ROM drive, which means that audio CD's can be played without the system needing to be turned on. A nice feature, which I used in the car on my way home. (some of us still don't have a CD player in the car!) Apart from this extra feature all other ports and peripherals are included such as PCMCIA slots, serial, parallel, modem, svga, mouse/keyboard, USB, speaker and microphone. On board sound and microphone are included along with touchpad mouse.

The Omnibook touchpad is very easy to use and has some excellent software, which allows one to change the button functions and touchpad pressure. Clicking and double clicking can be performed on the touchpad, which is a feature I use a lot.

Hewlett Packard's keyboard is large enough to use in earnest but I felt it dipped a little if firm pressure was applied to the centre keys of the keyboard.

Features
At the heart of the Omnibook XE is the AMD K6-450Mhz processor, supported by 64MB Ram, as standard, helped HP. Performance was good although we only really used Microsoft Office 97. The SYSmark scores tell the real story. The lack of an infrared port was a little disappointing, as was the ability to swap the CD for a DVD but at this price point not surprising.

Right, some breaking news. The Omnibook has just given me a warning that the battery is low and I should either switch off or go onto mains power. The battery has lasted for 1 hour 20 minutes, very good I feel, although using word is not accessing the hard drive very often and so it will have gone into sleep mode.

I sat with the Omnibook on my lap whilst wearing a pair of shorts. The point is that the Omnibook generated very little heat to the underside of case as so many notebooks do.

All the usual keys for notebook operation are easily identifiable on the Omnibook keyboard, such as contrast and brightness, Volume control and a system suspend key which lets you save you working environment at any stage so that when you restart the notebook your are returned to your previous application.

The Omnibook screen is excellent; it's clear and has a crispness one would expect from HP.

Performance
The HP Omnibook XE with the AMD K6-450Mhz processor and 64Mb memory helped it to a BAPco SYSmark 2000 score of 55. In performance terms this is well above average for its class of notebook.

Final Analysis
The HP Omnibook XE had stiff competition from UMAX, in a group-testing situation there can only be one outright winner, UMAX cannot be denied from a specification viewpoint, however, due to their last minute price and specification changes to the UMAX the Omnibook XE with a price tag of £768.00 Plus VAT is an absolute steal, coupled with HP's reputation for quality engineering and excellent support, it richly deserves our Value award. What more can we say? except buy one before they change their mind. Well-done HP.

Congratulations to Hewlett Packard for winning our One2surf Value Award!!

Back to top