The Golden Age of HP Palmtop PCs

[Adam Vaughn]

My first HP palmtop was a 200LX. Like with their calculators, I had no idea they'd made them until I spotted one 'in the wild'. In this case, it was at an antique radio-related swap meet, of all places. I got it for $50, and was immediately intrigued with what it was capable of. I downloaded applications off of the 'net, copied them to a 32MB Sandisk flash card, loaded it into the 200LX, and I was off to the races.

Unfortunately, it met its end after taking a tumble onto the floor, shattering the screen. I attempted to find a replacement through this forum and other means, ending up with a nice 660LX Windows CE palmtop in the process; it was nice, but not quite the same. Some time later, I did find another 200LX, again in an unexpected place, this time a ham radio flea market. Got this one for $20, and it even came with a manual.

This past spring, coincidentally at another instance of the same 'hamfest' I found the 200LX at, I picked up a HP OmniBook 300 for $40. While bigger than the standard palmtop, it is still quite small by laptop standards, and seems like a 'grown-up' version of the 200LX, including looks-wise. It once again has DOS 5.0 in ROM, this time complemented by Windows 3.1! The little 'mouse' which pops out from the side of the case is a bit awkward, but works fairly well. Here are some side-by-side comparison shots of the two: