HP OmniBook XE2

When Hewlett-Packard originally launched its OmniBook XE (Close-up April 1999) and told us that it was aimed at consumers, rather than corporates, we greeted the announcement with a healthy degree of scepticism.

We had certain criticisms of the machine itself, notably of the keyboard, and were staggered by the cost. Listed for about £2,200, we felt it was priced out of the consumer PC notebook market.

Over the past few months, little has changed. The OmniBook XE2 itself is substantially the same as before - same blue plastic, same integrated floppy and CD-ROM drive, same 13.3in TFT screen. In fact, the unit came with the same 333MHz mobile PII processor as before; despite the fact that faster chips are available from Intel, HP seems to regard this as top-of-the-range for consumers.

About the only difference we could find was in the keyboard. Last time we saw it, we felt that it was too clicky for our liking. With an apparently softer action, we preferred this model. However, it's only fair to point out that keyboards vary from unit to unit and are a matter of preference in any case - so don't make a buying decision based on this alone.

Though there may be more changes under the XE2's skin - we guess that a BIOS revision or driver update is responsible for its slightly improved SYSMark 98 score, up to 132 from 127 - HP made no comment on what they might be.

Our judgement on this updated OmniBook remains unchanged - nice but overpriced, especially as it still includes no software apart from Windows. True, it's about 10 percent cheaper than before but the market has moved on.

You can find notebooks of the calibre of the OmniBook XE2 that give you a lot more change from two grand.

The improved OmniBook is a nice notebook, but HP still trades too heavily on its brand name and it's still far too expensive to appeal to consumers.

SPECIFICATIONS

333MHz Mobile Pentium II processor

64Mb of RAM

5.8Gb hard disk

13.3in screen

V.90 modem

Weight: 3.03kg

Dimensions: 315x245x30mm

Claimed three-hour battery life

£1,655 (inc VAT)

Hewlett-Packard: 0990 474747

www.hp.co.uk

HEWLETT-PACKARD OMNIBOOK XE2

Build quality ****

Performance ***

Features ****

Value for money **

Overall ***