HP Pavilion ZE Series Laptops - A consumer laptop built for the Windows XP world!

[JackStavris]

I think I speak for most people here and say that we love the long computer videos. Always great to watch when I'm working on my own projects. Whenever one gets uploaded, I always set aside some time to make sure I watch all of it even if that's over a span of a week lol.

[mtor]

Funny that you just got this, your first laptop. I just impulse bought my first laptop from eBay, a Dell Inspiron 600m, a few weeks back. Always fun to mess around with these older machines. Nostalgia!

[skellsskells]

That's a laptop from the era when computers were respected. Beautiful quantity of ports/features.

[TheFlyingScotsman]

This has brought back a lot of memories. I remember a lot of these desktop replacement machines, and HP back in the day was indeed a formidable brand. I've often lamented on the way that buying a new computer went from being a special occasion to literally walking into a big box store and you're basically rushed out of the door within minutes of arriving there. Nowadays Amazon will ship you some piece of shoddy plastic that runs Windows in S mode, causing a great big headache, or you could spend loads to get a shiny new Co-Pilot Plus PC that has the wonderful Recall feature that is sat recording everything you do, like a stenographer on .... special drugs.

[WalterKnox]

My first laptop was an hp pavilion N5150, which had some form of Intel Celeron and ran Windows ME. I don't remember much about it besides for that, and it had a CD player with buttons and a little LCD screen you could use while the laptop was turned off and shut.

[AmazedStoner]

I’m still using a laptop from 2004 for certain tasks. It’s Dell Latitude D610 that has seen several upgrades and repairs since I obtained it back in 2018. In its current configuration it has a pentium m at 1.6 ghz a downgrade from its original 2 ghz cpu that failed. 2 gigabytes of RAM. 160 gigabytes Samsung hard drive with about 60 hours on it as I bought it new old stock back in 2022. It has a new old stock high definition display I bought in 2022 when the backlight failed. The display assembly is also new old stock from the same time frame as it broke shortly after the new display. I’m using a used but new to me 130 watt power adapter. The battery is in good condition as it was replaced in 2020 this is despite dell’s software telling me about the battery degradation. Still runs over an hour at full boar despite that. It currently has a cd/rw dvd rom combo drive. The bay it is in is a multi bay that could accept hard drives, different optical drives, floppy drives, and even a battery. As for port selection the answer is mostly yes and to clarify it has onboard vga and svideo as options. Four usb 2.0 ports. PC Card slot. Smart card slot. Parallel and serial ports. Gigabit Ethernet and 56k modem. IR. Plus if that wasn’t enough it has the docking station connector on the bottom which could connect to one of two different docks. Both of which contains a dvi port. The more advanced docking station I seen supported basically anything desktop related if you needed it. One last connection that isn’t visible is the optical audio out as it is part of the headphone jack. Up until now I haven’t mentioned graphics but unfortunately mine isn’t the upgraded board with ATI graphics chipset instead it has the lousy intel 915gm which is mostly just a mpeg video accelerator more than a graphics card 😂😂😂😂 still though best game I’ve managed was grand theft auto vice city. I’d imagine San Andreas would work as well.

[jo]

Definitely miss the variability in design back in those days. We are now shopping for a kids college laptop and I’ve not purchased a laptop in 15 years… can’t believe they come with nothing now. Two usb c ports and that’s it. Thinking about getting the kid either a slightly used business class Dell or Lenovo - or a refurbished MacBook. Both would be good for a college kid but I think the business class machines might be a better deal. Thanks for the video. Merry Christmas to you and yours. 🤚

[Samspianopage]

Nice machine B8shopp.

I have had a 2013 Toshiba P50T-A125 for 11 yrs everday use. Great reliable machines.

Not everything 8s bad about HP & Toshiba as folk say.

Have a Merry Xmas bud.☺️

[JohnSmith-xqpz]

The color scheme reminds me of a HP scanner we once had

[racinggameschannel]

My first laptop was a handed down ZE5500 P4 desktop machine, still have it, desperately need to restore it to its former glory!

[CPPRODUCTIONS]

I am starting to wind down on my computer collecting. I have an entire 90s network that was from a school just sitting in my summerhouse. Server and 5 clients, it all works but I rarely have time to tinker, storage is another big problem. I think my end goal is to create a PC for each era for games and then just collect anything I find interesting. I will always have these videos though, to satisfy that retro itch

[WalterKnox]

The progress bar on Windows XP home edition is blue when starting up as well on anything after service pack 1. I am not entirely sure why they changed it from being green, but they did.

[jlc]

I consider these older Pavilions to be "guilty pleasures". I feel like I shouldn't like them, but I do.

[domlimited]

I have an HP ZE Series with similar specs other than my Windows XP Pro. That laptop must come from a k12 setting with Novell Netware 6.5 client, office 2000, Altiris by Symantec, Grand Fortress Clean Slate, Lightspeed filter, group-wise, Zen works some educational software like scholastic AR, classroom suite, Kurzweil 3000. It was vary interesting

[isaacwright]

The HP ZE4500 had more ports than the ZE4900 on the back.

[drunk_by_noon]

I hate so much that most smart phones don't have LEDs anymore either.

[SamsungGalaxy-lsys]

I still have mine from 2004 in mint condition because I never used it, would only power it on to do the windows updates then put it away.

[Danuvox]

My first computer was a Lattitude D610 with a pentium m 1.6ghz that my dad bought from his work in 2009 i used it until 2012 when i upgraded to a Lattitude D830

[rudyiraheta]

got friendlyware & printmaster plus

[MegaTerryNutkins]

I had one of these years ago, no wifi card (and no antenna despite the empty mPCI slot) but it did ok. Eventually sold it for a V2000 which had a mich nicer screen and better audio.