Thoroughly MEdiocre 2001 HP Pavilion laptop with Windows ME

A surprisingly versatile HP Pavilion N5295 laptop from 2001, let down by miserable 3D graphics performance and a much-maligned version of Windows. That's not where we wanted to go today, Microsoft!

#retro #laptop #windows

[rayphoenix]

This is beyond anything imaginable for a lot of people in the early 2000's. Having a computer that can play DVDs was a luxury and having it also connect to a TV was almost unheard of.

[johnpriceuk]

Pretty amusing to a Brit to see you using “Keeping Up Appearances” to demonstrate the DVD player 😁

[mordekaiser_]

damn, that's indeed a behemoth of a machine. maybe hp marketed it as kind of a multimedia powerhouse

[Jako]

Free ME product key! Thank you very much 😁

[IsopropylRecordings]

Love the buttons, LCD and CD rom, and in general all the ports and feats (better to have then to miss them.) Windows ME i dont miss, at all.

[dhpbear]

14:38 - The TV output appears to SERIOUSLY crop video, horizontally AND vertically!

[marcelanddog]

0:15 not sure if the Mac wins the beauty contest with its childish design 🤣

[albear]

I honestly, in my personal opinion feel that the Windows ME hatred is quite unwarranted. Back in the Summer of 2000 I attended a Microsoft Windows ME industry event, and I received a brand spankin' new copy of ME a few weeks before it was released to the public. The OS brought new life to my old PC from 1997 that originally came with W98.

I honestly loved ME it was very stable and never gave problems at all. Unlike the W10 crap I'm currently using. Doing some decluttering a few years back I threw away the cool looking hologram disc, along with many other genuine W95 W98 W2000 and XP. discs. I at least wish I would have kept that cool looking ME disc.

[super_slav]

The clam shell mac has to be my least favorite design of all time it looks like a fisher price product. I would take the HP any day.

[_Bit]

I actually liked Windows ME and used it for several years once I discovered a few tweaks to the settings that made it a lot more stable. I wish I remembered exactly what settings; one of them was removing a checkbox in the network settings about automatic detection. I was doing trouble-shooting for an ISP at the time, and many customers had ME, so I got paid to figure this stuff out. I'm sure I wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

[twocvbloke]

I had a later Toshiba Satellite A30-203 that had the "play music when turned off" thing, never used it cos it was an awfully large thing to stick in one's pocket to listen to a CD on the go, versus a portable CD player or cassette walkman... :P

[soremuss]

I never understood what people loved so much about the style of old Apple tech. I always found it looked worse and even cheaper, like a kids toy.

[pbft.j]

These videos you make will be a GIFT to future generations.
I was a toddler in 2001 and I am beyond enthralled by this technology that was just barely out of my reach.
I grew up with the first iPod being a standard - the way that under display fingerprint scanners & Lidar face scanning are today.
Someday there will come a time where even getting the cables to connect these machines will be almost impossible to buy.
This video in itself is a time capsule for those 20 somethings of 2081, long after we're gone. Incredible.

[moottori_paa]

IBM Thinkpad T22 was my choice back then 2001.

[TheDuumiMuumi]

My sister still has a laptop exactly like this, although it's called HP Omnibook XE3. Only differences are smaller screen, different colored top case and only 800MHz Pentium III, rest is the same as yours. She used it until 2012, it got upgraded to Windows XP at some point.

[adid.]

This feature with the independent CD player is really cool and unique! Kudos to HP for this innovation! There were a lot of people back then who were using their own computers to play Audio CDs, so the fact that you could do this on this laptop without it even been booted up into the OS was really cool and practical.

[argetech]

Keeping Up Appearances and Fawlty Towers. Two of my most favorite British comedies. Hyacinth Bucket, excuse me, it's pronounced Bouquet.. 😊😊👍

[quertize]

ME edition added automatic driver install for USB flash drives. I kinda liked it. Never had a problem with blue screens or anything really. Maybe my PC was just a good match.

[TRLTheRandomLab]

I feel the same way about Windows ME -- it wasn't terrible but I wouldn't be picking it over Win98 SE, since it was just a mediocre attempt at making Windows 98 Third Edition.

Honestly, I think of Windows 11 in the same way, while I like some of the new features it brings, such as the ability to restore the placement of windows when disconnecting and reconnecting an external display (like every other OS), as well as the native Android emulation... those easily could've been put into 10. Especially since 10 was supposed to be the "last version of Windows ever".

[CoolDudeClem]

I had windows 98 back in 2001. I didn't get ME until 2003, and I had to keep getting it fixed!