the rarest laptop?

[gameboy3800]

just a fun question. aside from like oneoffs and prototypes whats the rarest machine you know about or happen to own?

 

here's my picks:

 

the green Voodoo Envy HW:201 is essentially a dual core w/ ddr2 updated version of the already rare Alienware mALX laptop featuring a 20 inch screen and dual nvidia 7950 gtx gpus. i consider it actually usable over a mALX because the mALX is limited to just 2gb of ddr1 ram and a single core cpu. the alienware is already super rare. how did i get the voodoo updated version? ebay, of course!

 

 

 

(i know i said 'aside from prototypes or oneoffs', but this this story is just too funny):

right at the tail end of the 'HP with VoodooDNA' timeline was the final ever project Rahul Sood did under his old VoodooPC brand, sorta kinda; the legendary Voodoo Firefly 003. it was made to be a portable version of the HP Blackbird 002. it was originally meant to use dual nvidia cards but ati (freshly bought out by amd at the time) just recently developed compatible cards so at the last second Rahul put dual ati cards in it just to force intel and amd to work together lmao. they also put 2 screens in it for some reason. couldnt find the reasoning for that one. supposedly only 12 Voodoo Firefly 003 units were ever made. of which Rahul said he had 2 of them in a video he did at CES 2009. so how did i get one??? lmao ebay.

 

the full story behind the Firefly is found on the old VoodooPC blog site. its through internet archive so it may load slow but trust me its worth a full read!

https://web.archive.org/web/20090114211241/http://www.thenextbench.com/t5/Blog/f1r3fly-the-backstory-and-birth-of-a-concept/ba-p/25005#A646

(Hp VoodooDNA Envy 133 to the right, the smol somewhat related unit of a similar time period; interesting machine in its own right, but too bad it sucks lmao)

 

 

 

here they are together all cool like

 

 

 

 

here's a classic alienware malx next to the green Envy. you can see they use almost the exact same chassis, just the green one uses updated hardware to be actually usable:

 

 

 

any other rare or oddball machines you know of or own, or the story behind them? please share!

[Needfuldoer]

The Macintosh PowerBook 550c is hard to find. Aside from the fact it's 30 years old, it was only on the market for a year, and exclusive to Japan.

 

It has a 33 mhz full 68040 processor with FPU (the other 500-series had 68LC040 CPUs with no FPU), a slightly larger screen, and all the plastics are the same charcoal gray color. Other than that, it's the same as the common 520 and 540.

 

One of these with the rare "revision C" PCMCIA card cage, the maximum 36 MB of RAM, and an extremely rare 167 mhz PowerPC upgrade would be something to find.

 

Next hardest to find would probably be the original "Kanga" PowerBook G3. It was basically a PowerBook 3400c with a G3 hacked onto the motherboard, released for 6 months as a stopgap so there would be a PowerBook G3 available before the "Wallstreet" G3 was ready. It was very expensive, at $5,700, but it did have a global release. The Wallstreet G3 started at half the price, and ran much faster, and like the 3400c it was based on, the Kanga had no CPU upgrade path.

 

[gameboy3800]

6 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

The Macintosh PowerBook 550c is hard to find. Aside from the fact it's 30 years old, it was only on the market for a year, and exclusive to Japan.

 

It has a 33 mhz full 68040 processor with FPU (the other 500-series had 68LC040 CPUs with no FPU), a slightly larger screen, and all the plastics are the same charcoal gray color. Other than that, it's the same as the common 520 and 540.

 

One of these with the rare "revision C" PCMCIA card cage, the maximum 36 MB of RAM, and an extremely rare 167 mhz PowerPC upgrade would be something to find.

 

Next hardest to find would probably be the original "Kanga" PowerBook G3. It was basically a PowerBook 3400c with a G3 hacked onto the motherboard, released for 6 months as a stopgap so there would be a PowerBook G3 available before the "Wallstreet" G3 was ready. It was very expensive, at $5,700, but it did have a global release. The Wallstreet G3 started at half the price, and ran much faster, and like the 3400c it was based on, the Kanga had no CPU upgrade path.

 

i wish i wasnt so late to the powerbook game. all cheap ones are broken and all rare ones are silly not cheap. i had a 1400 years and years ago i got for like $30 when i was in highschool with a super old version of photoshop but it was terribly slow. with no easy upgrading like i could do to old pcs powerbooks just never grew on me.

[LloydLynx]

@da na ^

[da na]

Oh man, that's awesome!

 

A few rarities in my collection are: 

The HDX 16 - absolutely gorgeous high end media laptop from the Pavilion series. 

Dell Adamo 13 - failed MacBook Air competitor, lost Dell $800 million

Latitude Z - Wireless charging and docking in 2009

[gameboy3800]

5 hours ago, da na said:

Oh man, that's awesome!

 

A few rarities in my collection are: 

The HDX 16 - absolutely gorgeous high end media laptop from the Pavilion series. 

Dell Adamo 13 - failed MacBook Air competitor, lost Dell $800 million

Latitude Z - Wireless charging and docking in 2009

the hdx series is awesome. i got the hdx9000 'Dragon' with its 20inch double hinged display myself. its speakers are unreal. 

here it is next to the even thiccer Acer Aspire 9810 with also awesome speakers:

[Kilrah]

Depends how old you'd want to go and what you'd consider a laptop, but my rarest battery-powered, portable machine is probably my Epson PX-16, from around 1990.

 

 

 

This thing had tons of accessories for it including a touchscreen that you could install in place of the keyboard and a printer for the top right module for use for purposes such as a cash register, so I've had a saved eBay search since I got it 5 years ago for $30 on a mislabeled listing hoping some would pop up - there has never been either any accessory or machine for sale since.

 

My Olivetti Quaderno PT-XT20 ultraportable from '92 is probably 2nd on the list.

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

wow  nice!  i really like the green one, its so shiny!

 

never knew that existed.  But, for real tho... can it run crisis?! at what fps?

[gameboy3800]

On 2/9/2024 at 6:01 PM, Kilrah said:

Depends how old you'd want to go and what you'd consider a laptop, but my rarest battery-powered, portable machine is probably my Epson PX-16, from around 1990.

 

 

 

This thing had tons of accessories for it including a touchscreen that you could install in place of the keyboard and a printer for the top right module for use for purposes such as a cash register, so I've had a saved eBay search since I got it 5 years ago for $30 on a mislabeled listing hoping some would pop up - there has never been either any accessory or machine for sale since.

 

My Olivetti Quaderno PT-XT20 ultraportable from '92 is probably 2nd on the list.

 

 

i love the olivetti machine! i used to have an old olivetti typewriter in blue!

[gameboy3800]

On 2/12/2024 at 3:52 PM, Mark Kaine said:

wow  nice!  i really like the green one, its so shiny!

 

never knew that existed.  But, for real tho... can it run crisis?! at what fps?

its probably able to run crysis at lowest settings. these machines are so rare tho that i dont run them too often. moving one around is like moving a priceless painting to me lmao