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HP Omnigo 120... Worth anything?

Don't know any value but certainly seems like a neat little system. Only bad part is I guess it's less dos compatible than the predecessors but depending on what someone wants to use it for it's probably a neat little hackable. Have you searched for completed listings on (fe)ebay to see what the perceived value might be? Or you could post it on the local VCGM with a starting price you'd accept and see what happens.
 
It was given to me recently and it is completely unused, still in its original seal and box. I heard those things were only available for a few months because they were horrible, but i dont know much more
 
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I was given an OmniGo 100 at work once. I liked the form factor OK, but the screen always felt constrained. GEOS was OK, but there just wasn't enough software with the OmniGo to make it work smoothly in a DOS/Windows world. Moving data back and forth, translating it, etc. was a real pain. Also, software development for it was a lot more difficult than it had to be. A lot of stuff that was available on other GEOS platforms wasn't available on the OmniGo.

It basically became a portable Solitaire machine for me. I gave it to some friends, they gave it back. I gave it to a daughter, she gave it to the same friends who had it before, last I heard it was being used as a bedside Solitaire player.

The 120's display was easier to see than the 100's, but otherwise I don't know of much change. As bad as the 300LX was (IMO), the OmniGo was even more useless. A better software package, and better developer support might have changed this, but with the LXs and Journadas I think HP had too many irons in the fire to give the OmniGo the love it needed to be successful.

Nowadays I'd love to have something in this case and with the same keyboard with a good display and a good OS behind it.

I remember there were some folks I knew who were planning on making a sort of open DOS ROM for the OmniGO back when it was still a current system. I have no idea if it actually went anywhere. I don't recall if the OmniGo had its ROM on a board like the 300LX, or if it would have taken swapping a surface mount chip on the board to make the change. The processor would have been a good one for a more or less straight DOS with something like the 200LX's GUI.

As to its present value, I doubt it has much. It's not like it was one of those systems people wanted but couldn't afford, or had and had an attachment to but gave up as technology advanced, like the Psion and 200LX. But I may be wrong. *shrug*

If you can't sell it and don't want it, I'd probably be willing to pay shipping and maybe a few bucks for it to keep it out of the dumpster.
 
You could try asking HP if they have any idea but that information isn't always logged or publicly available. Another thing is the serial number although some vendors enjoy starting serial numbers off at a random point so end users don't say "hey.. I don't want the first one off the shelf! I want one that's been checked for bugs." Also checking production dates if available can give you a hint at least if it was a several year success or a freak of the week design.

One thing I just noticed which does make it interesting is it's a 16Mhz 80186 processor system(ah, ok per HPs site it's a "V5H" processor which they say is a 186 compatible). That's pretty neat, I don't see many systems running off the 186 and I'm not sure all of the speeds they came in but that's pretty quick.

Daniel Hertrich has a site which has links at the bottom which are of interest. Looks like one has a program that may be able to get you a command prompt to disable the auto loading of geos. That'd be quite interesting to play with. Maybe it opens the system up to a computer again?
 
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Yeah they're in that annoying grey period of not being vintage and not getting much attention since they were sorta a non-dos compatible organizer. As we sorta pointed it out earlier it's probably not worth much. Maybe $40 or less but who knows if someone collects palmtops or HPs it may be worth more to them. Per wikipedia's non directly related page on the 200
The serial numbers printed on the HP machines 100LX, 200LX, 1000CX and OG700LX have the following meaning:

XXYWWNNNNN

XX = the country of manufacturing (e.g., SG = Singapore etc)
Y = the year of manufacturing; last digit (e.g., 6 = 1996)
WW = the week of the year of manufacturing
NNNNN = the number of the specific unit manufactured in specified week
Click to expand...

Your serial seems to match that format. SG 6 28 00482 (Singapore, 1996, week 28, unit 482 that week). I wouldn't know if 28 is 28 weeks of making that device or more likely just 28th week of the year and no relation to the number. You could take the release date though and do the math and figure .. well crap, someones information or my interpretation might be wrong but if you truly find a release date or date of the bios or something you may be able to do a rough guesstimate.

If I were you and had some time and interest in the system though, I would see if you can do that text mode hack to get a command prompt and maybe bypass GEOS. Once you're there if you can beam a program onto it maybe you can get it to do something else and it will be much more desirable. You can probably find a few folks trying to hack it with linux too.
 
Thanks, man. Very helpful. I know the first ones were released in September 1996. So mine was probably manufactured in July according to your logic (28th week of the year.
 
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