H i everyone,

I thought I’d join this group after what can only be described as a proper archaeological dig through my parents’ loft, only to discover a veritable treasure trove of my former life buried under some dusty old rugs since the tail end of ’99.

I’ve long since left home, wife, kids and the rest.. and assumed my parents had turned the loft into nothing more than a seasonal graveyard for Christmas decorations. What I’ve found was essentially my entire existence from birth to young adulthood, preserved like some sort of accidental museum exhibit. Star Wars sets and figures,masters of the universe, awful photos of when I thought I was cool 😎

Beneath these rugs were my laptops from 1995 to 2003. Back in my twenties I landed a good job during the dot com boom and splashed out on computers, laptops, holidays and cars for absolutely no other reason, but to spend money. Anyway. The remarkable thing is, these old work laptops look like they’ve barely left the shop floor. No battle scars, no yellowing plastic, no worn-down trackpad, they’re absolutely mint.

Miraculously they have all switched on! This first one a 1998 HP Omnibook XE2, last shutdown: July 2001, frozen like a time capsule with software of that time, just before 9/11, when computing was a simpler, more innocent affair.

So here I am with a few pristine pieces of computing history, wondering if anyone’s got thoughts on what this one might be worth, or if I’m just being sentimental about old tat. Either way, it’s a proper time machine, just like the others - for me at-least!

I’ll post the others if anyone is interested

Cheers3