Well if you thought the Disney Netpal was the weirdest netbook you've ever seen...
You were wrong!
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another video.
Now in today's episode, we're going to be exploring the Tim Hortons netbook,
a thing that exists, and when I found it on eBay I had to buy it.
Of course, Tim Hortons — everybody's favorite Canadian coffee shop chain place
that I've been to a couple of times that one time I was in Canada.
Or maybe you hate Tim Hortons. I don't know.
Whatever you feel about them, this thing exists.
And I gotta thank a viewer on the Disney Netpal video for commenting
and making me aware of this, because I had no idea this was a thing.
And so when I found it on eBay late at night
I decided I had to impulsively buy it,
so thank you to Linode for continuing to support
the weird shenanigans that we get into on this channel.
This was a part of Tim Hortons' Platinum Award program back in 2010, where
if you were an employee at Tim Hortons and your- the location you worked at met
a certain sales quota or whatever, you would be eligible to receive this as a gift.
I don't know if every employee in the restaurant got this,
or if it was only certain positions,
but, yeah you'd get a free netbook if you were eligible.
Back in 2007 they had a portable DVD player — yeah, remember those things?
— so they had a Tim Hortons branded one of those, which I feel like I need to get now;
and according to a Redditor, back a couple years ago
they had Google Home Minis.
2010's item was this netbook, which you might think is really cool
until you realize that this thing runs Windows CE.
Yeah, so it's not even desktop Windows. You can't run desktop Windows applications.
But you can, like, browse the web and, you know, do email...
and... other stuff with it.
This is definitely on the low end of the netbook spectrum,
as you're going to see once we open this up and explore it.
So let's do that.
Here's inside the box.
You have a power adapter here.
Nine volts, one amp. Hooray.
So we'll set that aside.
We have a USB to ethernet adapter which, uh,
interestingly is like a translucent, clear blue plastic.
And this was included in here, because I found
an unboxing video — from like 2009, when this thing
first came out — of, like an unbranded one.
Because from what I understand, this right here is like one of those
unbranded computers that you could buy in bulk and slap a logo on
and like, pass it off as your own thing.
Although I don't know if you'd want to say you created this
'cause I don't think anybody would ever want to go to a Tim Hortons ever again
if they knew that they actually manufactured this.
Right here we have the manual.
This is the "E70006 Series User manual".
They've got the logo up here, but not on the actual computer as it is right here.
And it runs Windows CE 6.0.
Ah, glorious.
Table of contents. Introducing NETBOOK!
"Emergency shutdown"?
"In case your operating system cannot properly turn off, there is
an additional way to shut down your NETBOOK."
It actually tells you how to hold down the power button.
That is hilarious that they have that described in here,
how to like force shut down a computer. But anyway.
Let's uh, go to page number, uh, one here,
and take a look at "Introducing NETBOOK.
Notes for this manual.
Information provided in this manual may varies from model to model,
so your model may not have some of the features described in this book." *laughs*
Uh, so they're basically saying that, uh, they could put anything in this box
and it doesn't have to be, like- all the features in here, you know,
might not actually be on the computer that you have in here.
"This book reserves the right to change any information without any notice-" *laughing*
Okay, so the book can just decide to change its information without notifying you.
Someone can like, I don't know, break into your house at night and swap out the manual,
and you can't do anything about it.
Uh, that is the funniest line I think I've ever rea- the book
reserves the right to change information.
*dissolves in laughter* I mean I assume that they're obviously
talking about like if they release a new version of this and package it with newer models.
But they're not going to send that to every existing customer, like, oh my gosh.
Yeah, we're just going to set the manual aside. Anyways.
Let's take out the glorious Tim Hortons netbook here, and explore this thing and uh, yeah.
See what it's all about. So, first off we've got a lovely film.
*thwiiiiip*
I always feel like I need to do that. It's just the rule of unboxing,
whenever there's a film you just have to bring the thing next
to the microphone and just take it off.
But, yeah, anyways.
So. Before we open this up I want you to imagine, in your head,
the biggest laptop bezel that you've ever seen.
The biggest screen bezel. Keep that image in your head and now take a look at this.
Because this ri- *laughing* This right here is th- like the largest
fricking bezel that I've ever seen in my life.
It is hilarious to me.
Oh my gosh, these buttons! Listen to this!
*click-click-click*
These are so crunchy!
The buttons are like...
Oh! That is not pleasant to use at all!
So, yeah you've got a really tiny track pad here.
Um, the keyboard looks like it's, it's bending in the middle there,
like it's bowed a little bit, so that's great.
Um, I mean I guess the keys have like, travel?
I mean they- they like, press.
Uh, but it's just, I would not want to do anything with this for a long period of time.
In terms of port selection you've got, uh, two USB ports.
So if you want to spare yourself from the keyboard and trackpad
you could plug in, you know, a real, uh, input device.
And you've got an MMC or SD card slot here on the side,
you've got your tiny little power connector,
and you've got, uh, headphone and microphone jacks.
Q3. So I guess, uh, it passed quality control hopefully?
And, yeah, it runs Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Pro according to that sticker right there.
I wonder if there's any battery life left in this thing. Let's see.
[nothing happens]
Well, that answers that — it's stone dead.
Oh look at that, it floats.
*clunk* All right,
we're gonna plug this thing into the wall and we'll-
*laughs* we'll see what's on it.
All right, full disclosure: I've got a keyboard and mouse plugged in so uh, yeah.
I just would much rather use like, actual peripherals.
Yeah we got some icons on the desktop here.
We've got, you know, My Computer, Recycle Bin, um, Internet Explorer.
Okay I assume this is a ca- because we're not on the internet
so this has to be a cached page.
So... that's interesting. So here's an old Google home page.
Uh, yeah, 2020.
Let's connect this thing to the internet so that we can go browsing.
I guess "Wifi power" is how we do that?
Okay well yeah, power on.
Oh my God. *pffft*
What did- *more laughter* Did that just lock up the computer?
I think it did. I can't- Oh my gosh.
That just literally locked up the entire machine, I- I can't do anything.
All right, so we gotta- Oh wait, how do we force power it off?
I gotta get the manual, dangit.
*beep*
So, maybe the Wi-Fi doesn't work,
because evidently powering it on, like, screws up the entire thing.
Let's try to power it back on.
*laughing* So that is,
that is not a good sign right off the bat.
I want to see if there's an optio- because maybe it's already on.
Okay, so here's your, like specifications and info down here.
Okay that's volume and sounds properties.
I find it interesting how like, the windows here?
How they're skinned to look like the Luna theme,
but the Start button and taskbar are not?
Yeah, I've not used this particular version of Windows CE before.
I- I did use, uh, I believe it was 5.0.
Microsoft had a Windows CE emulator
on their website back in like 2009-ish, I believe is when I used it, and
I used to mess around with that.
Okay, that's power properties.
I guess this is probably brightness here.
Yeah, backlight adjust.
Ah, it's the input panel. Okay, so if you want the on-screen keyboard,
to use the, the lovely trackpad to go arou- Can you resi-
Are you serious, you can't resize this?
You're kidding me.
Unless I'm just not getting right in- I'm getting right in the
corner here and it's not- Oh, here. Is there any options here?
Or no, do I just click- or I just right-click on the desktop.
So that's not doing anything.
Go away!
Uh... all right.
I'm just gonna drag this down here and just leave it there for now.
Yeah, it tells you to turn on the "Wifi power" from this option here,
and then an- an option will appear in the system tray here
for, you know, connecting to a wireless network.
So I don't know, let's try this again?
I mean we do have the USB ethernet adapter here that we can use,
but, I mean I would like to just try the Wi-Fi.
All right, here we go.
Oh! I think it worked. Yep, there it is.
All right. It found my network,
I put in my password, I'm currently connecting to it and...
just go to IP information here. Yep, we've got an IP address, okay.
So, yeah. It works, it just, for whatever reason
decided to crash the entire system when we went into "Wifi power" the first time, so.
I mean it's nice that you've got, since there's no like hard toggle
on the machine itself, you do have a way of
turning off Wi-Fi, uh if you, i- if you wanted to.
So yeah, we got this cached Google page, let's reload.
I'm sure it's not going to be able to load the page properly though.
Oh, did it actually- is this a current version of the page?
No, that's still the cached version.
Let's go to The Old Net and see if it can pull that up.
Yeah, so, it actually pulls that up.
Let's see if everything displays properly.
Still loading...
can't really interact with the page here.
Still downloading stuff. 24 items remaining, it's downloading some images...
We got the scroll bars now. Oh, and now it's
just starting to respond to my scroll.
That I did like, a couple seconds ago.
So yeah. I mean of course The Old Net is designed to work with
older browsers, so you'll be able to pull up pages on it just fine.
No real problems at all.
Although it is- oh my gosh. The scrolling is so delayed.
I am not scrolling right now.
Okay, so I'm going to scroll up...
Okay, that was a little bit better.
But still, I mean that's...
Like if I scroll down a lot, I mean that's- *laughs*
It's, e- there's definitely a noticeable delay, for sure.
Yeah, I think that's enough of IE.
Let's just, uh, let's just get out of that so we can remain sane.
Uh, Media Player.
If it wants to start up he- did I actually double click on it?
It's usually supposed to do the like, loading thing when it like, you know,
grows from the center, it pops out.
The reverse of when you close it?
Like that! It's supposed to do that.
Here's Windows CE Messenger.
There we go! Thanks, Media Player.
I am- *laughs* Part of me wants to like...
You know what? Let's just do it. Let me grab an audio file,
put it on here, and we'll test the wonderful speaker quality which — I can tell from
the sound effects — is going to be an amazing experience.
All right, so *laughs* I've got a USB disk with some files
on it, these are two MP3s. And it looks like
they want to open up in Core. I guess this is Core Media Player?
Which I think was that other icon on the desktop, right?
Yeah, this here, this other player.
So, okay we'll just go in there, let's go back into My Computer,
go to the USB disk and,
I- I've got the, uh, the wonderful Pictionary NES title screen music,
uh, produced by the legendary Tim Follin, on here, so.
Let's just open that up and
take a listen to it through these glorious speakers.
♫♪
All right, off to a good start. ♫♪
♫♪
Pffft. ♫♪
♫♪
*repetitive electronic clicks* ♫♪
♫♪
Oh my gosh. It is- *laughs* Okay, so, that's- that's one.
And then, I also got, uh, "At Doom's Gate" on here as well.
♫♪ [DOOM, but small and tinny] ♫♪
I'm trying to find where the speaker is on this thing. ♫♪
♫♪
There they are. ♫♪
♫♪
Yeah, two wonderful speakers on the bottom here. ♫♪
♫♪
[music stops] I mean, they're okay. I'm sure
you're gonna get people that'll be like,
"Oh, you're being too hard on it 'cause this thing was only like however much money."
Like, yeah, I get that, okay.
But, I mean *laughs* what can you say? That's the,
that's the speaker quality that you're gonna get.
And I think that's a video player too, isn't it?
I mean I don't know why there's- You got two media players, right?
Windows Media Player and then this Core player.
And I- I think this might be, like let's go to-
Well, let's see what this is first of all.
The Core Pocket Media Player. Okay so,
I assume this is something that wouldn't come with, uh, Windows?
Oh yeah, GNU GPL, yeah. Oh, this ain't coming with Windows at all.
So yeah, this thing could play back video if you wanted to, I don't know,
watch a movie on this thing.
Because that sounds like so much fun.
And then you've got a recorder.
Yeah, we could, we could record a nice- I assume that little
pinhole here is the microphone.
Or maybe you would need- maybe there is no internal microphone,
you would have to plug one in.
[louder] Testing...
WOOO!
[normal] Okay, we'll stop that, and we'll play it back.
[silence...]
All right, so I think you need to have a
microphone plugged in to make that work.
So... yeah, no internal microphone...
I mean, yeah. I wouldn't really want to use this as a content creation device.
But I guess if it's all you had?
I mean, you could do some stuff with it. You could record some audio files.
But yeah, those are all the programs on here. Oh and we got WordPad as well.
Microsoft WordPad — which is
not the same as the Wordpad like write.exe on, on Windows obviously.
This is going to be more like Pocket Word, um. So, you know,
"HELLO WORLD."
So, you know. *squeak*
Oh my gosh. *laughs*
That sound effect I re- *laughing* I remember that,
I remember that from the Windows CE simulator,
or emulator rather, that I messed around with.
We're not going to bother saving that.
But yeah, I think, uh, this is a document that I made earlier on.
Um, so yeah. There's that.
There's nothing on here like, from the previous owner.
I already went into the My Documents folder and everything.
Let's go to the Help documentation here.
All right, so we got help for Messenger and WordPad.
That's it? Uh, okay. *laughs*
We've got help for Messenger and WordPad. That's the only thing on here.
So... yeah, it's pretty much stock Windows CE6, as far as I can tell.
Of course with the- No, I don't want to launch IE, get out of here, no.
Noo.
But yeah, with the exception of these programs over here, like,
this Wifi Power thing certainly didn't come with every Windows CE6 device.
It's specific to the Wi-Fi hardware that's in here.
I just find it really funny how it crashed the system the first time?
And, I mean... calling it a netbook?
I- I guess it definitely fits that definition but,
I usually associate netbook with still running like, a desktop-class operating system.
Like Windows, you know, full-fledged Windows.
So, if you guys want to see the video on the Disney Netpal, I'll have that link down below
and while you're down there, why don't you check out today's video sponsor, Linode?
Because they do a lot more than help me buy
weird tech like this to show you guys on the channel.
In fact, they specialize in Cloud Computing Services.
So if you ever wanted to host a website or a game server,
they're definitely worth a look.
And with their One-Click App Marketplace, you can get your server up and running
quickly, even if you're not an expert.
Just scroll through a list of game servers
and applications like WordPress, Minecraft, Plex, or even Nextcloud,
and you can get set up in just a couple of clicks.
Even better, as a thank you for watching this video,
Linode is giving everybody watching right now a free $100 credit
as long as you sign up for a new account through my link in the video description.
It's a great way to get started with Cloud Computing,
and I really appreciate Linode's continued support of
tech shenanigans like this on the channel.
So be sure to check them out,
and huge thanks again to Linode for making today's episode possible.
Well, I think that about does it, guys.
That is the Tim Hortons Windows CE thing that, uh, that exists for some reason, so.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
If you did, be sure to give it a thumbs up, get subscribed, all that good stuff.
And, as always, I want to thank you all so much for watching and
I'll see you — stop fricking dimming! — in
the next video.
♫♪
◢ Captioned by: Pineapples Foster Media Services ◣ ◹ pineapples.foster@gmail.com ◸