[♪ Music Intro ♪ and Keyboard Typing noises]
Say hello to the Gateway 2000 Solo 2200 Model S5-166!
And this cost $5,399 US dollars in March of 1997 or around $8,073, adjusted for inflation, in 2017.
When this was new, it truly was one of the best laptops that money could buy.
[♪ Windows 95 Startup Chime ♪]
Well, for a few months, at least.
This kind of machine is what I imagine whenever I hear the term "Moore's Law."
And in case you're not familiar with that, it is an idea that came from Intel co-founder Gordon Moore.
And his observation that
"the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years."
That was definitely the case with the Solo 2200;
in fact, just five months later, the 9100 was available from Gateway for the same price and it was better in every way.
And by 18 months, or two years, or whatever, it was completely obsolete.
Nevertheless, the Gateway Solo 2000 series of laptops were billed as desktop replacements
allowing for "More Computing, More Places!"
[♪ Jingle ♪] Commercial: "More Computing, More Places.
More Computing, More Places.
Finally have more computing in more places..."
LGR: Man, they really doubled-down on that tagline.
Anyway, the 2200 was one of the early laptops to feature the brand-new Pentium MMX CPU,
boasting near desktop performance that you could carry with you and only weighing 7 pounds.
It was more than good enough for your average consumer and very much suited the business needs of business users.
As well as being the computer of choice for the Dakota Keykeeper guy
as used in Gateway 2000 advertising. I don't know exactly why,
but you know, whatever, Solo 2200, take it in the snow and cabins and stuff.
But yeah, the Pentium MMX processor was the big deal with this particular laptop.
It was new and it was exciting, and in case you're not familiar with what exactly made it so,
these MMX processors featured a more advanced CPU core, larger L1 cache, and 57 additions to the x86 instruction set,
allowing it to outperform even the faster Pentium processors and even the Pentium Pro,
which meant you had speedier applications and games, especially when they supported the MMX instructions.
PC game developers and publishers really leapt onto the MMX bandwagon around 1997,
with Ubisoft's POD being one of the first games to do this, running nicely with no 3D acceleration at all.
In fact, the Solo 2200 is a very solid machine for DOS and Windows 95 gaming,
with great sound and video support in Windows and DOS modes. Just listen to Tyrian's OPL3 soundtrack through this.
[♪ Tyrian - Return me to Savara ♪]
The biggest problem here is that you're stuck with black borders for low-res on the LCD panel
unless you wanna deal with ugly non-integer graphics scaling through software,
or, of course, you could just plug it into a CRT and it's gonna look fine.
This is true across the whole range of systems in the Gateway Solo 2XXX line,
including this 2100 system that I also happen to have because why not?
This was one of the lower-end models, although externally, these systems are almost completely the same.
It's just on the lower-end; they started at $2,299,
which came with a Pentium 120 megahertz and 16 megs of RAM, among other lower specs.
But back to the 2200 and what you got with for 5 and a half thousand dollars after tax in '97:
Which starts with a 166 megahertz Pentium MMX CPU,
Windows 95 as an operating system with a whole bunch of bundled software for Microsoft, Coral, and others,
80 megabytes of RAM, yes, that's right!
80 megs, which was absolutely genuinely massive in '97, with most systems still peaking at 32.
A respectable 2.1 gigabyte 4200 RPM IDE hard drive,
a 2 megabyte SVGA graphics chipset,
a 16-bit integrated wavetable soundchip and stereo speakers (which are annoyingly covered up by your hands when you're typing),
a couple of Zoom Video-compatible PCMCIA slots with a 28.8 Data/Fax dial-up modem card included,
a 4 megabits per second infrared port for doing wireless printing and such,
topped off with a 12.1 inch active matrix LCD panel, with an 800x600 native resolution.
And of course, you had optical and magnetic storage, with an 8x speed CD-ROM drive and a 1.44 megabyte 3½ inch floppy drive.
And these were actually plugged into a modular bay, which meant that you could only have either the CD-ROM or the floppy drive at the same time.
Unless you were to use an external drive in addition to these. And pretty awesomely, that same bay could also accept
a second lithium ion battery pack to double your battery life from 2 hours all the way up 'till 4, holy crap!
And if that wasn't enough of a desktop replacement, they sold a variety of docks and port extenders,
most of them being rather small, but one at least being large enough to fit multiple expansion cards.
Yeah, that's right! Full size PC expansion cards! Delightful and absurd!
Yeah, alright, so maybe this all sounds a little bit silly today and really, it is.
There's nothing that particularly special about these machines now and
really, they can be found for pretty cheap on eBay. I got each of these for like, $30 total.
But, to me, I just like Gateway 2000 laptops, the Solo line in particular, they just always impressed me when I was a kid.
I mean, that massive 12.1 inch active matrix panel, I mean, that thing just looked amazing!
I know it doesn't look great in this particular shot because camera issues.
And beyond the nostalgia factor, I just think it's interesting to look at a computer like this that was so ridiculously expensive when it launched
and was so quickly replaced by stuff that was cheaper and way better,
which just really represents the rapid obsolescence of PCs in the late 1990s and beyond.
[♪ Music Outro ♪]
And if you enjoyed this look at a little old computer, then perhaps you would like some of my other videos.
I do similar stuff every Monday and Friday, here on LGR, so subscribe if you would like.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.