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A History of Portable Computing
PCM2 writes "MobilePC magazine is running an exhaustive history of portable computers, going all the way from the IBM Portable 5100 to last year's OQO. Do you remember the three-pound Epson HX-20 from 1982 that boasted a 50-hour battery life? Or that the first color portable came from Commodore? Interesting stuff." They have the compaq luggable I learned BASIC on in middle school in the 80s. 28lbs of power baby!
I would include them as well in the list.
I think the military definition of portable is if two people can move it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
No sig for now.
What about the Model 100/102/200? Those were some pretty good computers, and iirc sold quite well.
or at least it was my first laptop, and I have many fond memories of downloading games off of a bbs on a 300bps modem
Extra points if you post from the OQO.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
Anyone remember the good old UNIVAC PDA?
Back then, it was considered clever to quip, "Is that a UNIVAC in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Pioneering nerds may not have had Starbucks tables to occupy with their PowerBooks for hours on end
Nerds? Starbucks and powerbooks don't remind me of nerds. They remind me of metrosexuals.
I think every laptop I have ever owned is basically a very similar variant of that simple design! Way to go Apple.
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
They make no mention of modern laptops and their current capapbilities. They mention Mac Laptops, and jump straight into the newfangled devices that aren't laptops (a la tablet PCs...), but they make no mention of current "desktop replacements."
They have the compaq luggable I learned BASIC on in middle school in the 80s.
I remember being a wee kid, and doing some simple programming on an 80s Compaq behemoth as well. I had a floppy disk (5 1/4", of course) that held roughly 20-30 games on it. Nothing like launching up Frogger and staring at the miniscule 6"x6" green-monochrome screen for hours. I'm surprised I don't wear glasses today.
Anyhow, imagine my surprise when I took a job a few years back, and noticed that we are using said Compaq as a status/communications monitor in one of our test machines.
Good times.
And i quote from the article, "ThinkPads were red hot, but IBM was still a corporate brand for corporate users. College kids and aspiring hackers wanted portables, too: They bought the Apple PowerBook. Apple had just come off one of the worst beatings in computer history: The Newton had bombed miserably, and the 16-pound Macintosh Portable (see "The Worst Notebooks of All Time") was a laughingstock of computing."
Considering that the Newton wasn't released until 1993, it seems difficult to believe that it preceded the Powerbook 100. Mobile PC needs an editor who can fact check.
That there color's called "amber", son. ;-)
Here's an 1802 based handheld computer from 25 years ago, complete with specs and schematics.
Where can I buy a notebook with > 8 hr battery life?
I'd give up the CD/DVD, the color screen, the ghz proc. I'd give up most things to get a decent battery life. Now the ideal would be about 40hrs.
Any ideas?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Somewhat off topic, but, a neat side bar to the story would be "how long can you compute with out being plugged in".
Seems that batteries havnt really improved much in the last 20 yrs. The only thing that seems to have greatly improved is power-consumption with better, low power chip designs.
I wonder how long an old Apple ][e could run if it was re-designed with low power components? (not that I'd want to actually use it!) Could I run it for a couple days on flash-light batteries?
Anyone have any info on how many amps the old "Lugable" PCs would draw?
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
.. I remember those hot, sweaty days, at the back of the typing class, me and the fold-up newly-donated Osborne sitting together, watching the sweaty backs of all the schoolgirls in class adjusting their bra-straps .. hooh boy .. I was 15, the only guy in the class of 30, and I selected the class because of the Osbourne straight up, without even thinking, ignoring the other 'none of my friends are gonna take it' factor completely, honest. My first day of class, when I realized it was just me and pretty much every hot chick in my year, *plus* the Osbourne sitting there for me to hack on, every afternoon ..
.. highest accuracy, highest rate, document writing, etc. The Osbourne was 'special', because it wasn't really typewriter-standard keys, or so the teacher said, bless her .. but it wasn't long until it was just me n' Wordstar, totally horny for each other, watching sweet teenage girls of my year doing their typing drills on crappy old hard-core typewriters, in the desert sun, paper, ink and sweat. In uniform.
...
..
I was only allowed to touch 'the wordprocessor' because I'd already mastered the drills and homekeys of every other typewriter in the class (Typing A, Senior High School)
Good times, good times
I'd love to have an Osborne around, but alas the oldest computer I ever owned that I still have is a lowly Oric-1, whose treasured spot in a box in the attic at home is right next to the "Local Boy Wins in State Typing Championship" newspaper article, cheesy photo and all
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yep, I have two of these, actually. One I just purchased. They both are in 100% working order, though the first one has a home-made wood and aluminum handle on it, and I'm still looking for another keyboard cable. They both have JiffyDOS, and system reset buttons (to accompany the serial reset buttons). Great little machines. Was thinking about converting one to an internal LCD if I can do it without making any permanent mods to the inside of it.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Look at this timeline and tell me who had the idea first.
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
It doesnt even mention Strongbad's Lappy 512..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I hated it, since I a bunch of them in my department I was respsonsible for. Two main reasons: (1) The butterfly mechanism was somewhat fragile, and (2) any PCMCIA peripherals that stuck out from the slot (network adapaters in particular) couldn't stick up even the slightest bit from the slot, or the butterfly action and the PCMCIA device interfered.
I thought my Timex Sinclair was pretty portable.
Carrying around a TV was harsh though.
Timex Sinclair Emulator
Timex Sinclair Picture
"well, you see, son, daddy has a computer. And mommy has a data center."
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Look at this timeline and tell me who had the idea first.
Uh, Sony? They designed and manufactured the 100 for Apple (to Apple's specs, of course).
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
10.00 Ghz 2000MB Ram and 30000GB HD AND, it runs DOS, wohoo!
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
the DG/One http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/dg-1/.
It may not qualify as 'clam shell' due to having it's hinge more toward the centre but to my mind it set the design that all others followed. It was a full laptop pc in 1983!
The "degaussing slot." Located above the built-in floppy drive (or was it below?), this space provides an inviting location to store your floppies when you're on the move. What they didn't tell you is that any floppy left in that space when the unit gets turned on has a better than average probability of being wiped by the degaussing circuit of the monitor.
Here come da fudge!
I remember a mate of mine used to take his Amiga 600 with him everywhere in a rucksack. Pretty cool little machine that...
that what? Do we have to wait for Timothy's dupe to get this cliff hanger resolved? Stay tuned for the next exciting dupe on "As the Slash Dots"?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
What's more, they also say that Apple stole the GUI and the mouse from Xerox, which is completely false. Anyone who'd done the slightest fact-checking beyond "well my buddy Bob on the interweb told me" wouldn't make mistakes like these. I also don't remember the Portable being a laughingstock. It was big and heavy, yes, but so were ALL the portable machines of that time.
This guy is their Editor-in-Chief too.
The IBM 5100 is the fav' of time travelers!
Visit, http://www.johntitor.com/ to see why!
That said, the reason he states is The 5100 has the ability to easily translate between the old IBM code, APL, BASIC and (with a few tweaks in 1975) UNIX.
This makes little sense to me, it can translate between 2 languages and an operating system? Perhaps this is a hoax *grin* Still, hundreds have read this guys postings, and he has been the topic of coast2coast more than once. The inconsistencies in his story lead little credence to his claims, as for Art Bell's show, that's for you to decide.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
No idea what the original battery was like - I had to build my own battery from old cellphone ni-cads, and had to mod the case a bit to get it all to fit. I also managed to get the docking station (where you could add EISA cards and such). But the real treat was the keyboard...
It was detatchable! You could detatch the keyboard and it had a cord so you could position it how you wanted. In reality, it used a PS/2-style mini-connector (not sure how compatible it really was with PS/2 stuff), so the keyboard was like a mini-keyboard of sorts.
It was a great computer, and I played around with it and such a lot - even managed to use a form of Linux on it (my first Linux experience - it was Monkey Linux which ran on top of the DOS filesystem!)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The NEC computer looks pretty much the same, and that was before.
If the paradigm is fold up screen, then the GRID is the first one like that.
If the paradigm is the computer being stored under the keyboard, instead of in back of it, then they probably get the credit.
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Another trip down memory lane. For good grades in 8th grade I recieved my first computer, an Epson Geneva PX-8 bought from a DAK catalog. I feel so old.
The Mac Portable sucked, but at least you could look at it and know right away it was awful. I can't believe the PowerBook 5300 didn't make their "Worst laptops ever" list - other than being slow, unstable, and stylistically a step back from the previous PBs, they would actually burst into flames sometimes due to a defective battery - a friend of mine personally saw one start to melt on a woman's desk. I mean, bad performance and too much weight is one thing, but when your laptop starts trying to actively murder you, it seems like it deserves a special place in the annals of portable history.
Not only that, but the Newton didn't really "bomb". They sold over 100,000 units in the first year - far more units than Apple IIs or Macs in their first years of introduction.
The reason why so many people think it "bombed" was because they spent too long a time and too much money on R&D, they set their expectations too high, and later when the Palm Pilot entered the market, they looked bad by comparison. Before the Pilot came out, they were the best selling PDA by far.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
> It wasn't until 1989 that someone had the bright idea that the power of a luggable and the portability of a laptop didn't have to be mutually exclusive.
:) Borland Turbo C and FoxBase worked too. Batteries were completely dead in 1996.
Ten years ago, I owned an old PC laptop manufactured in 1987. I don't remember its name but in was 8088 (4.77 MHz) equipped with 512k of RAM and 720k 3.5'' floppy drive. The last OS that worked on it was MS DOS 6.22. Qbasic was amazing
Uh, Sony? They designed and manufactured the 100 for Apple (to Apple's specs, of course).
Manufactured, yes. Designed - not at all. It was designed by Robert Brunner, head of Apple Design Group of that day. He scored many awards for his powerbooks (powerbook 500 was also a huge success).
An interesting article. Unfortunately, I found it to be very lacking. In 1992, I was a dirt poor college student. Strapped for cash, but needing a computer, I bought a KayPro portable computer. It had a 10MB hard drive and ran MS-DOS. Total cost at the time was $100.00 used. It was the first DOS-based computer I owned.
It's also sad that the Atari Portfolio wasn't mentioned. I'm not sure when it actually sold (sometime between 1997 and 1989). However, at 15.87 ounces with batteries and running a DOS compatible operating system, I'd say this piece of technology should stand out! A bit of notoriety: It was used in Terminator 2 when John Connor hacked an ATM. Full specs can be found at old-computers.com with a nice blurb at atarimuseum.com
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Apple powerbook shouldn't even be on the list. It looks just like a thinkpad. Hardly innovative. Reminds me of an article on /. awhile ago that rated the powerbook 100 as the best portable gadget ever. Give me a break. The only interesting thing about the powerbook 100 is that people who liked MacOS back then finally got a portable to run it on.
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continued the series started with the model 5100 from the article. Its model number was the 5150. You can find out more about this series of IBM computers at the IBM Archives..
The IBM 5110 was the second small IBM computer I worked on back in the 70's and I can remember the IBM rep pulling the 8" disk drives out of the back of his station wagon so we could use them on one occasion. If you look at the picture at IBM 5110, you will see just how portable that was.