Inside the TRS-80 Model 100

enalbro writes "What wouldn't you give for a laptop that starts instantly, weighs 3 pounds and gets 20 hours of battery life? That's the TRS-80 Model 100 in a nutshell. Granted, it displays only 8 lines of text and has just 28 kilobytes of memory, but it's a classic, the first truly popular portable in the U.S. At PC World we have a teardown that'll show you the guts of this featherweight champ." And, like many of the best things in life, it's powered by AA batteries (as is the Apple eMate).

Comments

Re:GK Chesterton

[Applekid]

With the new crop of machines like the EEE PC it seems that we're moving back to small, power-efficient machines as opposed to huge hulkers. People have been predicting the death of the hulker desktop now for what, 10 years? Sure the move to smaller and efficient is what's going to make computing truly ubiquitous by hiding them everywhere (well, that and economics), but full-sized machines will always have more power and reflect the state-of-the-art computing muscle the industry has to offer.

But muscle isn't everything? Lalalala, I can't hear you. ;)

Re:I still have mine

[fishbowl]

>20 hours, on 4 AA batteries. No proprietary battery.

Do not underestimate the impact of this, on its popularity.
One big reason the Model 100 was so popular among journalists was
the extremely good (even for now) battery life, together with the
fact that the AA battery is something that you'd be able to get in
even some very remote places.