Sounds similar to one of many desk computers built in the early eighties. For a while the fancy wooden computer case was seen as a status symbol with the desk model being the ultimate form. Usually these were CP/M machines with some model of dumb terminal sitting on top serving as monitor and keyboard. No cooling fans needed on those low-powered machines. However, the silence of the CPU was more than compensated for by the dot-matrix printer.
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It appears laptop computers are very cheap in San Francisco: http://www.sfindependent.com/article/index.cfm/i/1 00604n_laptops
Chad - wasn't that the stuff that resulted from keypunching Hollerith cards? The stuff on the edges of the printout we called "perfory".
Sounds similar to one of many desk computers built in the early eighties. For a while the fancy wooden computer case was seen as a status symbol with the desk model being the ultimate form. Usually these were CP/M machines with some model of dumb terminal sitting on top serving as monitor and keyboard. No cooling fans needed on those low-powered machines. However, the silence of the CPU was more than compensated for by the dot-matrix printer.