Non-backlit grayscale LCD No moving-parts. Windows/Word/Excel built into ROM. 16 MHz 386sx processor.
Since the NiMH battery pack from HP died, I've been using it with four ordinary AA batteries, with which it runs a LONG time.
If there was a serious market for a long-life portable with full-sized keyboard, it could also be a very low-cost system, since it would have a high quality non-backlit grayscale display.
Surprisingly, nobody ever thinks of usability versus battery life for a full-sized keyboard unit anymore. So every portable made is either tiny to the point of useless for regular writing/computing, or so screaming-fricking-loaded with crap to make it as powerful as a 'desktop' machine that it's battery life is pathetic.
Actually, Apple did a massive bellyflop with the Macintosh Portable, then had Sony's design team come in and rescue them with the redesign that became the Powerbook 100.
The Mac Portable was a huge heavy disaster, similar in many regards to IBM's first 'Laptop', the PC Convertible.
Disclaimer: I own a Powerbook 165c, it's a great little machine. Also have a PC Convertible. Would pick the Mac over it anyday. But the machine that RULED in that era was the Toshiba 1000.
I started out on the TI SR-56, which was the lower-end brother of the SR-52. I always envied the magnetic card r/w on the SR-52, but it was out of my high school student budget at the time. Then I switched to HP and never looked back.
I say that it would be an appropriate end for the company that bought DejaNews and is continuously screwing with the useful Usenet archive tool that it once represented.
Then again, Deja.com 'the place for consumers to search for product info' was an abomination in the middle years before the Google takeover.
Why do all the good Internet resources gradually turn to shit?
There sure as heck aren't many tech-literate people here these days.
I mean, comeon. The old days are gone. It's about colored lights in a tricked out see-through case, in todays 'Phillips Screwdriver Pilot' techno world.
But it's a lot easier to keep a company productive if there are 48 out of 50 personal workstations up and running than if all 50 people are debilitated because the App Server is down.
This, in spite of the way so many IT people are chiming in about it, is MORE than an IT issue. It is NOT about what makes life easier for the IT Staff.
Tell me about it! I remember the groan of dismay that would cascade through the cubicle farm when the mini crashed and everybody lost everything they were working on at the time.
The 'PC Revolution' in business took place in spite of the IT Goons of the time. The IT people had their mainframe, and issued greenscreens and account to a few select people. If a manager needed a report, he filled out a form, put in on the ledge of the half-door (the door to the 'glass room' where he wasn't allowed to enter) and hoped there would be a big 4" thick printout on greenbar paper for him by the time he needed the data.
Business got a big boost in productivity when the 'priesthood' of IT was taken down a bunch of notches. The first PCs inside many companies were bought by maverick managers and execs who totally circumvented the draconian 'IT Policy' and the white-coats in IT.
These early machines weren't even networked. This was the era of sneakernet, which evolved into the Zip-drive sneakernet, etc. The Networking of the PCs in many businesses came much later.
If you have one 10-user machine that has 1 hour of downtime per year, and 10 1-user machines that have 1 hour of downtime per year, you have, in both cases, 10 man-hours of downtime.
When a 10 user department is completely unable to do their work it's considered far more serious than one or two machines in the workgroup being down.
A bunch of single processer machines, each with its own board, memory, IO, fans, footprint and power supply (w/ AC-DC transformer) is neccessarily more "wasteful" in terms of resources than a WTS running on an SMP machine.
I think you've forgotten that the single-user workstation has exactly the same set of hardware in it as the 'terminal' except the 'terminal' doesn't have a hard drive.
Businesses don't buy 'whitebox' systems and plug all the parts together themselves. Their 'full workstation' system is an integrated whole from a single vendor, just like a terminal is, but minus the fact that the terminal is dependent on a server staying up and responsive.
I think his point was that it's easier to keep 48 of the machines up and running than one server.
Single-point-of-failure solutions are bad. Shutting down a whole office because the server is out is far worse than having lazy PC Tech service the one or two single-user machine outages that happen from time to time.
Possibly he was there. But then he started rambling on about 'production models requiring a metal frame' and it becomes unclear what the HECK he was talking about.
The Apple 1 was shipped as a populated circuit board in a cardboard shipping box. Soldering was required to make it 'go.'
The Apple I didn't have a case. It was shipped as a bare circuit board. In fact, it didn't have a power-transformer as shipped, either. Because the weight of the transformer (for a linear regulated power supply) would have greatly increased shipping costs. And anybody capable of bringing up an Apple I was gonna be somebody who could source their own AC line transformer.
Oh, and it also didn't have a keyboard. And there was a 'scratchpad' area near the solder pads for the keyboard input, so that you could add in inverter ICs if your parallel-strobed keyboard of choice used negative logic.
In 1976 the FCC didn't require a heck of a lot of shielding for 'production model' home computers. They swooped down on Comdex years later, putting tags all over systems in booths. Which killed the TRS-80 Model 1, for instance.
Why screw around with medium-power-burning tech? What you're talking about would only reduce battery life by 3/4. Use carbon arc lamps and turn every bootup into a 'flash' followed by the low power alert.
maybe some VU meters.
To measure what? Are you talking about a riced-out laptop here??
Slashdot Mirror
Pick one up on eBay. They don't go for that much, and you'll not regret it.
The closest I have come is my HP Omnibook 300.
It accomplishes a long battery life by:
Non-backlit grayscale LCD
No moving-parts. Windows/Word/Excel built into ROM.
16 MHz 386sx processor.
Since the NiMH battery pack from HP died, I've been using it with four ordinary AA batteries, with which it runs a LONG time.
If there was a serious market for a long-life portable with full-sized keyboard, it could also be a very low-cost system, since it would have a high quality non-backlit grayscale display.
Surprisingly, nobody ever thinks of usability versus battery life for a full-sized keyboard unit anymore. So every portable made is either tiny to the point of useless for regular writing/computing, or so screaming-fricking-loaded with crap to make it as powerful as a 'desktop' machine that it's battery life is pathetic.
The Mac portable was considerably heavier than the good third-party laptops available from Zenith, Toshiba, etc.
People who were wholly wedded to the Mac probably didn't notice the bad press, though.
My SE/30 is STILL loaded in it's big soft carrying case, with shoulder strap. I should go out with it more often.
Actually, Apple did a massive bellyflop with the Macintosh Portable, then had Sony's design team come in and rescue them with the redesign that became the Powerbook 100.
The Mac Portable was a huge heavy disaster, similar in many regards to IBM's first 'Laptop', the PC Convertible.
Disclaimer: I own a Powerbook 165c, it's a great little machine. Also have a PC Convertible. Would pick the Mac over it anyday. But the machine that RULED in that era was the Toshiba 1000.
I got taunted at a LUG back in about 1997 for bringing in my Model 100 to take notes with.
If I recall correctly it's an old Navy saying:
If it Moves Salute it.
If it doesn't move, Paint it.
I've witnessed control-freaks of dubious intelligence 'delete all that extra crap' on the hard drive to 'get more space.'
It's fun to watch them spin their wheels and sputter when they're done totally futzing up their computer.
The SuSe versioning is the 'logical' answer.
Your second answer, which has to do with marketing, is probably the main reason.
This is no different than Windows NT 'magically' starting at version 3.1 I suppose.
I started out on the TI SR-56, which was the lower-end brother of the SR-52. I always envied the magnetic card r/w on the SR-52, but it was out of my high school student budget at the time. Then I switched to HP and never looked back.
Novell Linux Desktop 10?
When did the nine previous versions come out?
I say that it would be an appropriate end for the company that bought DejaNews and is continuously screwing with the useful Usenet archive tool that it once represented.
Then again, Deja.com 'the place for consumers to search for product info' was an abomination in the middle years before the Google takeover.
Why do all the good Internet resources gradually turn to shit?
There sure as heck aren't many tech-literate people here these days.
I mean, comeon. The old days are gone. It's about colored lights in a tricked out see-through case, in todays 'Phillips Screwdriver Pilot' techno world.
But it's a lot easier to keep a company productive if there are 48 out of 50 personal workstations up and running than if all 50 people are debilitated because the App Server is down.
This, in spite of the way so many IT people are chiming in about it, is MORE than an IT issue. It is NOT about what makes life easier for the IT Staff.
A 'single point of failure' for a single employee is nowhere near as severe as a 'single point of failure' for an entire department.
Well, since the $500 SCSI drive has 148 people hitting on it steady 8 hours a day, we might have a draw.
Whoah! Now you're changed the scenario, from 'one big server' to 'a whole cluster of redundant servers.'
Why not say that up front?
Also, the mainframe word processor kinda sucked.
Tell me about it! I remember the groan of dismay that would cascade through the cubicle farm when the mini crashed and everybody lost everything they were working on at the time.
MIS guys like central control, though.
The 'PC Revolution' in business took place in spite of the IT Goons of the time. The IT people had their mainframe, and issued greenscreens and account to a few select people. If a manager needed a report, he filled out a form, put in on the ledge of the half-door (the door to the 'glass room' where he wasn't allowed to enter) and hoped there would be a big 4" thick printout on greenbar paper for him by the time he needed the data.
Business got a big boost in productivity when the 'priesthood' of IT was taken down a bunch of notches. The first PCs inside many companies were bought by maverick managers and execs who totally circumvented the draconian 'IT Policy' and the white-coats in IT.
These early machines weren't even networked. This was the era of sneakernet, which evolved into the Zip-drive sneakernet, etc. The Networking of the PCs in many businesses came much later.
If you have one 10-user machine that has 1 hour of downtime per year, and 10 1-user machines that have 1 hour of downtime per year, you have, in both cases, 10 man-hours of downtime.
When a 10 user department is completely unable to do their work it's considered far more serious than one or two machines in the workgroup being down.
A bunch of single processer machines, each with its own board, memory, IO, fans, footprint and power supply (w/ AC-DC transformer) is neccessarily more "wasteful" in terms of resources than a WTS running on an SMP machine.
I think you've forgotten that the single-user workstation has exactly the same set of hardware in it as the 'terminal' except the 'terminal' doesn't have a hard drive.
Businesses don't buy 'whitebox' systems and plug all the parts together themselves. Their 'full workstation' system is an integrated whole from a single vendor, just like a terminal is, but minus the fact that the terminal is dependent on a server staying up and responsive.
I think his point was that it's easier to keep 48 of the machines up and running than one server.
Single-point-of-failure solutions are bad. Shutting down a whole office because the server is out is far worse than having lazy PC Tech service the one or two single-user machine outages that happen from time to time.
Possibly he was there. But then he started rambling on about 'production models requiring a metal frame' and it becomes unclear what the HECK he was talking about.
The Apple 1 was shipped as a populated circuit board in a cardboard shipping box. Soldering was required to make it 'go.'
The Apple I didn't have a case. It was shipped as a bare circuit board. In fact, it didn't have a power-transformer as shipped, either. Because the weight of the transformer (for a linear regulated power supply) would have greatly increased shipping costs. And anybody capable of bringing up an Apple I was gonna be somebody who could source their own AC line transformer.
Oh, and it also didn't have a keyboard. And there was a 'scratchpad' area near the solder pads for the keyboard input, so that you could add in inverter ICs if your parallel-strobed keyboard of choice used negative logic.
In 1976 the FCC didn't require a heck of a lot of shielding for 'production model' home computers. They swooped down on Comdex years later, putting tags all over systems in booths. Which killed the TRS-80 Model 1, for instance.
Neon bulbs for power/HD
Why screw around with medium-power-burning tech? What you're talking about would only reduce battery life by 3/4. Use carbon arc lamps and turn every bootup into a 'flash' followed by the low power alert.
maybe some VU meters.
To measure what? Are you talking about a riced-out laptop here??