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!

Complete?

[chiapetofborg]

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."

Shoddy reporting a.k.a get your timelines straight

[crumbz]

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.

Re:And as ever, Apple creates the current paradigm

[tabkey12]

I mean what I wrote!

Look at this timeline [mobilepcmag.com] and tell me who had the idea first.

Re:Learn something every day

[kaszeta]

I *loved* IBM's butterfly keyboard

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.

Re:And as ever, Apple creates the current paradigm

[Ohreally_factor]

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).

I can't believe they missed out...

[BigZee]

the DG/One http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/dg-1/ [digibarn.com]. 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!

Some things missing from the article

[Anonymous Coward]

The Radio Shack Pocket Computer, which had a miniature keyboard, a one-line display, and all of 1k of memory. It was about $200 and released in 1981.

The Toshiba T3100, with its gas plasma display, had a clamshell design three years before the NEC ultralight (it also weighed 15 pounds instead of the NEC's 4.5 pounds).

Re:Shoddy reporting a.k.a get your timelines strai

[skroob]

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.

Re:OQO?

[ccnull]

You're in luck, in addition to this fine, fine feature, we have a full review of the OQO [mobilepcmag.com] on Mobile PC as well. Cheers.

Christopher Null
Editor in Chief
Mobile PC

No mention of Psion?

[gidds]

Not only did they pioneer handhelds, their Series 7 was ahead of the subnotebook game. And I hope I don't have to mention the 5mx again...

Mac PORTABLE Apple's worst laptop?

[fritter]

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.

Re:No TRS-80's?

[Anonymous Coward]

Response from article author:

FROM: Christopher Null | Save Address
DATE: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 10:09:46 -0800
TO:
SUBJECT: RE: notebook article

Thanks for the note -- the 100 is so similar to the Epson (and both were so
successful) that I couldn't devote a lot of space to each of them... But the
Epson came first, so I had to go with that one... PLUS: Sweet built-in
printer!

CN

---
Christopher Null / Editor in Chief, Mobile PC
[e-mail] / 415-656-8349
150 North Hill Drive, Suite 40
Brisbane, CA 94005
www.mobilepcmag.com

Re:And as ever, Apple creates the current paradigm

[Trurl's Machine]

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).

The first IBM PC Model...

[pblaker99]

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. [ibm.com].

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 [ibm.com], you will see just how portable that was.