The Osborne 1
The first successful portable computer was the Osborne 1, created by computer book author and publisher Adam Osborne in 1981. Adam believed that in order for personal computers to be successful, they must be portable.
His design for the Osborne 1 portable computer was ambitious for the time: The thing needed to fit under an airline seat — and this was years before anyone would even dream of using a computer on an airplane.
The Osborne 1 portable computer, shown in Figure 1-1, was a whopping success. It featured a full-size keyboard and two 5¼-inch floppy drives but only a teensy, credit-card-size monitor. It wasn't battery powered, but it did have a handy carrying handle so that you could lug around the 24-pound beast like an overpacked suitcase. Despite its shortcomings, 10,000 units a month were sold; for $1,795, you got the computer plus free software.
The loveable luggables
The Osborne computer was barely portable. Face it: The thing was a suitcase! Imagine hauling the 24-pound Osborne across Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Worse: Imagine the joy expressed by your fellow seatmates as you try to wedge the thing beneath the seat in front of you.
Computer users yearned for portability. They wanted to believe the advertising images of carefree people toting the Osborne around — people with arms of equal length. But no hipster marketing term could mask the ungainly nature of the Osborne: Portable? Transportable? Wispy? Nope. Credit some wag in the computer press for dreaming up the term luggable to describe the new and popular category of portable computers ushered in by the Osborne.
FIGURE 1-1: A late-model Osborne.
Never mind its weight. Never mind that most luggable computers never ventured from the desktops they were first set up on — luggables were the best the computer industry could offer an audience wanting a portable computer.
In the end, the Osborne computer’s weight didn’t doom it. No, what killed the Osborne was that in the early 1980s the world wanted IBM PC compatibility. The Osborne lacked it. Instead, the upstart Texas company Compaq introduced luggability to the IBM world with the Compaq 1, shown in Figure 1-2.
The Compaq Portable (also called the Compaq 1), introduced in 1983 at $3,590, proved that you could have your IBM compatibility and haul it on the road with you — as long as a power socket was handy and you had good upper-body strength.
Yet the power cord can stretch only so far. It became painfully obvious that for a computer to be truly portable — as Adam Osborne intended — it would have to lose its power cord.
The Model 100
The first computer that looked even remotely like a modern laptop, and was fully battery powered, was the Radio Shack Model 100, shown in Figure 1-3. It was an overwhelming success.
FIGURE 1-2: The luggable Compaq Portable.
WHAT’S A PC?
PC is an acronym for politically correct as well as for personal computer. In this book’s context, the acronym PC stands for personal computer.
Originally, personal computers were known as microcomputers. This term comes from the microprocessor that powered the devices. It was also a derisive term, comparing the personal systems with the larger, more intimidating computers of the day.
When IBM entered the microcomputer market in 1982, it called its computer the IBM PC. Though it was a brand name, the term PC soon referred to any similar computer and eventually to any computer. A computer is basically a PC.
As far as this book is concerned, a PC is a personal computer that runs the Windows operating system. Laptop computers are also PCs, but the term PC more often implies a desktop model computer.
FIGURE 1-3: The Radio Shack Model 100.
The Model 100 wasn’t designed to be IBM PC compatible, which is surprising considering that PC compatibility was all the rage at the time. Instead, this portable computer offered users a full-size, full-action keyboard plus an eensie, 8-row, 40-column LCD text display. It came with several built-in programs, including a text editor (word processor), a communications program, a scheduler, and an appointment book, plus the BASIC programming language, which allowed users to create their own programs or obtain BASIC programs written by others.
The Radio Shack Model 100 was all that was needed for portability at the time, which is why the device was so popular.
The Model 100 provided the form factor for laptops of the future. It was about the size of a hardback novel. It ran for hours on standard AA batteries. And it weighed just 6 pounds.
So popular was the Model 100 among journalists that it was common to hear the hollow sound of typing on its keyboard during presidential news conferences in the 1980s.
Despite its popularity and versatility, people wanted a version of the Model 100 that would run the same software as the IBM PC. Technology wasn't ready to shrink the PC's hardware to Model 100 size in 1983, but the Model 100 set the bar for what people desired in a laptop's dimensions.
PORTABILITY AND COMMUNICATIONS
Long before the Internet came around, one thing that was deemed necessary on all portable computers was the ability to communicate. A portable computer had two communications duties: First, it had to be able to talk with a desktop computer, to exchange and update files; second, it needed a modem, to be able to communicate electronically over phone lines.
Nearly every portable computer, from the Radio Shack Model 100 onward, required a modem, or at least an option for installing one. This was before the Internet era, back when a modem was considered an optional luxury for a desktop computer. Out on the road, away from a desktop at the office, early proto-road-warriors needed that modem in order to keep in touch.
The lunch buckets
Before the dawn of the first true laptop, some ugly mutations slouched in, along with a few rejects from various mad scientists around the globe. I call them the lunch bucket computers because they assumed the shape, size, and weight of a hardhat’s lunch box. The Compaq III, shown in Figure 1-4, was typical of this type of portable computer.
The lunch box beasts weighed anywhere from 12 to 20 pounds or more, and most weren’t battery powered.
The lunch bucket portables were the first PCs to use full-screen LCD monitors. (The Osborne and Compaq portables used glass CRTs.)
Incidentally, around the same time as the lunch bucket computers became popular, color monitors were becoming standard items on desktop PCs. All portables at the time, even those with LCD monitors, were monochrome.
Honestly, the lunch bucket did offer something over the old transportable or luggable: less weight! A late-model lunch bucket PC weighed in at about 12 pounds, half the weight and about one-eighth the size of the suitcase-size luggables.