Laptop History

The book I read to research this post was Laptops for Dummies by Dan Gookin which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. I thought I'd do a little bit on the history of laptops. The first computer that could be considered in any way portable although calling it portable is a bit of a joke is the Osbourne 1 which would just about go under an airplane seat. It weighed 24 pounds and had a miniscule screen. It also had to run off the mains so you couldn't use it whilst travelling. It came out in 1980 and was priced at around $1,800 but did sell quite well. It showed that people were prepared to buy a portable computer. A little while later came the Compaq 1 which had a bigger screen but still weighed in at 20 pounds. It still only worked off the mains. Then came the Radio Shack 100 which only had a small screen but was the first truly portable computer. The first portable computer that was IBM/PC compatible and had a 286 processor was the Compaq SLT. Of course with many portable computers the battery weighs half as much again as the computer. Many manufacturers when giving the weight of a laptop don't include the battery. Also in the near future people will use fuel cells with their laptops rather than batteries. These are too large at present but technology is making them smaller and smaller. These will also require topping up with fuel but you know how people have to conserve power on their laptops, that may become a thing of the past.