Before Airis, Mike Maziarek was formerly the head of a chain of picture-framing stores and had no prior experience in the tech sector.
[4][3]: 93 Airis was headquartered in an eight-room office[3]: 93 on the second story of the Elston Corridor building on North Besley Court, the first floor of which was occupied by the Chicago Brewing Company.
[6] The notebook was named the Airis VH-286 and featured an Intel 80286 microprocessor clocked at 12.5 MHz, a socket for an Intel 80287 math coprocessor, 2 MB of SIMM[7] RAM standard (expandable to 4 MB), a built-in 2400-baud modem, and a monochrome super-twisted nematic LCD measuring 11 inches diagonally and capable of displaying video at VGA resolution, 640 by 480 pixels.
[3]) Airis sourced the notebook's 2.5-inch 20 MB hard drive from PrairieTek and Conner Peripherals; the drivers were supported by 256 KB of page cache.
[8] Airis chose a contract manufacturer in Des Plaines, Illinois, to assemble the notebook's printed circuit board.
[8][10] By loading a special utility on ROM which prompted users to dial into Airis' BBS using the notebook's built-in modem, customers could have upgraded the BIOS chip to new versions as they came out, potentially expanding the lifespan of the computer by introducing new features to the BIOS as well as patching firmware bugs and supporting newer hardware.
[7] The company missed the deadline when they modified the design of the motherboard to include a VGA port socket for external video display in October, setting a new release date of November.
[14] In December 1990, Airis received FCC Class B certification for the VH-286, and in February 1991 the company announced that the notebook would be available for sale that month.
[4] In January 1992, however, PC Magazine editor Bill Howard asserted that the VH-286 had never shipped,[15] Byte later repeating this claim in July 1995.