History of laptops
The portable microcomputer "Portal", of the French company R2E Micral CCMC, officially appeared in September 1980 at the Sicob show in Paris.
The Portal was a portable microcomputer designed and marketed by the studies and developments department of the French firm R2E Micral in 1980 at the request of the company CCMC specializing in payroll and accounting.
The Osborne 1 had a five-inch screen, incorporating a modem port, two 5+1⁄4-inch floppy drives, and a large collection of bundled software applications.
Although it was large and heavy compared to today's laptops, with a tiny 5" CRT monitor, it had a near-revolutionary impact on business, as professionals were able to take their computer and data with them for the first time.
The HX-20's very limited screen and tiny internal memory, made serious word-processing and spreadsheet applications impractical and the device was described as "primitive" by some.
[8] Dulmont was eventually taken over by Time Office Computers, who relabeled the brand "Kookaburra" and marketed 16- and 25-line LCD display versions.
It was equipped with an internal floppy disk drive and a pioneering touchpad-like pointing device, installed on a panel above the keyboard.
Like the GRiD Compass, the Gavilan and the Sharp were housed in clamshell cases, but they were partly IBM-compatible, although primarily running their own system software.
Due to its portability, good battery life (and ease of replacement), reliability (it had no moving parts), and low price (as little as US$300), the model was highly regarded, becoming a favorite among journalists.
The machine was in fact about the size of a paper notebook, but the term had yet to come into use and it was generally described as a "portable" computer.
It used an 8-bit Z-80 CPU running at 4 MHz, had 64 KBs of RAM, and a 3+1⁄2-inch (89 mm) floppy disk drive built in, which was unusual for CP/M laptops.
Although limited floppy-based DOS machines, with the operating system stored in ROM on the T1000, the Toshiba models were small and light enough to be carried in a backpack, and could be run from Ni-Cd batteries.
Competition to supply this contract was fierce and the major PC companies of the time; IBM, Toshiba, Compaq, NEC, and Zenith Data Systems (ZDS), rushed to develop laptops in an attempt to win this deal.
The SupersPort series was originally launched with an Intel 8086 processor, dual floppy disk drives, a backlit, blue-and-white STN LCD screen, and a NiCd battery pack.
[11] It had the classic laptop configuration (keyboard and monitor closes up clam-shell style in order to carry), however, it was very heavy and fairly large.
About the size of an A4 sheet of paper as well, it ran on standard batteries, and contained basic spreadsheet, word processing, and communications programs.
It anticipated the future miniaturization of the portable computer, and as a ROM-based machine with a small display, can – like the TRS-80 Model 100 – also be seen as a forerunner of the personal digital assistant.
The 16-bit COMPAQ SLT/286 debuted in October 1988, being the first battery-powered laptop to support an internal hard disk drive and a VGA compatible LCD screen.
It was significantly smaller than all earlier portable computers and could be carried like a notebook and its clamshell LCD folded over the body like a book cover.
Apple's first laptop product was the 16-bit lead-acid battery powered 7.2 kg (16 lb) Macintosh Portable released in September 1989.
[16][17] The Apple PowerBook series, introduced in October 1991, pioneered changes that are now de facto standards on laptops, including room for a palm rest.
Prior to this point each brand used custom BIOS, drivers and in some cases, ASICs, to optimize the battery life of its machines.
Windows 95 ushered in the importance of the CD-ROM drive in mobile computing, and helped the shift to the Intel Pentium processor as the base platform for notebooks.
The article stated that "LCD screens still look to many observers like Etch-a-Sketch toys, or gray chalk on a dirty blackboard", and predicted that until displays improved, "laptops will continue to be a niche rather than a mainstream direction".
Among them were: In June 2007, Asus announced the Eee PC 701 to be released in October, a small lightweight x86 Celeron-M ULV 353 powered laptop with 4 GB SDHC disk and a 7-inch screen.
Asus then extended the Eee line with models with features such as a 9-inch screen and other brands, including Acer, MSI and Dell followed suit with similar devices, often built on the fledgling low-power Intel Atom processor architecture.
