Laptops

A Brief History of Laptops

If you have a laptop or you have a passion for laptops, you might be interested in a brief history of the laptop. Determining the exact date the first portable computer was manufactured is difficult.

Many people believe that the first laptop was the Grid Compass which was designed by William Moggridge in1979. This laptop had a die-cast magnesium casing and a folding electroluminescent screen. It used 340K byte of bubble memory. Other people believe that the first fully-functional laptop was the Gavilan Computer by Manny Fernandez. This was manufactured in 1983 and it designed for business executives.

Other people believe that the first laptop was Osborne 1 by Adam Osborne back in 1981. This machine was characterized by a weight of 24 pounds, a price of $1795, a 5-inch screen, a modem port, a battery pack, 2 5¼ floppy drives, and bundled software programs. Some people only consider the clamshell design to be what makes a laptop. However, others consider portability and compatibility to be what makes a laptop.

For those who consider portability and compatibility, the Radio Shack TRS-80 Mobile and the Epson HX 20 were the first laptops. This machine looked like a big calculator with the screen and the keyboard on the same panel. Other early notebooks were the GRiD Compass by Bill Moggridge between 1979 and 1980, Dulmont Magnum/Kookaburra by John Blair between 1979 and 1980, Ampere designed in 1983 by Ryu Oosake, Tandy Model 100 by Kyocera in 1983 which featured an LCD display and a keyboard.

However, most people agree that the first true laptop that is the basis for what is available today was the Macintosh Portable by Apple. This laptop featured a trackball instead of a mouse, a new technology at the time, and it had graphics and sound that rivaled those of desktop PCs at the time.

This machine was first introduced in 1989 at a price of $6,500. After this machine, development of the laptop and the notebook was fast. The main players were Apple and IBM. Apple introduced the first PowerBook in 1991 and IBM followed with its first ThinkPad in 1992.

Throughout the 90s, laptops took a backseat to desktop PCs. It was only at the turn of the century that competition in the field grew and demand for portable computers grew. At the turn of the century, the major actors were Apple, IBM, Toshiba, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Lenovo and HP. Until very recently, laptops featured lower power in terms of processing speed, HDD size and RAM compared to desktop PCs, but this is slowly changing. If you are thinking on buying a new laptop, due dillegence is the key, there are many laptop reveiws available online so you can make an informed decision.