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February 27, 2008

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The evolution of the notebook

Posted Feb. 27, ’08, 11:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Internet

Osborne 1Did you know that the first portable computer weighed 23 pounds? We have desktop computers that weigh half as much as that today and notebooks that are one-tenth as heavy. We’ve come a long way and in this age of notebooks thinner than your tiny little pinky finger; it’s easy to forget how much innovation and hard work it’s taken to get here.

To keep us mindful of the ancestors to the MacBooks and ThinkPads we hold in our hands today, BusinessWeek has published a slideshow of the evolution of notebook computers. Starting with the Osborne 1, the 23-pound “portable” released in 1981, to the 3-pound, 0.76-inch thin MacBook Air released this year (I’m going to pretend that the Lenovo X300 did not make it to this list, undeserving as it is of this honor), it gives us a remarkable insight into what was considered revolutionary a decade ago and has been archived in museums today.

One day, perhaps a decade or two from now, we’ll be looking at a picture of the MacBook Air and chuckling to ourselves, amused at how far we’ve gone since 2008. Here’s hoping to a consistently inventive and innovative future ahead of us.

[Via The Mac Observer]


3 Comments

fletcher Author Profile Page said:

This seems like a pretty superficial list. It's hard to tell why they picked these machines and left others out.

I would have included one of the Sony sub-compact VAIOs for sure. I also would have included a docking machine like the PowerBook Duo. There were (still are?) competing docking machines from Dell and others as well.

Also, this is the evolution of "portable" computers (as labeled on the BW Web site), not "notebook" computers. I'm not sure when that term became vogue, but nobody would describe the early machines as "notebook" or even "laptop" computers.

February 27, 2008 11:34 AM
ToreUs said:

Superficial? There are a few undistinguished machines here, but there are more significant portable computers entries -- the first portable, the first 100% IBM compatible, the first clamshell DOS computer, the highly popular Tandy Model 100 (they left out the Model 200, the original clamshell computer of any sort), the first Mac portable...these are technically and historically significant computers.

February 27, 2008 10:51 PM
anon said:

We had one of the original Compaqs (the fourth slide in the BizWeek presentation linked here) in the house when I was a kid. My father used to schlep that beast between home and office three or four days a week, along with an armload of floppies.

Scratched the hell out of the dining room table on more than one occasion.

I seem to remember ours having two full height drives, unlike the two half-height pictured in the presentation.

February 28, 2008 1:48 PM

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