It is funny how a couple of things can look so similar yet so different. You might still frown upon Darwin’s Evolution Theory, but the term has almost become synonymous today with anything that, with time, improves itself dramatically.
Yet unlike Darwin’s own theory which started from the tiny to the large, the evolution of laptops has been the other way around- from the gigantic weightlifting equipment to pocket tablets that can slide into your jeans. The principle remains the same- the fittest and the best continue while the weak are eliminated.
Portability is the key word for laptops as performance was already on offer in the form of relatively advanced desktops. After portability and size came an ability to perform. Sleek, stylish, powerful and sexy of the today’s modern notebooks came from the bulky, heavy, barely performing ancestors which were conceived less than three decades ago. From the dumb Goliath to the smart David, it was the far too familiar path of NASA and military research that gave the idea of a portable computer.
1970 – 1981 : First Ideas Regarding Portability
There is a point of contention with many till this date about what exactly was the first laptop ever. In 1970’s the idea of a portable personal computer was first thought up by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC. The guy even went ahead and published a paper on that, but that is about as far as the idea got back then. Picked up soon by the others, the generally agreed upon first laptop ever was the Osborne 1. Produced first in 1981 by Adam Osborne, an ex-book publisher founded, it weighed in a whooping 11 kg. If you are surprised, then there is more. The giant came with an unbelievably tiny 5-inch screen, something of a giant cell phone-sized display in a machine that challenged your strength.
Osborne 1
Image by Purdueriots
Osborne 1 came with an electrical connection with an optional backup battery, used two 5 ¼” floppy drives, a modem port, the keyboard, a battery pack and a price tag of $1,800 attached to it. So how well did it do, you ask? Well, as well as a Sumo wrestler in a 100 meter sprint; this was not a laptop in any true sense. While it offered portability, you would have to be Shwarzy to carry it around all day.
1981 – 1984 : Gavilan’s First Tries And IBM
But then the Gavilan Mobile Computer came in. Not only one of the very first prototypes to look similar to the current laptop design with a clamshell case, but weighing only 4 kg and with a 9 hours running on nickel-cadmium batteries, for 1983 it was way ahead of the others in both performance and design. Plus, it was Galvin who first introduced and marketed their mobile PC under the term ‘laptop’.
Gavilan Mobile Computer
Image by Dvorak
Since the advent of Osborne 1 was a vital development as someone had opened up a market that was untapped into earlier, this led to one Bill Gates to come up with an idea of a portable computer with the latest display technology of that time— LCD screens. Kazuhiko Nishi of Microsoft took the prototype to Radio Shack who jumped on the idea and hit production. Weighing in at 2 kilos, Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 Mobile Computer came with a modem, a telecommunications program, a text editor and a program written by Microsoft.
Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 Mobile Computer
Image by Wikimedia
While Radio Shack took the first step towards making laptops look like laptops, IBM successfully managed to take it back by a decade or so by releasing the Portable PC 5155 in 1984. But what did they got so hideously wrong? Nothing much, apart from the fact that its “Portable” weighed in at a breezy 13.6 kilograms had a 9-inch screen that did little of great note and costed a very generous $ 4000. More to it, you had to plug it in for charge as it had no batteries inside. Okay, so the 5155 was in fact just a movable desktop and thankfully IBM put an end to this monstrosity within a year.
IBM Portable PC 5155
Image by davidmontse
1984 – 1988: Compaq Steps In
Progress in coming years was slow with each company setting its own unique standard and having its own definition for a laptop, but Compaq put an end to most of that nonsense and broke away from the pack in 1988 by shattering the graphics barrier. Achieving VGA resolution with the Compaq SLT 286, it housed a 1.44 floppy drive and 286 processor, but weighed a good 6 kg.
Compaq SLT 286
Image by Kiberpipa
1989 – 1993: NEC, Zenith’s MinisPORT and the First Macintosh
That’s when NEC come in and altered the weight trend with their NEC UltraLite model— the first full-function MS-DOS-based portable computer, which astonishingly weighted only 4.4 pounds. The next step on the evolution ladder and the real revolution came as we started to head into the 90s. It started in 1989 with Zenith Data Systems bringing out the Minisport with 640 kb of ram, a 1.44-inch floppy drive, a 2400 baud modem and a 20MB ESDI hard drive. Okay, so you might be laughing at it today, but just remember that this was 1989 and with color LCD display (though not very great), the Minisport was fairly well received.
MinisPORT by Zenith Data Systems
Images by DigiBarn
The final step up came from new comers (at the time) Macintosh and their Macintosh Portable— no less than a hefty 8-kilos. It was pretty high-end and truly revolutionary for its time with a 9.8-inch active matrix display at a resolution of 640 x 400 pixels and even a trackball. After the Macintosh Portable, the 90’s started to kick in some real pace and gave complete technological facelift to the world of laptops. By now, most makers had agreed upon what commonly constituted a laptop and what were the things that needed an improvement.
Macintosh Portable
Image by Engadget
By 1993, 256-color screens were already an one good example was PowerBook 165c. But then things went further. We ended up getting millions of colors on the screen, better and lighter notebooks, with even greater flexibility in design and most importantly performance add-ons like the CD-ROM and its evolutionary steps forward. However, to make them popular, there was still one component missing. By the late 90’s laptops had advanced enough to meet the needs of people, but the price could not meet their pockets. Technology was there, but you were scared to even think about buying one, unless you were loaded with cash. The ThinkPad’s and the MacBook’s were here, but who would really buy them?
Powerbook 165c
Image by Excite(Japan)
1996 – 2003 : ToughBooks from Panasonic and Intel processors
It was in 1996 when Panasonic stepped up and introduced a new line of notebooks that would concentrate on the robust mobile computer market segment— the first “true” Toughbook (CF-25). Built to survive falls from heights of up to 70 cm (2.3 feet) and to resist, dust and humidity, it was clear that Panasonic was trying to revolutionize the whole laptop notion. Designed for a definitely new market share (like the military for example) the new CF-25 had an aluminum alloy case with a solid handle for better carrying and was performing great in demanding environments and extreme surroundings.
Panasonic Toughbook CF-25, Bullets Inside!
Image by Myself248
But then 2003 came and the final piece of the laptop puzzle was put together by Intel and it was packing a magical low-power Pentium M processor. That forced a new trend that not only improved laptops immensely, but along with other global factors slashed the prices down and ensured that you got quality at a fair bargain.
Nowadays .. Light as Air, tiny as (Net) Books
Later on, most laptops got Wireless connectivity— be it Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, DVD drives, advanced graphics cards, wide-screens or “pocketables”, all these making the first Osborne 1 look like an over-weight fool. With Tablet PCs and ultra mobile PCs also just starting to come in, things are only likely to get smaller, sleeker and a lot cooler than ever before.
Apple Macbook Air
Netbooks emerged during 2007 and represent mini laptops, primarily made for handling simple web applications like email and web browsing. Never meant for prolonged work (anything less than 13.3″ will not really make it) Netbook is an ideal gadget to carry in your messenger bag around the city while surfing the coffe shops and hot spots.
Asus EEE PC S101
But the future seems to hold a lot more. A different direction for laptops, with greater variety, portability and some incredulous features that look today just like a MacBook Air would have looked 20 years ago.
The concepts include Laptops like the Canova Dual Screen Laptop which sports uber-cool two screens, a multi sensitive touch screen and is just like a book that you can open up and read. Then there is DesCom that fits right into your desk, not very fancy, but still pretty innovative. Also, ultra-thin sliding OLED screens could also be the next step with concept models like Compenion and the LG Ecological Laptop.
And the future …
However, our ultimate favorite is definitely Vaio Zoom, a concept that uses holographic technology inside a thin glass form factor. When shut down, the screen becomes completely transparent while the keyboard stays opaque, but when you turn it on the whole feast begins. That’s right, the future of laptops could be an imaginary display in thin air…
Sony VAIO Zoom
Image by Smart-parts
So, what will be the next step in the (R)Evolution?
If you want to find out all the latest news on tech why not subscribe to our RSS feed?
[...] Laptop (R)Evolution: Where size does matter…a whole lot [...]
[...] Laptop (R)Evolution: Where size does matter…a whole lot [...]
Superb overview I used to have a compaq zobo computer.
I like the evolution aarticles looking for ways to incorporate them into my blog,
http://designsdelight.com
[...] With Laptop hat eine ziemlich gute Übersicht über die Entwicklung des Laptops im allgeimen und allerhand Fotos im speziellen. Ich für [...]
No love for the various models of GRiD? (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/company.asp?st=1&m=324) They were the first portables I saw and lusted after. And they were, by reputation at least, extremely robust for the time.
What a nostalgia. It just brings back the memory of my first computer though it already belong to the later generation.
woow interesting
Interesting article. One machine (an entire family, actually) which bears mentioning is the DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) HiNote Ultra. Introduced in 1994, it was a wonderfully portable laptop.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/digital/timeline/1994-7.htm
What about the “GRiD Compass 1101″?… look in my site
eloya.wordpress.com
bye
Hilarious to see one of my photos used here, as I’ve owned also a Model 100 clone, and a Minisport. I should point out that the Minisport (and all the other laptops of the time) had a monochrome display panel, driven by a “CGA” display adapter. Connection of an external CRT would yield color images, but all the user got on the LCD was shades of blue. Zenith got 7 or 8 distinguishable shades out of that display, but you wouldn’t want to try to read a graph with more than 2 or 3 “colored” lines.
LCDs of the era were very slow, and until active-matrix TFT was developed, mouse cursors vanished when moving. GRiD got it right with the red gas-plasma displays, which featured stunning contrast ratios and response times. Compaq used some on their portables too, and then they disappeared.
The next thing? Well, let’s look at where we are now. Netbooks have as much processing power and storage as mainstream laptops did just a year or three ago. Where they fail is screen real estate. Cellphones are a few more years behind in CPU and memory, but tiny screens remain the problem. Sony leads the way in packing more pixels per inch and making it look good, but even the current state of affairs is pushing the visual acuity of all but the youngest users.
The way out of this morass is to either change the way information is presented so that screen size isn’t so important (unlikely), or to pack more display into a smaller size, like some of the dual-head laptop prototypes we’ve been seeing. I wouldn’t be surprised if ultra-dense-pixel-pitch displays start coming with glasses, so things like the Vaio UX and OQO can continue along their evolutionary paths without leaving the majority of their users behind.
Or we could, you know, just carry normal-sized machines and live with it. Which is what I suspect will happen for the reasonably foreseeable future, at least until a good wireless head-mounted display (bluetooth 3.0 might enable this?) makes screens as we know them obsolete. I’ll be digesting my meal pills while jetpacking to work and dictating into my full natural-language speech recognition system by then, though.
i like the Viao Transparan, how much that price
Odd how someone mentioned a Mr.Kay who worked and did a paper at IBM, yet nowhere did I see my old pride and joy of CP/M the “KAYPRO II”.
A few tweaks and it became one awesome machine.
9” green CRT, but the whole suite of software was truly integrated and did indeed work.
Ahhh the memories.
I think i just dated myself.
ATB
Jack
I agree with JRatz. The Kaypro definitely belongs in the mix. An oscilloscope that could think.
But good on ya for including the TRS 80’s or, as we called them when they would randomly erase everything in their memory, the Trash 80’s.
Darwinian evolution among animals is not always “from the tiny to the large,” though the very first — and still the vast majority — were tiny.
Very often the early forms in a new niche are big, like dragonflies with 30″ wingspans: they got small later when other ways of flying competed better at the big sizes. Birds cannot be as small as today’s dragonflies, so the sub-niche ‘flying+small’ is good for insects. Dragonflies can be as big as pigeons, but lose out to them.
Laptops have selection pressure for portability.
Supercomputers don’t.
Wanna learn some history? Talk to some old people!
The above posts are right – the Kaypro II is universally regarded as the first *usable* portable and there’s no way any “evolution of portable computing” article is complete without it. Seriously, that’s like leaving the Model T out of a history of the car article.
Also, in 1989 the Mac was no newcomer. (The first Mac in 1984 was called ‘luggable’ and was half the size of IBM’s allegedly portable 5155)
The Mac Portable was insignificant. Apple’s big laptop advance was the Powerbook 100 series – in 1991 it looked like the laptops we use today – it weighed well under 3 kilos, had the keyboard and track device in the right places, clamshell case, removable battery and the whole deal! OK, it had a trackball, a 16 MHz processor and early ones had a B+W display, but its basic design is the first example of the one we use now.
Those laptops, though huge, work for a long time. I’m my parents oldest kid and they still have a laptop that they bought when I was a baby. We only use it for the kids as their “first computer” when they are really little, and for cd computer games. amazingly enough, It has survived six different young kids using it and still works just fine, as opposed to theese newer laptops that break after a few years
what about the HP 110 series? a very short review is here:
http://oldcomputers.net/hp110.html
i got one used and it was nice. the lead-acid battery lasted forever when new and the dam thing still worked when i ebayed it about 4 years ago. it communicated through HPIL, which although a proprietary HP serial system, was common in that it was used by the Hp 41, 71, 75, and 110 systems and there are HPILHPIB and HPILRS232 converters.
i actually remember USING the one in pic #4 (IBM Portable PC 5155)
was my dad’s
wooth! I remember a time where i worked on tha fabulous IBM Portable PC 5155.
Nice post, very nice. where do you have the information about the new Vaio from?
Best Regards from Austria