Portable Computer
Had one of these laying around my office when my boss asked me to set up a "shipping address label" machine that would be a standalone workstation. I used its Basic to craft a fill-in-the-blanks app and plugged in a dot matrix printer. Worked perfectly for years. When I left the company, I took the machine (by then no longer is use). Ended up giving it to a friend who had a soft-of computer museum in his house. Probably still on display.
portable computer
Remember your first laptop? It probably weighed less than 24.5 pounds, the weight of this substantial Osborne 1. While the first successful luggable computer was used at CDC beginning in 1982, this 64K RAM model was considered to be the first truly portable computer. It has an optional battery pack, and connections for a printer and a modem. The monochromatic screen is a massive 5 inches diagonal in size, and displays no more than 50 characters per line of text. To compensate, you could scroll the screen display back and forth with the cursor keys to show lines of text up to 128 characters wide.
To the left and right of the screen are two floppy disk drives used for storing files. The two pockets beneath the floppy drives are handy floppy disk storage or could be used for the Osborne modem. While the Osborne 1 was a good deal at $1,795, it was also the first computer to be sold with bundled software packages.
The Portable (model 110, "Nomad") was a lightweight, reliable, battery-powered PC with built-in software and a 16-line, 80-character LCD. With its built-in 300-baud modem, the Portable was an excellent remote computer for mobile workers. The Portable contained the operating system (MS-DOS) and application software in ROM. This provided for almost immediate boot up and access to programs (Much faster than today's Windows PCs). The difficult challenge for HP was to provide a ROM version for all software that users might want.
The Portable was powered by the Intel 80C86 CPU and offered excellent performance compared to other portable and even desktop machines. The biggest problem was that it did not have a built-in flexible disc drive. HP offered an external, battery-powered flexible disc drive (the 9114) to go with the Portable; but this was considered too cumbersome by users. Users had no easy way of accessing the software they wanted, unless it was available in ROM from HP.
Collector's Notes: Both the Portable and Portable Plus are very reliable. All eight units held at the museum work fine. The problem with these machines is that their rechargeable batteries die. These computers can still be operated off AC power even with flat batteries. The battery pack for these computers consists of three D-size sealed lead acid (SLA) batteries with a total voltage of six volts. In 2013, a complete replacement pack was available from Fedco Electronics Inc for $US44. The part number is 0810-0102HP at www.fedcoelectronics.com.
Sterling Computer Sales offers the latest processors from AMD and Intel for use inside our portable lunchbox computers. We have provided many systems offering the above highend processor solutions for government and military applications.
Sterling Computer Sales offers semi to rugged notebooks which are stronger than a standard notebook computer. Our rugged notebooks meet a military standard for harsh environments and some offer a built in RS232 serial port.
Sterling Computer Sales offers quality "portable computers" which are also known as lunchbox computers that are rugged, upgradeable, full functional mobile computers and travel hardened chassis models. We have been building luggable computers since 1991. Many of our portable pc lunchbox computers have been used in the industry to program equipment, where other lunchbox computers would simply fail. Sterling provides lunchbox computers which can be considered mobile servers offering dual processors and multiple drives of lunchbox pc units. Our portable pc line now offer HD LCD displays and full-size expansion slots for your specialty cards. Sterling Computer Sales specializes in integrating full length PCI and PCI-E boards into our lunchbox pc cases. New to our industrial line is our rugged notebook series which are rugged mobile notebook computers that are stronger than a standard notebook computer. Our rugged notebooks meet a military standard for harsh environments. Rugged portable pc's are now available in custom configuration delivering desktop performance. The biggest emphasis is now seen in performance capabilities. Sterling Computer Sales is able to incorporate the latest Intel Xeon server designs into a luggable portable pc platform. Our Zeus models of lunchbox computers offer advanced designs in a rugged platform (luggable computer). Our single board computer lunchbox pc designs will still handle specialized PCI-E and PCI cards so necessary in the instrumentation arena. Sterling Computer Sales has introduced a battery powered 2 full length PCI or PCI-E lunchbox pc design unit that can meet the industrial applications of specialized PCI cards with our Commander-AT5 model lunchbox pc. We are now offering a 400Hz power supply to our lunchbox computers for the aviation industry. This option is available in many of our lunchbox computer chassis case models. Sterling Computer Sales is ready to customize a portable computer for your specific requirements. We have setup our lineup of lunchbox computers into series for you to focus on mainboard form factor so you can determine which lunchbox computers you require. Our lunchbox computers can be custom built with standard components so you can upgrade your lunchbox computers for the future. Call us today to customize lunchbox computers for your project or we can develop a new line of lunchbox computers for your division. Contact us to discuss your application of a portable computer solution or lunchbox pc. We offer many portable computer variations including standard ATX, Extended ATX, Micro-ATX, SBC and Backplane arrangements. Contact us today to discuss your lunchbox pc project and we can send you a formal quote of lunchbox computers with your requested configuration. We also provide custom lunchbox computers and lunchbox pc solutions for your business needs. Our company has the ability to provide a hardware computer solution for portable lunchbox computers for field use or internal server business solutions.
Sterling Computer Sales offers the latest computer products, rackmounts and notebooks available on the market today. We provide custom portable and computer solution with the latest cutting edge industrial computer products available since 1991.
I, umm, impulse bought this. The ARM ones had little appeal to me other than the form factor as I have several ARM computers already. But, a reasonably priced RISC-V machine and a cool form factor? Yes please. Without a GPU it will be a text based machine, similar to the TRS-80 from which it draws inspiration, but it should be more than sufficient for SSH and telnet.
Worth noting that the RISC-V model contains significantly less RAM than the ARM-based versions of the DevTerm (1 GB, compared to 2 or 4 GB for ARM). And, as this is the first real \u201Claptop adjacent\u201D computer running a RISC-V processor\u2026 there are bound to be some hiccups.
Value for money: As far as Chromebooks and 2-in-1 laptops go, this is hands down the best value you're going to find in a portable device of its kind. It's the computer that last decade's netbooks promised to be - but couldn't quite become - while taking the Chromebook to its next logical step.
Performance: The Dell XPS 13 (2022) is designed to be an affordable, ultraportable laptop that can do what most people need it to do: some web browsing, video streaming, and maybe messing around with a couple of spreadsheets for work.
The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra is a truly impressive Ultrabook that proves that Samsung can make laptops as stylish and desirable as major laptop brands such as Dell, HP and Asus. The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra is an absolute stunner of a portable machine, offering excellent specs and a gorgeous display all in a sleek and sexy package, and it's one of the best looking ultrabooks going that isn't the Dell XPS 13 and Apple MacBook Air (M1,2020). Arguably its best feature is the beautiful 3K (2880 x 1800) AMOLED screen that is bright and vibrant, and at 16-inches, is a joy to work on.
Rugged Portable systems by CP Technologies are the ideal solution for situations requiring a transportable, all-in-one, high-performance computing while out in harsh, real-world environments. Used in applications such as Ground Control Stations for flying drones, our Rugged Portable computing systems deliver all the power and capabilities of a full fledged desktop system with all the necessary peripherals needed, such as displays and keyboards, all while packaged into a singular portable, ruggedized unit designed and built to survive in the most adverse of deployments.
If the size and weight of the 5100 seems huge by today's standards, then the Portable Computer was very slender compared to a late-1960's IBM computer with the equivalent capability. Such a machine would have been nearly as large as two desks and would have weighed about half a ton.
In November 1982 Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable, a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer. It was released in March 1983 at $2995, considerably more affordable than competitors at the time. The Compaq Portable was one of the originators of today's laptop. It was the second IBM PC compatible, being capable of running all software that would run on an IBM PC.
In April 1981 writer and computer entrepreneur Adam Osborne and Osborne Computer Corporation, Hayward, California, produced the first commercially successful "portable" computer, the Osborne 1. It weighed twenty-three pounds, ran the CP/M operating system, and sold for $1795, with $2000 worth of software included. Its main deficiencies were a tiny 5 inch (13 cm) display screen and use of single sided, single density floppy disk drives which could not contain sufficient data for practical business applications. Its 23 pound weight meant that the computer was more "luggable" than portable. 041b061a72