It was called "portable", but it weighed eleven kilograms and had an inconvinient size. It heated on the summer days so that you could make coffee on the top of the chassis. And it ran WordStar.

- Veikko Rekunen in book "Mikrotietokone Suomessa 1973-1993"


"Small enough to fit under an airline seat, cheap enough to be purchased by credit card"

One of the first portable computers, from year 1981. Designed by Adam Osborne and Lee Felsenstein.

The machine had two 5 1/4" floppy drives, keyboard, and a really small (90x67 mm, 5") CRT screen - all in a chassis of size of a huge briefcase (okay, so it wasn't a "portable", more of a "draggable" computer). It ran CP/M on Z80 processor and had 64 kilobytes of RAM.

...and then came Kaypro II and Commodore Executive 64...

Collected from obsoletecomputermuseum.com, Data General website, computingmuseum.com


The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance

The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable. If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup, they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.

- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
(from fortune(6))

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