A Brief History Of Laptop Computers

Laptops have today become an integral part of our lives. Laptops are widely used for professional as well as personal use. However, laptops were not even existent in this world just a few decades ago. Here a brief laptop history.

Before the laptop that we see today was feasible, there were several ideas proposed that were similar to the laptop. Before the term laptop became common, the term portable computer was used to describe machines like the Osborne 1. The Osborne 1 was the first commercially available portable computer. It was released in 1981 and used the CP/M operating system. This portable computer was considered to be a path-beaker in the world of portable computing and computing. The Osborne 1 did not have batteries, and the user had to plug into electronic mains to rev up the machine.

In 1982, the Kaypro II was introduced, which was a competitor to the Osborne 1, and was an integral part of laptop history. The Kaypro II had a larger display than the Osborne and had double density floppy drives.

The Bondwell 2 was released in 1985. It used a Z-80 CPU which ran at 4 MHz. It also had 64 K RAM, which was quite unusual for a CP/M machine. It was also one of the few laptops that had a hinge form factor, something that is a consistent feature in the laptops that are present in the market today.

The most part of laptop history was the Compaq portable. The Compaq portable was the first product by Compaq and was introduced in 1983. The Compaq portable ran MS DOS and required AC power to function.

The Epson HX-20 was widely sold in 1983. It had a full transit 68 key keyboard, and had nickel cadmium batteries, which were rechargeable. It also had a dot matrix LCD display that had four lines of text. Every line had 20 characters. It was one of the few portable computers that had expandable RAM till 32 KB. The initial offered RAM was 16.

The GRiD Compass is considered by some to be the actual first laptop computer. It was introduced in 1982. The laptop was revolutionary for its time, as it had the clamshell design that is so common today, and weighed a little under five kgs, something that was unheard of at those times.

However, the GRiD was quite expensive, in the range of $8000 to $10000 and the general public could not afford the GRiD. Therefore the GRiD was mainly bought by the Army and NASA. The Army was of the idea that their soldiers could use the computer while on the field. The GRiD also had its own operating system, the Grid-OS.