[Gankdawg]

John C. Dvorak - PC Magazine

Once in a while it's good to remember the computer classics, in order to see how far we've come in making these devices more fun and more useful. I'm going to illustrate the utility of this by citing what I believe are some of the great products of yesterday. Readers are invited to toss in other suggestions or weigh in with their own top 10 lists.

I'll begin with a list of what I believe to be the top 10 laptop or notebook computers. I am specifically referring to portable, battery-operated laptop/notebook computers. These criteria call for leaving out the famous GriD Computer of the early 1980s and various plug-in Toshiba machines, although those did influence future designs:


The Top 10 Classic Laptops

10. TRS-80 Model 100 (1983). This machine would be higher on the list if future computers had emulated its shape, but its influence on the market was unmistakable. It was probably the first machine to be used widely by professional writers. This was a small single-piece unit with an eight-line monochrome LCD. It was derived from the NEC-8201, which was not seriously marketed in the USA.

9. Toshiba T-1000 (1987). Listed for its popularity and price. A well-made monochrome unit that pushed in the lightweight (3.5kg) direction.

8. Zenith laptops. By today's standards, these laptops were heavy clunkers, but in their day they were stylish and trendy. They set the stage for today's clamshell designs. These machines dominated the scene in the late 1980s.

7. The first HP laptop (1984). This $3,000 unit was one of the most ambitious offerings ever produced by HP. Ahead of its time in every way, it also had Lotus 1-2-3 bundled into the ROM on the machine, making it very fast to work with. Curiously, this laptop/portable unit is no longer listed on HP's corporate-history timeline. One also has to note the HP-75 series (1982), which others consider as the first HP laptops.

6. IBM 5140 Convertible (1986). Selling for a reasonable $1,975, this machine triggered more interest in lightweight machines only because it was from IBM. In fact, it was not a true laptop. It was something of a clunker, especially when docked with its printer.

5. Poquet (1991-1992). The first real example of a super-small full-featured computer, an amazing unit ahead of its time. Atari followed with its Portfolio. This shape never got much further than those two models, which have evolved into the Palm and other more modern machines.

4. Toshiba Porteges. For a number of years Toshiba dominated the laptop arena with a line of ambitious lightweight units called Porteges. This line became so important that Toshiba continues the brand to this day.

3. IBM ThinkPads (1992-present). I'm grouping these together as one, since nearly every one since the original was a classic. Only the odd units with a "butterfly" keyboard were dubious. Nearly all the rest were huge successes that catapulted IBM to the top in laptop design and popularity.

2. Texas Instruments LT286/CompuAdd Companion (circa 1990). The first modern superlightweight machines. I consider them to be among the most important computers ever built, as they initiated the true ultra-lightweight movement in an era where people were demanding that floppy-disk drives be in the machine. These were hard-disk notebook-style machines before anyone had imagined that this would be the permanent direction of the future. Fabulous for their era.

1. The NEC Ultralite (1989). This is the classic that set the stage for everything that came after. The original Ultralite still has features that we'll probably see again someday, such as silicon-based mass storage rather than a hard disk. This was probably the classiest machine you could use in its day. It remains, at least in my thinking, the machine that forever changed portable computing.


What has consistently interested me until this day was the length of time that it took to finally get these machines right. All of today's laptops owe a debt to these classics.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Who cares what he likes. He just does this to get all sorts of attention and everyone falls for it every time.

The worst thing you can do to him is ignore it.

[Amorya]

Powerbook 100 - pioneered the clamshell design that's still the dominant design for laptops today! Incidentally, it was designed in conjunction with Sony.

Amorya

[philzilla]

Originally posted by Socially Awkward Solo:
Who cares what he likes. He just does this to get all sorts of attention and everyone falls for it every time.

The worst thing you can do to him is ignore it.

you just described yourself perfectly there.

[tooki]

Originally posted by Amorya:
Powerbook 100 - pioneered the clamshell design that's still the dominant design for laptops today! Incidentally, it was designed in conjunction with Sony.

Err... not exactly.

PC laptops in the clamshell case existed before Apple made any such thing. What Apple did pioneer is the modern clamshell with the keyboard towards the back and a pointing device in the wrist rest area. PC laptops until the mid-90's placed the keyboard at the front edge of the unit, with dead space behind it.

The PowerBook 100, 140 and 170 were all released at the same time. The 170 was the most popular at release, due to its active-matrix display. The 100 was a flop, so Apple dropped its price by about 60%, at which point it sold rather well!

The PowerBook 100 was not designed in conjunction with Sony, per se. Apple gave Sony the schematics for the Mac Portable (which was a total Apple design) and had them make it small, and that became the PB 100. (That is why the PB 100 is the only PowerBook that can run System 6, because that's what the Portable shipped with.)

tooki

[BasketofPuppies]

Nothing from Apple or Sony, the two companies that have done most of the innovating in the past six years. Yep, Dvorak is looking for attention again.

Not to mention the PowerBook 100 and 500 series and Duo 200 series, which inspired just about every portable on the market released since then.

Heck, what about the PowerBook 3400? Sure it was, big, heavy, ugly, and the feature set was questionable (four speakers and no 24-bit color?), but it was the first portable with a hot-swappable drive bay.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by BasketofPuppies:
Heck, what about the PowerBook 3400? Sure it was, big, heavy, ugly, and the feature set was questionable (four speakers and no 24-bit color?), but it was the first portable with a hot-swappable drive bay.

I thought 5300 was the first with the swappable bay?

Pretty sure it had one, anyway... The Macintosh Museum site says it has an expansion bay occupied by a floppy drive. Or do you mean swappable without shutting down? (In which case I've no idea, since I've seldom done it on anything but a Pismo.)


Amorya

[BasketofPuppies]

Originally posted by Amorya:
I thought 5300 was the first with the swappable bay?

Hot-swappable.

[Freeflyer]

Powerbook 100, my first mac. I missed it badly when it died. My current Tibook is the only one since then that I've liked so much. The small form factor was wonderful.

J.

[DeathToWindows]

Dvorak wouldn't know a mc if it bit him in the arse... much less if he used one!

[Eug Wanker]

The mostest bestest wowifying laptop computer of all time was the original TiBook.

[d4nth3m4n]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
The mostest bestest wowifying laptop computer of all time was the original TiBook.

other than the tab placement on the keyboard, werent all the tibooks the same? i.e. there was no original

[wataru]

I think the case evolved a little bit. Depending on whether you call that a "new" TiBook or not, you could say there was an "original" one.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by d4nth3m4n:
other than the tab placement on the keyboard, werent all the tibooks the same? i.e. there was no original

All I meant was the original TiBook blew everything else on the market at the time away, and it was the coolest looking laptop ever made up until then. The current PowerBooks are also nice, but they're much less of a jump over the TiBook than the TiBook was over everything else when the TiBook came out.

Maybe it's better to say that the TiBook series should be on any top ten list.

[gorickey]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
All I meant was the original TiBook blew everything else on the market at the time away, and it was the coolest looking laptop ever made. The current PowerBooks are also nice, but they're much less of a jump over the TiBook than the TiBook was over everything else when the TiBook came out.

Maybe it's better to say that the TiBook series should be on any top ten list.

Amen.

[C.J. Moof]

Originally posted by d4nth3m4n:
other than the tab placement on the keyboard, werent all the tibooks the same? i.e. there was no original

They increased the screen resolution, moved from VGA to DVI output, and swapped an option key for a command as the processors changed.

And they changed the font of "Powerbook G4" below the display.

[scaught]

its really no surprise to me that this dudes list seems focused on "ultralite" models (those ones we always make fun of for not having internal CD drives and whatnot) since hes a writer and doesnt need that stuff anyway. all he does is type.

having said that. its insane that the tibook didnt make it on this list. an inch thick with the feature set it had. the 15" widescreen that inspired many many copycats.

how about the first laptops to have wiring for 802.11 built in?

this guy just wants attention. such a glaring lack of mentioning certain companies its ridiculous. i can hear him typing his next column already "why i didnt mention those other companies"

****ing toshiba? has anyone ever looked at a ****ing toshiba laptop and went OOOOHHHH!!!

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by scaught:
its insane that the tibook didnt make it on this list.

It'd be the top of my top 10 list. When it came out I wasn't even a Mac person (because I couldn't stand OS 9, and OS X 10.1 wasn't out yet). However, when I saw that thing of beauty, I knew Apple had a winner on its hands.

[PacHead]

I nominate the Pismo.

[olePigeon]

Only reason he's famous is cuz he shares a name with a keyboard layout.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Only reason he's famous is cuz he shares a name with a keyboard layout.

A lot of people have no use for either.

[Eriamjh]

I still have my model 100. It's neato.
http://www.kekatos.com/computers/tandy100.jpg

Paid $200 for it in 1985.

[TailsToo]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
The mostest bestest wowifying laptop computer of all time was the original TiBook.

I might vote for the PowerBook 170, because it was so far ahead of everything else out on the market that was scary. Apple was never able to meet all of the demand for the unit.