Comments on: My first laptop computer

By: dave

dave — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:48:08 +0000

I still see these once in a while. I work for
a company that recycles computer equipment. right now I have an amstrad ppc640 portable computer which actually has 3.5 inch disks and a supertwist lcd screen. it can run on a wad of D cells. I can’t find the mfg date though.

By: John O.

John O. — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:39:43 +0000

If you can believe it, I owned an Osborne I together with an interface that allowed it to print out through an Epson (or was it a Brother?) electric typewriter. And, as I recall, I ran an early version of Wordstar on it (where’d those .dot commands go?) … fledgling word processing. I was in the Marine Corps at the time and even took it aboard a ship when we “cruised” to the Med in late ’82. I remember being concerned about whether shipboard electrical power would somehow damage my prized Osborne/Brother combo (spikes, surges, etc.), and a Navy Chief proudly telling me that shipboard power was the cleanest around. When we went ashore, the Osborne went in the trailer we pulled behind my section’s M151 – the old jeep. Great memories, thanks!

By: John O.

John O. — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:39:25 +0000

By: Jon in Atlanta

Jon in Atlanta — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 12:20:00 +0000

I had a Panasonic Senor Partner. It weighed 33 pounds, green screen etc….Only 1 floppy though. Ran WordStar remeber that one?? Actually it was very good. 256K RAM.

You would put Wordstar in on its 5.24 floppie. Write your doc. Then tell it to save and it would tell you to put in another floppie, which you would do. Save the doc, then put the Wordstar floppie back in. Although most (all???) of Wordstar resided in RAM, so you only had to get it going then you could take the program disc out.

Fun!! But they were tough. One day at a meeting we knocked on off a table while it was up and running. It crashed to the floor and never shut down. We just picked it up and put it back on the table.

Those were the days../

Remeber Data General?? They made the first smallish portables that I can remember.

By: Alslayer

Alslayer — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:29:23 +0000

Now how can you hate me? I can’t help when I was born. I seemed to miss the computer age of the 80′s and the dot coms of the 90′s. I can’t wait to graduate college.

By: Lyle Van Camp

Lyle Van Camp — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 11:36:22 +0000

Stephen,
We bought a VP in early 1984, Manufacturing date is 1/1984 it served as our typesetting system using a program called RimWriter. We output to an original HP Laserjet, supposedely the third one shipped out of Minneapolis – we had our choice of taking a serial port unit or waiting for one of the “new” parallel ones! We took the serial unit.
The VP still should work. I dug it out this morning, found the Perfect manuals in their slips but I think I may have thrown the disks. Just over a year ago if I did. The VP had a memory expansion unit which I removed to try use a multifunction card for even more ram! If I remember correctly the two clashed. Should still have that memory expansion card around though.
Thanks,
Lyle Van Camp

By: jk

jk — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 21:08:24 +0000

Stephen, what bundled software are you referring to? I don’t remember any s/w with the VP- it was just too long ago.

By: jk

jk — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 20:55:41 +0000

Thank you, Steve, for a box that served me very well indeed.

By: Stephen E. Somerville

Stephen E. Somerville — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 20:27:07 +0000

I was the senior operations manager at Columbia Data Products from 1982 to 1984. My production team built and shipped about 2,000 VP’s a month during that time. I still have one buried in my closet. Wish I could find the “perfect” bundled software that came with it. I’d pay big to find that software somewhere on the net. Anyway, those days were indeed heady times. BIG BONUSES, all expense trips for the senior staff in Vegas, and bahamas, the champange flowed like water. We were making money hand over fist, then one day, all of the sudden, I was told to layoff 400 production line workers. I ONE DAY! I quit 2 weeks later and never looked back. But I’ll never forget those times. We took Kaypros apart, as well as commodores, compaqs, and anybody elses where we could see a better idea, cheaper method, any item to drive a higher margin. I remember sitting at a conference room table with the guts of all our competitors machines hanging out, and saying to the rest of the senior staff, “guys, there is no more profit in this box, we’ve trimmed everything we can”. I remember the press coming to the company. An expedition team was taking one of our VP’s to the top of mount everest to plot wind, conditions, etc. and the entire company was wearing tee shirts that read “Columbia Data Products, computers that can climb mountains”. Geeez, those were heady times, we had the world by the balls.
Steve

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:11:47 +0000

Well, geez, if you’re going to bring calculators into the picture, then don’t we have to go back to Commodore, which I believe also produced them before jumping into “proper” desktop units?