Human laps aren’t getting any smaller. Human eyes can only comfortably read text that’s so big. But most importantly, human fingers have trouble with keyboards that are too tiny. Because of these limitations, the laptop of the future will probably remain the about same size as a laptop of today. (Even though scientists could make the keyboard and screen smaller, the human form wouldn’t appreciate it.)
Technology will continue to make laptop hardware smaller, more energy efficient, and better able to handle the portable environment. But one area that needs vast improvement is battery technology. The battery of the future will be the fuel cell, which is like a miniature power plant directly connected to your laptop PC. Fuel cell technology promises power that lasts for weeks instead of hours, which will prove a boon to portable gizmos of every kind — but only when it’s perfected. Presently, scientists are predicting that the first usable fuel cells will be available by the end of the decade, or around 2009. Until then, we’ll have to slug it out with rechargeable batteries and power packs.

As technology careened headlong into the 1990s, it became apparent that users were desperate for three things from their laptop computers:

• Light weight
• Long battery life
• Full hardware compatibility with desktop systems

Over time, all of these were achieved — but at a price. Today, the Holy Grail of a lightweight, PC compatible laptop that boasts a long battery life isn’t elusive, it’s just expensive:

• Weight. Depending on how much you want to pay, your laptop can be anywhere from 1?2-inch thick to just under an inch thick and weigh in at between 2 to 6 pounds, such as the IBM Thinkpad. The weight and size also depend on the features you want in your laptop, with more features adding more weight.
• Battery Life. While the batteries themselves haven’t improved much in the past several years, thanks to power management hardware and software, modern laptops can extend battery life from the once-standard two hours to about three or four hours.
• Hardware compatibility. Since the late 1990s, all laptops come with color screens just like desktop systems. They also sport CD-ROM or DVD drives, though floppy drives are seldom found in a modern laptop (and then usually as an external device). Laptops also feature modems, networking, and expansion options. Special laptop microprocessors and other hardware have been developed over the years, keeping the laptop hardware small and energy efficient.

The UltraLite marked the line between what was then called a laptop to what is today called a notebook. While manufacturers had perverted the term laptop to include heavy, bulky portables that were anything but lap-friendly (such as the bowling ball-heavy Compaq III), the UltraLite raised the bar and created the notebook category.
Any laptop that weighs under 6 pounds and is less than an inch thick is technically a notebook. Some even lighter units earned the moniker sub-notebook.
But keep in mind that all these terms are for marketing purposes; today, all of these computers, regardless of weight, size, or what the brochure says, are called laptops.

Just because the marketing department labeled the computer a “laptop” didn’t mean that it was sleek and lightweight. For a while there, it seemed like anyone could get away with calling a portable PC a laptop, despite the computer weighing up to 20 pounds — which is enough to crush any lap, not to mention kneecaps.
In the fall of 1989, NEC showed that it could think outside of the laptop box when it introduced the UltraLite laptop. It featured a fullsized screen and keyboard, but no disk drives or other moving parts! The UltraLite used battery-backed up memory to serve as a silicon disk. The silicon disk stored 1 or 2MB of data — which was plenty back in those days. The UltraLite featured a modem, but it could also talk with a desktop computer via its serial port and a special cable. Included with the UltraLite was software that would let it easily exchange files and programs with any desktop PC.
The weight? Yes, the UltraLite lived up to its name and weighed in at just under 5 pounds — a feather compared to the obese laptops of the day. And the battery lasted a whopping two hours, thanks to the UltraLite’s lack of moving parts.

When computer companies specify the weight of their laptops, I’m certain that they do it under ideal conditions, possibly at the North Pole or some other location where the earth’s gravity field is at its weakest. The weight advertised is, like they say, “for comparison purposes only.” Commonly left out of the laptop’s weight is what’s known as the power brick. This is the AC adapter used to connect the laptop to a wall socket. When the laptop isn’t running off of batteries, you need the power brick to supply the thing with juice. This means that the power brick is a required accessory — something you have to tote with you if you plan on taking the laptop on an extended trip.
In the old days, what they didn’t tell you in the advertisements was that the power brick often weighed half as much as the laptop itself! Either that, or the power brick was more bulky than the laptop, as seen nearby with the Dell 320LT’s obnoxiously big power brick (and heavy 30-minute batteries). Lugging around such items is not very convenient. Things are better today.

The computer industry’s dream was to have a portable computer that had all the power of a desktop computer, plus all the features, yet be about the same size and weight as the Model 100. One of the first computers to approach that mark was the Compaq SLT back in 1988. The Compaq SLT was the first portable computer that actually looks like one of today’s laptops. It featured a full-sized keyboard, full-sized screen, floppy drive (this is before the era of CD-ROM), and a 286 microprocessor, which meant that the computer could run the DOS operating system of the day. Weight? Alas, the SLT was a bowling ball at 14 pounds!

What the Compaq SLT did was prove to the world that portability was possible. A laptop computer was designed to feature everything a desktop computer could, plus run off batteries for an hour or so.

The very first computer that even remotely looks like a modern laptop, and was fully battery powered, was the Radio Shack Model 100, shown in Figure 1-3. It was an instant, insane success.
The Model 100 was not designed to be IBM PC compatible, which is surprising considering that PC compatibility was all the rage at the time. Instead, it offered users a full-sized, full-action keyboard, plus a tiny 8-row, 40-column display. It came with several built-in programs, including a text editor/word processor, communications, a scheduler/appointment book, plus the BASIC programming language, which allowed users to create their own programs or buy and use BASIC programs written by others. The Radio Shack Model 100 was really all that was needed for portability at the time, which is why the device was a such a resounding success.
_ The Model 100 provided the form factor for laptops of the future. It was about the size of a hardback novel. It ran for hours off of standard AA batteries. It weighed just 6 pounds.
_ Despite its popularity and versatility, people wanted a version of the Model 100 that would run the same software as the IBM PC. Technology wasn’t ready to shrink the PC’s hardware down to Model 100 size, but the Model 100 set the goal for what users wanted in a laptop’s dimensions.

The Osborne was portable, but not conveniently so. Heck, it was a suitcase!
Imagine hauling the 24-pound Osborne across Chicago’s O’Hare airport? Worse: Imagine the joy of your fellow seatmates as you try to wedge the thing beneath the seat in front you.
Despite the inconvenience, the computer world recognized the value of portability. And despite the print ads showing carefree people toting the Osborne around — people with arms of equal length, no less — no hip marketing term could mask the ungainly nature of the Osborne: Portable? Transportable? Wispy? Like it or not, the computer industry itself devised the unglamorous term luggable to describe that type of computer The luggables were an extremely popular class of computer. Never mind the weight. Never mind that most never ventured from the desktop that they were set up on, luggables were the best the computer industry could offer in the arena of portable computing.
The problem with the Osborne was not that it was a luggable. No, what killed the Osborne was that the world wanted IBM PC compatibility. The Osborne lacked that. Instead, an upstart Texas company called Compaq introduced luggability to the IBM world with the Compaq 1, The Compaq 1, introduced in 1983 at $3,590, proved that you could have your IBM compatibility and eat it on the road — or anywhere there was a power socket handy.
But yet, the power cord can stretch only so far. It became painfully obvious that for a computer to be truly portable — as Adam Osborne intended — it was going to have to lose that power cord.

Long before people marveled over solar powered, credit card-sized calculators, there existed the world’s first portable, human-powered calculator. Presenting the abacus, the device used for centuries by merchants and goat herders to rapidly perform calculations that would break human fingers.
Abacus comes from the Greek word meaning “to swindle you faster.” Seriously, the abacus or counting board is simple to master, and in the deft hands of an expert, it can even out perform all operations on a calculator — including the square and cubic roots. In his short story “Into the Comet,” science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote of stranded astronauts using many abacuses to plot their voyage home when the spaceship’s computer broke down.

The first successful portable computer was the Osborne 1, created by Adam Osborne in 1980. A computer book author and publisher, Adam believed that for personal computers to be successful, they would have to be portable. Adam’s design for the Osborne 1 portable computer was ambitious for the time: The thing would have to fit under an airline seat — and this was years before anyone would dream of actually using a computer on an airplane. The Osborne 1 portable computer was a whopping success. It featured a full-sized keyboard, two full-sized floppy drives, but a teensy credit card-sized monitor. It wasn’t battery powered, but it did have a handy carrying handle so you could lug the 24-pound beast around like an over-packed suitcase. Despite any shortcomings, they were selling 10,000 units a month (at $1,795 each, which included software — a first for the time). The cash was rolling in.
By late 1983, sadly, Adam’s company floundered, suffering from the onslaught of the new IBM PC and its legion of compatibles and clones. Yet the Osborne 1 proved that computers could be portable. In fact, it founded a new class of computer: the luggable.