30 years anniversary of the first mass produced
portable computer COMPAQ Grid Compass 1011
Today it is considered the modern laptop (portable
computers) are turning 30 years old. The notebook grandparent is a
COMPAQ - GRiD Compass 1011 - a "mobile computer" with
a electroluminescent display (ELD) screen supporting resolution of
320x240 pixels. The screen allowed the user to use the
computer console in a text resolution of 80x24 chars. This portable
high-tech gadget was equipped with magnesium alloy case, an Inten
8086 CPU (XT processor) at 8Mhz (like
my old desktop pravetz pc ;) ), 340 kilobyte (internal
non-removable magnetic bubble memory and even a 1,200 bit/s
modem!
The machine was uniquely compatible for its time as one could
easily attach devices such as floppy 5.25 inch drives and external
(10 Meg) hard disk via IEEE-488 I/O compatible protocol
called GPiB (General Purpose instrumental Bus).
The laptop had also unique small weight of only 5 kg and a
rechargable batteries with a power unit (like modern laptops)
connectable to a normal (110/220 V) room plug.
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The machine was bundled with an own specificly written OS GRiD-OS.
GRID-OS could only run a specialized software so this made the
application available a bit limited.
Shortly after market introduction because of the incompitablity of
GRID-OS, grid was shipped with MS-DOS v. 2.0.
This primitive laptop computer was developed for serve mainly the
needs of business users and military purposes (NASA, U.S. military)
etc.
GRID was even used on Space Shuttles during 1980 - 1990s.
The price of the machine in April 1982 when GriD Compass was
introduced was the shockingly high - $8150 dollars.
The machine hardware design is quite elegant as you can see on
below pic:
As a computer history geek, I've researched further on GRID
Compass and found a nice 1:30 hour video telling in detailed
presentation retelling the history.
Shortly after COMPAQ's Grid Compass 1011's introduction, many other
companies started producing similar sized computers; one example
for this was the Epson HX-20 notebook. 30 years later,
probably around 70% of citizens on the globe owns a laptop or some
kind of portable computer device (smartphone, tablet, ultra-book
etc.).
Most of computer users owning a desktop nowdays, owns a laptop too
for mobility reasons. Interestengly even 30 years later the laptop
as we know it is still in a shape (form) very similar to its
original predecessor. Today the notebook sales are starting to be
overshadowed by tablets and ultra-books (for second quarter laptop
sales raised 5% but if compared with 2011, the sales rise is lesser
1.8% - according to data provided by Digital Research agency).
There are estimations done by (Forrester Research) pointing
until the end of year 2015, sales of notebook substitute portable
devices will exceed the overall sales of notebooks. It is
manifested today the market dynamics are changing in favour of
tabets and the so called next generation laptops -
ULTRA-BOOKS. It is a mass hype and a marketing lie that Ultra-Books
are somehow different from laptops. The difference between a
classical laptop and Ultra-Books is the thinner size, less weight
and often longer battery use time. Actually Ultra-Books are copying
the design concept of Mac MacBook Air trying to resell under
a lound name.
Even if in future Ipads, Android tablets, Ultra-Books or whatever
kind of mambo-jambo portable devices flood the market, laptops will
still be heavily used in future by programmers, office workers,
company employees and any person who is in need to do a lot of
regular text editting, email use and work with corporative apps.
Hence we will see a COMPAC Grid Compass 1011 notebook likes to be
dominant until end of the decade.