Look, I'm not saying there weren't others before she came into my life, but they were just puppy-love infatuations… This was my first deep romance.

Wow. I think Gregg had a Kaypro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaypro

I took a class in DOS and COBOL at the local community college during high school and was thrilled to pieces to never have to go through that hell again, getting to the University of Michigan and getting a Mac under the student discount program.

That one was still working in the early part of this century. Friends in Rome gave it to their kid to play with.

Huh? It is literally impossible to use a laptop in coach class on an airplane. That's why you don't see them anymore.

The seats are so close together that you have to push the laptop all the way against the seat in front of you.

But: that seat is tilted backwards (even before it reclines into your lap). So your laptop screen points down. You can't see anything at all.

Who rides trains these days? And who ever brought a laptop to the beach for fun?

If I want a simple game or something to read I have a cell phone. My laptop is for work. I use it at customers sites.

Ah 1985, I missed that.

Wait, wut? someone actually uses the airliner's tray to support their laptop? huh. I always just used my lap to support the laptop. Seems to work.

I favor the smaller laptops, and they should do OK even in a tray. It didn't take long to get tired of lugging a 10 pound beast thru the airport.

Now a days, I would use a tablet on a plane to watch the Amazon prime video(s) I already downloaded so that I could entertain myself.

I use a desk top for my work and cannot stand using a laptop. If I'm flying I take a book.

I was issued one of those monsters for travel use, along about 1987.

It wasn't that it wasn't useful, it was more that the applications available for it were very limited. I was using mine for engineering math, at which it was actually quite good. But I would always smile at the road-warriors who would be dragging these things around with them, knowing that they could do a bit of word-processing, maybe a simple spreadsheet, but apart from that, it was all vanity - especially since so few others were equipped to receive and process their output anyway. A moleskine notebook and a good pencil were more useful.

Nowadays, I just carry the thing to where it's going - the laptop is rapidly expanding back to the size it started out at, for engineering use, anyway, and it's really not practical to use in-route. That's what the phone and the Kindle are for.

llater,

llamas

If you thought those were huge to lug around, this guy's article about the early stuff reporters used is interesting. Especially the early stuff that used modem couplers: http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/291145401.html

My dad had something similar to a TRS-80 model 100 to phone in his timecards for AT&T for a few years. Horrible little thing that used these magnetic strips vs actual tape or a disc drive. Had a 40x1 display.. blech.

We started out with computers my friend across the street had (his dad was into computers).. Timex sinclairs, TRsSh-80s, Commodores (vic-20 through 128s), etc.. First in family was my grandparents Apple //c, first in our house was an AT&T PC6300 (dual 5-1/4" floppies, no HDD). When we did get a 20Meg HDD a year later, I remember thinking, "I"ll never be able to fill this monster!"

My tinkering started that early and eventually became my career. One that makes decent money, so that turned out great.

I still have the box from my first laptop in my garage (storing old games)... it was an AMD K6-2 processor.. my phone is more powerful now.

The next great lover had an stunning sexual maneuver called The Butterfly.

Remember what Compaq started out making? It made a "compact" computer. I had one of those for work. It was about the size of an old-fashioned suitcase, and as heavy as one full of rocks. In carrying position, it sat on its keyboard. To use it, one sat it on its side and tipped the keyboard out.

I remember lugging it home one night in winter in Minnesota. I had to hop over a snow bank and cross a busy street quickly. Well, the keyboard dislodged and was bouncing merrily through the snow and slush in the street. Fun!!

Here is one!

http://www.vintage-computer.com/compaq_portable.shtml

Of this fabulously-failed prophecy, I found the last two sentences to be the most hilarious: "Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so."

Wanna bet?

> I remember lugging it home one night
> in winter in Minnesota.

The first time I saw one, in 1983, it looked like the most fabulous thing in human creation.

I literally remember the scent.

Hmm? Career? TV... Watched the micro revolution sweep the industry.

Why do you ask?

Some really smart guy, it may have been Paul Graham, said that laptops are for the creative class and tablets are for the consuming class. There was no mention of the bigger-than-a-breadbox PCs that I use.