Archive for the ‘portable computers’ Category

The book I read to research this post was Laptops For Dummies by Dan Gookin which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book tells you all about the history of laptops and has quite a lot of general information about them. One thing I particularly liked was their is a section on free utility software. I think everyone knows about avast & AVG antivirus & spybot antispyware but what about hijack this which is anti hijacking software which prevents someone taking over your computer and making a certain website your start page. It also has quite about features like hibernation and how to set them up on your laptop not to mention getting on the internet and wireless networking. The first computer which could be called a portable in the sense that it could be transported although it only ran on the mains was the Osbourne 1 in 1983 and sold around 10,000 units a month. It had a small monochrome monitor and would just about fit under an airline seat. The first IBM compatible portable was the Compaq which was slightly more portable although you needed to be very strong to carry it far. The first proper portable computer was the Radio Shack 100 which was a reasonable size but still only had a small monochrome monitor. These computers sold well and proved there was a potential market for laptops.