History of Laptops: All about the Weight

Today I bring you the history of laptops: based on one defining factor…weight.

Today I bring you the history of laptops: based on one defining factor weight. You may call it poundage, heaviness, kilograms, lbs, etc, but it still harkens back to one important ideal, how much physical mass you have to carry in order to garner that super human processing power. I have chosen a variety of laptops from 1984 2008 leading up to one that some might say is the most modern, and prettiest pieces of laptop tech to hit the market in years: the shiny miniscule Macbook Air.

1990: Macintosh Portable (15.8 Lbs)

The Macintosh Portable was apples first attempt at creating a portable PC with Macintosh desktop capabilities. The Mac Portable weighed 15.8 pounds, due to the large lead-acid batteries used to power the unit and its features are nothing spectacular either. The Portable had a 16 Mhz CPU and 1 Mb of Ram, which was expandable up to 9 Mb. The Apple “luggable” was quite costly with a price of $6,500, however the luxury of a full travel keyboard, and battery life was up to 12 hours doesn’t give credence to exorbitant cost. The Mac Portable had a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk drive, but these added features still resulted in disappointing sale numbers for the unit.

1996: IBM Thinkpad 560 (4 Lbs)

Some feel the Thinkpad 560 led the way for a variety of modern day laptops with its 12 inch screen and full-size keyboard. It was a pioneering 4lbs and was only 1.2 inches think. It sported a sizeable 8MB of Ram, which was impressive for the time. The 560 had 810 MB of memory and a 1.44 MB external floppy hard drive. The small battery used to reduced weight had a fatal flaw in the design and only allowed for roughly 2 hours of battery during standard computing, however the features it supported were truly innovative with an attachable CD drive and integrated microphone.

2002: Compaq Evo N800c (6.6 Lbs)

The Compaq Evo N800c has a large 15.1 LCD screen and was thought of as the perfect portable for students in its debuting year. Its features include: 256 MB DDR SDRAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, and two 2.0 USB ports. The unit’s design showed how thin and light a powerful laptop could be and the High-end graphics provided a dazzling display of new technology. The mediocre weight of 6.6 pounds enabled easy transportation. The Evo Notebook N800c provides up to 4 hours of battery life using the standard 8-cell Lithium-Ion battery in “normal” conditions. The Evo N800c was reasonably priced and sold very well to the members of the realm of academia.

2008: Macbook Air (3.0 Lbs)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. Apple describes it as the “world’s thinnest notebook”. The thin and lightweight Macbook Air is not as ground-breaking as the light bulb, but at least it’s really attractive. The Air sports a variety of fresh features running the gamut from the 13.3-inch, widescreen LED backlit display, with 1280 x 800 screen resolution to the Intel Core 2 Duo chip. The Air weighs in at 3.0 pounds and is 0.76 inches at its thickest point. The Macbook Air doesn’t offer much in the way of novel technology, in fact it may have taken a step back as it only feature one USB port, roughly 3 hours of battery during average computing and 2GB of RAM. The fit form factor will set you back a pretty penny in the form of $1,799 and sales have been going well thus far, but only time will tell.

By Henrik Stigell