Portable PCs: Twenty years of design innovation

In this article, Andre Rossouw, a business manager at Rectron, the local representative of Toshiba laptop computers in South Africa, charts the history of the portable PC and its evolution into the laptop and today`s notebook PC.

Twenty years ago, in 1985, the first portable personal computers (PCs) appeared on the market. They were designed exclusively for business use and were positioned to appeal to the well-heeled corporate executive who would be travelling by private plane - or similar means of transport.

These "lugable" PCs were little more than a conventional desktop PC with handles and a small screen and keyboard attached. They were cumbersome and expensive - and by no means targeted at the mass market.

Where to use them? Trains, planes and other forms of mass transport were out of the question, because of their size. And their weight precluded many women from taking a second glance at them.

Within a year or two, size was reducing and the (then) latest technology - such as the 4.77 MHz Intel 80C88 processor, with 512Kb of RAM - was on the specification sheet.

The size and weight of the average portable PC almost halved in five years, such was the fast pace of development - reflecting the time and money invested in these machines, which had carved an important and lucrative niche in the market.

Portables were becoming highly sought after by executives "on the move".

The Toshiba portable PC of this era weighed over 20 Kg and was 30 cm wide, 7cm high and nearly 30 cm deep. A 22cm x 11.7cm black-and-white display offered 640x200 resolution, and units had optional 300 baud modems.

This specification was considered state-of-the-art at the time and, because of its compact dimensions, the Toshiba machine was labelled a "laptop" for the first time. It was, in fact, the first laptop PC to be offered on the market.

Laptops soon proliferated. Vendors focused on gradually reducing the size and weight of their machines with each new model launch. Dual floppy drives, improved displays, increased RAM and faster processors were introduced.

At the turn of the decade (1990) the first improvements in battery life and durability were registered with the invention of the nickel-metal-hydride battery, which permitted around an hour of constant activity.

Display technology was also an area of focus and the newly named "notebooks" (because of their resemblance to the paper article) with higher quality thin film transistor (TFT) displays hit dealers` shelves.

At about the same time as the arrival of Intel`s 486 chip - in 1992 - came the development of the lithium-ion battery and even smaller, lighter and more powerful "notebook" machines were manufactured that boasted longer battery life - of around two hours.

The notebooks that followed all showed quantum leaps in power thanks to Intel`s Pentium chip developments. But more importantly, the functionality of the notebook was about to ramp up considerably with the introduction of CD-ROM drives (in 1995) and DVD drives a year later.

At the turn of the century, a leading edge notebook PC came equipped with a DVD/CD-RW multi-drive as standard, while Bluetooth communications and wireless networking capabilities were options that followed in 2001, paving the way for the establishment of wireless corporate networks.

These allowed company executives - and anyone else with a notebook PC - to move from office-to-office or office-to-meeting room while remaining linked to the network. Productivity began to rise significantly.

Wireless technology also sounded a warning alarm for desktop PC vendors, who, for the first time, were being out-sold by notebook manufacturers at the top end of the corporate market.

There was more innovation to come. In 2002, Toshiba launched what it called a "full-performance audio-visual" notebook with LCD TV-class video quality.

Now, for the first time, the notebook was seen as something more than a business machine. When linked to the Internet, or when playing DVDs, it became transformed into a portable entertainment centre.

The cross over between business and entertainment continued into 2005, with innovations coming thick and fast. Today`s leading edge notebook PCs feature ultra fast 32-bit CPUs running at more than 3 GHz - capable of playing games and other programmes with high overhead demands.

Memory (RAM) now exceeds one gigabyte while high resolution,1600 x 1200 pixel displays, with 16 million colours are available to amaze older purchasers who remember the early days of this technology.

And the inclusion of 100 GB hard-drives means that music, movies, graphics, photographs, spreadsheets, data, and a whole lot more, can be stored on the hard drive, making the machine a self-contained "office-come-entertainment centre" for everyone (including kids and students) on the move.

What`s more, notebook technology and design innovations are spawning other spin-off products - such as ultra-small pocket PCs, sub-notebook "tablet" PCs that can be used to replace paper and pencil when writing is preferable to typing.

The marketplace too has seen change. Companies such as Compaq and HP have merged, while IBM has sold its once thriving PC business.

With the exception of Toshiba, very few of the brands that set out to establish this market in 1985 remain to take us forward into the new era of converged data/voice/video communications that awaits the portable PC market.