We've come a long way haven't we!

Yeah, that thing ways just a bit more than the portable for which GBM is having the contest!

The Osborne 1 came out before the Compaq company was organized, and it led the market with their 28 pound "portable," with a five inch screen that scrolled right as you typed past the forthieth column.

The big innovation was the O1 was an all-in-one that included "bundled" software, Wordstar (the most advanced word processor of its time), Supercalc, two versions of Basic, and some other gems.

I believe they were the first and last company to write a complete and readable user's manual.

Adam Osborne was visionary with that product, and created his company's own destruction by announcing the next model would be "IBM-compatible," thus ensuring the model he was shipping would have no customers.

After that double innovation of delivering good and then going bust by promising better, Osborne went on to become the first person to see the potential of selling software in bookstores--an established distribution and retail system for a growing market. Neither bookstores nor his target market had any idea how software could be sold that way, so he had to envision the kind of packaging only vaguely being adopted by Radio Shack for their TRS-80 computer software.

Watching Compaq go from a copycat to an innovator to a company that dominated the market was amazing. 128 kb on the board was mind-boggling.

I have used (and lugged around) the IBM PPC... (am I old now??)

At least is was not 'IBM PC Compatible', its was a real PC with CGA monitor (amber) and 2 5 1/4" floppy drives (even got a 20GB HD and 3.5" floppy upgrade during its lifetime)

Darn, I remember lusting for one of these back in '84 but getting a PC Jr. instead... Ah, software on ROM cartridges, those were the days... :-D Back when 512k RAM was way more than any sane human would ever use...