A Walk Down Portable Computing's Memory Lane

This is a very special issue of VARBusiness, dedicated to how the notebook computer has transformed the computing landscape. This issue, sole sponsored by Toshiba and produced independently by the editorial staff of VARBusiness, coincides with the 20th anniversary of Toshiba's entry into what was then the portable-computing market. I must confess, I have been around this industry long enough to have witnessed some of those first-generation mobile-computing products. Some resembled awkward-looking pieces of luggage, oddly shaped and rather ungainly in appearance and functionality. The early screens of those "luggables," or transportable systems as they were referred to back then (along with terms like IBM-compatible and MS-DOS), had monitors about the size of a Blackberry device or the latest cell phone.

The only things more interesting than the devices themselves were the men and women behind them. The new generation of solution provider or computing professional may not appreciate who those legends were, but trust me, they were giants. Working with them was like playing golf with Arnold Palmer in his prime, or taking the field with Ted Williams when he was hitting .400. What I remember most about those early pioneers in this portable-computing market was their brashness, their ego, their appetite for risk, their vision. It is a shame that Adam Osborne, the man many credit with bringing portable computing to the channel and business users, is no longer with us. When I was breaking into this business, he was the story. The Osborne portable computer, with a fraction of today's memory, processing power and storage capacity, was the most exciting product to write about. His company, Osborne Computer, was also the most enthralling to cover, not only because of Osborne's largesse, but because of the company's meteoric rise and ultimate crash. Many blamed the pre-announcement of a new system as the reason for the company's decline, but there were many other factors.

I have so many vivid recollections of the portable-computing market. Let me share a few with you. As a reporter for CRN--which is also publishing a special issue of its own on mobile computing--I had access to a small pool of Radio Shack TRS-80 portable computers, which, if memory serves, displayed maybe eight lines of type on a machine not much larger than a spiral notebook. The machine enabled us to file stories from anywhere in the United States as long as we packed the black rubber acoustic coupler. We had to travel with these funky-looking earmuff-like devices, which needed to be stuck on each end of a telephone handset to send stories back to the newsroom. We also had to do a fair amount of coding on top of the story so the system back home could read the text files. I remember writing a story while my then-girlfriend (and now wife) was driving me to my office after I had returned from a trip to cover a legal dispute between an Entre franchisee and the parent company. Believe it or not, we used those machines for years.

A few years later, Toshiba and other vendors brought systems to market that resembled the mobile computers of today. As one Comdex (remember that show?) approached in the late-'80s, Toshiba asked if we wanted to experience their newest devices firsthand by taking them to the show to file stories. Sounded like a great offer. So Toshiba sent us two machines, which were incredibly useful but wound up getting stolen after we set them down for a moment at a cocktail party. I still remember the look on my editor's face when I told him we owed Toshiba several thousand dollars for the stolen goods. Portable systems sure were expensive.

What amazed me back then was the insatiable appetite the channel and customers had for Toshiba's notebooks. The company actually put its machines on allocation--you don't hear that word anymore--and its channel policies always sparked great debate among solution providers, who were either upset that they didn't get any Toshiba systems, or angry that they didn't receive enough of them.

On another note, the early founders of Compaq used its portable-computing systems as a means of leapfrogging IBM and propelling the company to fortune and fame. Well, vendors have certainly come and gone, technology has evolved and Dell has eaten into the share of the indirect players, but the channel remains the most viable way to sell those devices to business customers. And that is not likely to change much in the next 20 years.

Have a favorite mobile memory? Please let me know at [email protected].