13 Jan
1998
13 Jan
'98
12:32 p.m.
At 10:05 PM 1/12/98 -0500, you wrote:
I dunno... The 5100 was heavy, did not include a case, offered no
protection for the screen, didn't run on batteries...
I think it's only portable in comparison to the mainframes of the time --
that is, you could move it from room to room because it didn't need air
conditioning or special power or anything. But that's true of most of the
computers of the time. Yes, it was a one-piece unit, but I don't think
that's really enough. You wouldn't have really taken it home to finish up
or to a client's office to do an audit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
I think if you
consider the 5100 a portable, then so should you consider the
PDP-8. The 5100, while more *convenient* to move, perhaps, than, say, an
Altair, is hardly all that portable. It's listed as 50lbs (a stretch even
for me) and has no handle. You tell me how that's a portable? (It's much
like a TRS-80 Model III, only flatter. I think the III is lighter though.)
Even if the implementation may be poor (ie. no handles), I think IBM
really did try to make the thing truely portable. After all, all you
needed to do was lug around _one_ 50 pound box to do useful things, rather
than a processor plus a tube or printer, and perhaps an external power