Osborne put the diskette drives on either side. kaypro stacked them and put them on one side, which made room for a bigger display. I suspect that the Osborne design was cheaper (standard full height floppies vs a more compact but more expensive 2 in 1 stack).
Soon after that, of course, they figured out how to halve the height of a 5.25" floppy drive, but by that time the bulky suitcase computers had given way to the first real laptops, like the 12 or so pound, dual 3.5" floppy (but no hard drive) Toshiba I remember my father owning a couple years later.
