The Osborne led to the Osborne Effect:
Adam Osborne began showing the follow-on to the Osborne 1, the Osborne Executive, to journalists in early 1983. It had a number of improvements including an 80 column screen.
Dealers rapidly started cancelling orders for the Osborne 1 in anticipation of the new machine. Unsold inventory piled up despite of dramatic price cuts. This was one of the major factors that led to their bankruptcy.
I would expect if you tried to boot it up now youâd have some exploding capacitors on the PSU.
To think weâve gone from that to forced obsolescence being a viable business strategy.
Both concepts were common then and now. The article mentions that âMakerBot appears to have fallen victim to the Osborne effect: talking openly about a future product significantly reduced the sales of their current product.â
I have a military version Panasonic CF-29 as my personal laptop. It has two big eyelets to attach a shoulder strap. It doesnât need a case to protect it - nor to ship it, apparently.
Any laptop that has a spare parts list, substantial screws, and pretty much zero glue is fine in my book.
Itâs not exactly the same thing but something extremely similar exists. Not an advertisement or an endorsement. Iâve used one. I hated it and donât recommend it. Though the people who had them seemed to like them.
(Disclaimer: I also hate those mouses that you hold your hand at a 45 degree angle for. Not a natural angle.)
I am a poster-child for âtoughbooksâ, despite hating the name - which evokes shades of typing in futility upon an old Dashiell Hammett paperback. Being a multimedia artist of sorts, I am likely to be travelling with a laptop, bringing it wilderness locations, fighting or running from police and/or other violent gangs. Also I require maximum connectivity in the form of ports, ports, ports. So I am far more likely to get a ruggedized military laptop and crowbar MacOS onto it than buy Appleâs current flimsy-looking hardware. I still have whole and parts PowerBook 1200s and Pismos, because they are at least field-servicable. My poor last generation TiBook always seems like itâs wanting an excuse to die.
I am âone of thoseâ annoying characters who will show up to play a set and carry a whole tower instead of a laptop.
I was thinking of the Kaypro too. Would love to find a case, do it over and plunk one down at a Starbucks. Instead of a speaker, music could be grinded out on the floppy drives.
Forget those new-fangled 1980s computers like the Osborne and Kaypro. Go with an IBM Portable PC from 1975.
The oldest computer I still have is an Ohio Scientific Challenger 4P from 1978/79. But itâs not portable.
UmâŚ
It has a Thunderbolt port and two (2) USB 3 ports.
Plus a SDXC card slot.
You are thinking of the MacBook Air. I was talking about the MacBook (now in Rose Gold!!!)
They could have added a second USB - C TB2 port to the other side, but no.
Thatâs a real thing, the IBM Portable PC 5100 from 1975.
Not to be confused with the IBM Portable PC 5155 from 1984.
very true. useless item not worth selling. pointless and a waste of time.
Thereâs not a ton of space in the MacBook retina. The motherboard is essentially surrounded on three sides by batteries.
A second usb socket would have eaten into battery space or the headphone jack, and while the 2016 update (from a manufacturing perspective) is more than just a motherboard replacement, the second port would still necessitate a more complete redesign.
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