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"I've got this beautiful panoramic three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30 feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And who'd have dreamed you could do that?"
- Arthur C. Clarke
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| Briefcase Console | ||
| A notebook computer |
This term just gets a brief reference in the book. The book was published in 1981; probably written in 1980. At that time, Apple II computers were just breaking into the non-hobbyist market.
| A useful gadget [referring to an implant that would allow the user to communicate with a computer by thinking about it], but you know, you can communicate with a computer about as well with a good briefcase console. |
| From Oath of Fealty,
by Jerry Pournelle (w/L. Niven). Published by Timescape in 1981 Additional resources -
|
The first real briefcase consoles (probably the Osbourn) also came out in 1981. The Osborne I was the first complete portable microcomputer, with 64 K, two floppy discs, the CP/M operating system, and BASIC for $1795.
One of my absolute favorite computers was the Toshiba 5200, a "laptop" computer sold in 1988 that fits the description of a briefcase console to a "T". It weighed about 15 pounds; it was really a portable workstation. As I recall, I paid about $4,200 for it. It had room for internal PC cards, Intel 80386 whipping along at 11Mhz, 100 Mbytes of internal hard drive storage, and had a 13" 640x480 VGA orange gas plasma flat screen that was, hands down, the best display then available. So cool, I provide a picture:
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'Waldo flexed and extended his fingers gently; the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
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'He immediately turned the small shining disc of the Language Rectifier..'
'The delicious, indescribable pleasure of being a little planet swinging through space...'
'The horse reared up, pawing the air, then sprang into a gallop.'
'...most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives.'
'So what we're looking for now is... an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug.'
