
The creation of the modern laptop - bootload
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/05/from-laptops-that-needed-leg-braces-to-laplets-engineering-mastery/
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kooltechar
I just wish glossy screens were something in the past and that all new laptops
had matte screens or at least an option for it.

You could argue that glossy screen gives better color representation but I can
not personally stand the reflection I get on glossy screens.

When I sit on a matte screen, do I think about that my colors are slightly
worse? No.

When I sit on a glossy screen, do I think about that my colors are slightly
better? No, but I do think about the reflections all the time because
sometimes I can not even see what is on my screen because of all the
reflections.

I have a Thinkpad with a matte IPS screen, it appears that this will be my
last laptop given the trend at the moment.

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userbinator
Agreed on the screens, and I'll add to that the trend of cut-down keyboards
with missing/non-standard key arrangements and absolutely flat keys.

Low key-travel to actuation is fine (and actually makes for faster typing),
but there needs to be a soft "damping" stop past that to cushion and rebound
the fingers, otherwise it feels excessively rough and abrupt to type on.

Then again, seeing how many people just can't seem to type without looking at
the keys, or barely use the keyboard at all, it's not surprising that
evolution has removed the features of keyboards that don't give any advantage
for them.

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slantyyz
I'd like to add touchpads with a pair of discrete buttons.

I'm the first to admit that my hand-eye coordination on touchpads sucks, but
my finger has a tendency to move when clicking on those Apple style, pivoting
touchpads. More often than not, it moves the pointer away from what I'm trying
to click onto something I don't want to click.

~~~
slinkyavenger
Of course it's a preference thing, but I love the ability to click wherever my
fingers may be - I also have never had my fingers accidentally move when
clicking. I also really like having all the space to use for gestures without
the discreet buttons.

I'm really happy the rest of the world is finally catching up with Apple's
trackpads. No more unresponsive synaptic driver nonsense.

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ghshephard
_Unfortunately, the industrial equipment to bore tiny holes in MacBooks on a
production line in China didn 't yet exist. Ive's team of experts eventually
found a US company that made machines—at $250,000 a piece—that could be
adapted to do the job. Apple got the equipment provider to sign an exclusivity
deal, then proceeded to buy "hundreds of them." Within a few years, millions
of Apple laptops and peripherals had a growing green light._

$25 million just so the green light can shine "through" the aluminum.

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contingencies
No mention of the Kaypro:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaypro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaypro)

Random stories: I think I have an old T3100 (later version of the Toshiba in
the picture, but which looks about the same). Someone gifted it to me circa
1999 - it came with some obsolete DOS TCP/IP stack which operated over a
serial cable PPP link and I submitted to the _nmap_ database just for kicks...
virtually any invocation of _nmap_ (even TCP half-open scans) would crash the
thing. I'm sure I had an older, huge, really heavy box-type portable as well.
It wasn't an Osborne, and as far as I can tell from online pictures and foggy
memory it wasn't a Kaypro. I didn't see it featured in this article, either.
Not sure if it's still around, but the thing worked on 5 1/4 or 8 inch disks
and had a horrible monochrome display.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_T3100](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_T3100)

~~~
teh_klev
Well to be fair, and in terms of notability for the purposes of the article,
the Osborne 1 was the original "commercially successful portable
microcomputer" [0] you could run CP/M on with disks and a proper monitor. The
Kaypro etc just copied and improved upon the idea, as did Compaq, IBM etc.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1)

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VLM
Its interesting that if you want an actual lap mounted laptop (not a
transportable) you want one of these from 1983:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100)

I had one of these about 30 yrs ago, it was pretty awesome.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I would _love_ a modern version of these - a cheap, long lasting, "fast
enough", super portable and durable machine to run a lightweight linux distro
on. The closest thing like it I can think of is the Samsung Series 3, but I've
heard it's a bit fragile.

