The Ever-shrinking Pc
The Sun Herald
Saturday June 12, 1993
FIRST there was the portable computer: 10-kilogram monsters that could be carried from room to room, but had to be plugged into AC.
Then came the laptop personal computer (PC): about half the weight and capable of operating from batteries as well as household power.
The laptop was swiftly supplanted by the smaller notebook PC.
Weighing around 3kg to 4kg, these little wonders have gone from being status symbols to serious business tools.
Today, around one in every seven PCs sold in Australia is a notebook. But there is no end to the incredible shrinking computer show.
Meet the sub-notebook PCs which weigh around 1.5kg to 2kg, slip easily into a briefcase or can be used with ease on a fold-down table.
Despite their size, they're fully-fledged PCs.
Sub-notebooks are not the smallest mobile computers. That title belongs to the palmtop category: PCs not much bigger than calculators.
But palmtops, while useful for engineers on the move, are just a bit too small for daily use.
The most popular sub-notebook PCs are probably the 1.9kg Macintosh PowerBook Duo models sold by Apple Computer. In the IBM-compatible field, makers of sub-notebooks include the US-based Hewlett-Packard and Dell and the French-owned Zenith.
The Apple Duo operates on the road as a stylish portable Macintosh Q, or back at the office or home it can be slipped into an optional DuoDock with connections to full-size keyboard, large screen and network, effectively turning it into a powerful desktop computer.
There is hard disk storage but no internal floppy drive. An optional external drive is available. Duo prices start at $4,495.
The latest challenge for dominance in the sub-notebook comes from Hewlett-Packard.
Its innovative new IBM-compatible OmniBook 300 will go on sale next month. Measuring 27cm by 16cm, the OmniBook is about half the size of a notebook model and weighs 1.3kg.
It has a full-size keyboard and a full VGA screen Q, the smallest and lightest PC on the market with these features, the makers say.
Product of an unusual alliance between Hewlett-Packard and the software giant, Microsoft Corporation, the OmniBook comes with Microsoft's Windows operating system, word processing and spreadsheet software, as well as HP's electronic diary, phone book and financial calculator programs all on credit-card size Read Only Memories (ROMS).
SOFTWARE PRICE WAR ON WAY
WATCH for crashing prices in the personal computer software market, as Melbourne cut-price operation, Ozzie Discount Software, invades the Sydney market. The plan, according to marketing manager and part-owner Andrew Gannon, is to set up between two and four stores initially and build up to between 11 and 15 stores.
© 1993 The Sun Herald