Monday, April 6, 2009

Size: A Brief history of Computer Types and Debuts

The Desktop Computer

In 1975 the first personal computer is marketed in kit form. The Altair features 256 bytes of memory. Bill Gates, with others, writes a BASIC compiler for the machine. The next year Apple begins to market PC's, also in kit form. It includes a monitor and keyboard. BASIC was the appropriate language to use because it did not use much memory.

The eight design principles of BASIC were:

1. Be easy for beginners to use.

2. Be a general-purpose programming language.

3. Allow advanced featured to be added for experts (while keeping the language simple for beginners).

4. Be interactive.

5. Provide clear and friendly error messages.

6. Respond quickly for small products.

7. Not to require an understanding of computer hardware.

8. Shield the user from the operating system.


Notebook Computer

Although the term Notebook is now often used interchangeably with the term Laptop, it was originally introduced to differentiate a smaller, thinner and lighter range of devices, which supplanted their larger counterparts. The computer considered by most historians to be the first true portable computer was the Osborne 1. Adam Osborne, an ex-book publisher founded Osborne Computer and produced the Osborne 1 in 1981, a portable computer that weighed 24 pounds. The Osborne 1 came with a five-inch screen, modem port, two 5 1/4 floppy drives, a large collection of bundled software programs, and a battery pack. The Osborne sold for $1795 and did good business selling 10,000 units a month. However, other larger companies jumped on the bandwagon, most notably Compaq - and the Osborne computer company went bankrupt in 1983.


Tablets

In the late 1980s, early pen computer systems generated a lot of excitement and there was a time when it was thought they might eventually replace conventional computers with keyboards. After all, everyone knows how to use a pen and pens are certainly less intimidating than keyboards. Pen computers, as envisioned in the 1980s, were built around handwriting recognition. In the early 1980s, handwriting recognition was seen as an important future technology.



PDA

The first PDA is considered t be the CASIO PF-3000 released in May 1983. GO Corp. was also pioneering in the field. The term was first used on January 7, 1992 by Apple Computer CEO John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton. In 1996 Nokia introduced the first mobile phone with full PDA functionality, the 9000 Communicator, which has since grown to become the world’s best-selling PDA and which spawned a category of phones called the smartphone.


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