How Compaq portable sales took over corporate america

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Mon, 01/01/2007 - 7:54pm.

The tenth place on the top technologies list belongs to the first Compaq portable. Well, portable is a generous term. We called it a luggable when it came out.

The Compaq portable weighed in at 34 pounds, had dual floppies and a nine inch integrated monochrome screen. Yes, it was advanced for the time, because it was the first truly portable IBM compatible machine.

Now, many people think this was the first portable computer. They'd be wrong. Osborne and Kaypro had machines out prior to this, but they ran CPM.

Anyway, we were excited when the executives at our company decided to order a few of these. One, it was our first exposure to portable machines and two, it was our first exposure to Compaq.

The machine was solid, rugged and performed well. We did have an issue with video compatibility with certain software packages, but I think that was more a driver than hardware issue.

We kept those machines in service until Compaq released their Portable III.