A History of Portable Computing

From 'portables' that weighed nearly 30 pounds in the 1980s to the featherweight Apple iPad of 2010, portable computing has come a long way. Here's a look at some of the milestones.

By Lincoln Spector

Laptop Time Machine

We've come a long way from the earliest "portable" PCs, which weighed more than 20 pounds, wouldn't fit in today's carry-on luggage, and had screens barely bigger than the iPhone's.


Here are some of history's most important—and most unusual—portable computers. Let's start in 1981.


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Republished with permission from PC World. (View original version.)