The desire for the power of a desktop computer compacted into a small, portable chassis had been around for some time but was mainly limited by the massive size of CRT displays. They were very large and difficult to move around on their own, so it wouldn't be until LCD displays were popularized that laptops would make their way into millions of homes around the world. The very first laptop computer was called the Osborne 1, (released in 1981) featuring a five-inch screen, a modem port, and two 5" 1/4 inch floppy disk drives. It looked like this.
It's quite a heavy-looking machine, to say the least, and doesn't look very portable at all. However, this would be the turning point of computer manufacturing. Much like calculators, the race for a smaller laptop had begun, and it was down to computer manufacturers to make them as small and cheap as possible.
Computer manufacturers such as Compaq, IBM, Toshiba, HP, and Epson were among some of the biggest names in the business, each releasing new and more affordable laptops at a breakneck pace. The release of LCD displays and Windows 95 led to much smaller, but far less powerful PCs when compared to desktops at the time. It wouldn't be until the early '00s that laptops would start to rival desktop PCs and with the release of the legendary operating system, Windows XP, laptop sales shot through the roof.
Comparing the chunky laptops of the early '00s and '10s to the laptops of this decade is astonishing. Microsoft came out with their own line of touchscreen laptops called the Surface in 2012, an unimaginable feature in 1992 or 1982. Modern laptops have come very far in the last ten years.
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