Industrial Titanes: ToughBooks from Shanghai

02.07.2019

Grid Compass the first notebook in history appeared in 1979. It was ordered by NASA. Grid Compass weighted 5 kg, was equipped by Intel 8086 with 8MHz and 340kB. The laptop was often used on board of the shuttles in 1980-1990s of the last century. Due to inability to work from battery, high cost, and specific software, it did not become popular, and remained only space technology.

In 1981 the first notebook entered the market. It was called Osborne 1, weighted about 11 kg, had 4mHz processor, and 64kB core memory, light pipe 5' display, and two 5.25' discs slots, and could work from battery. Osborne 1 used CP/M 2.2 operation system, and preinstalled software had two Basic versions, WordStar text editor, e-tables SuperCalc, and dBase II.

Osborne 1 had great commercial success, causing enormous raise of interest to this prospective area among different companies, and leading to establishment of large number of companies developing and creating notebooks. Compaq, Epson, Apple, and Toshiba were among the first.

Toshiba T1100 that has entered market in 1985 is often called forefather of the modern notebooks. Distinguished for monochrome 640x200 LCD, equipped with 4.77mHz Intel 80C88 processor (with reduced power consumption) and floppy disc slot for 3.5' discs for 729kB. Since that time Toshiba keeps leading positions on the global laptop market.

Toshiba is also the author of the world's first laptop with 386 processor, first portable computer with colored LCD screen and active matrix, first notebook with 2.5' hard disc, first notebook with PCMCIA slot and USB hub, first portable computer with installed CD-ROM, and etc.

Mass production of the notebooks started in the end of the 1980s. Each new generation of notebooks is more compact, more productive, has more options, and approaches desktop computers to extend that it nearly removed it from the market now.

ToughBooks are the notebooks placed in special bodies that protect them from dust, water and humidity, heat, explosions, and other occurrences that may cause death to regular device. The lot of such "immortal" industrial ToughBooks was shipped by Delivery World in the beginning of July from Shanghai . The customer performed all customs formalities himself, and delivered devices are already available in the specialized showrooms of the n capital.