Читать книгу Laptops For Dummies - Dan Gookin - Страница 20

Before the dawn of the first true laptop, some ugly mutations slouched in, along with a few rejects from various mad scientists around the globe. I call them the lunch bucket computers because they assumed the shape, size, and weight of a hardhat’s lunch box. The Compaq III, shown in Figure 1-4, was typical of this type of portable computer.

 The lunch box beasts weighed anywhere from 12 to 20 pounds or more, and most weren’t battery powered.

 The lunch bucket portables were the first PCs to use full-screen LCD monitors. (The Osborne and Compaq portables used glass CRTs.)

 Incidentally, around the same time as the lunch bucket computers became popular, color monitors were becoming standard items on desktop PCs. All portables at the time, even those with LCD monitors, were monochrome.

 Honestly, the lunch bucket did offer something over the old transportable or luggable: less weight! A late-model lunch bucket PC weighed in at about 12 pounds, half the weight and about one-eighth the size of the suitcase-size luggables.