Wired - What's this? It's a portable computer -- the world's first portable computer, in fact. And how do we know its portable? Because IBM tells us so. The 25kg (55lbs) beast was born in 1975 and christened the IBM 5100 Portable Computer. It is one of Royal Pingdom's excellent gallery entitled The history of PC hardware, in pictures.
We honestly don't know how the Pingdom folks get time to do their real job -- monitoring uptime. They keep coming up with galleries like this, which runs from the first mouse to the first web server, taking in the wood-cased Apple I and a giant, room-sized laser printer on the way.
Back to that "portable" from IBM. We know you''e itching for the specs. The top end model – a mere $20,000 – had 64kb RAM, a five inch CRT screen and a hard drive with... kidding. It didn't have a hard drive. Instead, there was a tape drive. This stuff still amazes me, every time I see it. Take a look at your cellphone, right now. Even the junkiest models kill these old machines.
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