Ultraslim Laptop

The Evolution of the Ultraslim Laptop

The laptop computer was originally created to allow corporate employees to have a way for them to continue working no matter where they were. Initially laptops were quite large and bulky, nothing like the ultraslim laptop that we see on the market today. In fact the early models were very heavy, had no hard drives and a very small screen. All of the programs and information were stored on floppy disks and they used RAM for computing power.

One of the first slim laptops was made by the Gavilan Company in 1983 and was the first one to be able to close by folding the screen over the keyboard in a clamshell design. However this machine weighed in at over 9 pounds making it quite heavy to have sitting in your lap. It was however fully portable and could run on its internal batteries for up to 9 hours and soon became very popular in the business world.

In the same year Radio Shack introduced their new slim laptop the TRS - 80 Model 100 followed by the model 200. The latter model while still not lightweight was more compact with a larger display and included built in software, an industry first. With extra battery life the 200 was perfect for creating documents on the go and along with their desktop computers put Radio Shack at the forefront of the computer industry.

Until 1988 laptops could only display text they could not display any type of graphics, Compaq released the behemoth SLT 286 that weighed in at a massive 14 pounds. This was definitely not an ultraslim laptop, however NEC introduced the world to the ultraslim idea with their UltraLite that only weighed 4.4 pounds and measured 11.75"x8.3"x1.4" and broke the laptop size barriers.

Impervious to the quest for lighter notebooks Macintosh came out with their own laptop in 1989 that weighed close to 17 pounds and had a 9.8" active matrix screen. This gargantuan laptop could run for up to ten hours on it's built in lead acid batteries.

This unit was the forerunner of the PowerBook line that has led to the latest offering from Mac the MacBook Air that only weighs three pounds and comes with built in wireless connectivity to keep you in touch on the go.

Today's computer user wants everything to be smaller, lighter and have more computing power than ever before. They want to be able to run all of the programs they need for school or business complete with top notch graphics and when they are done they want to still be able to play. The ultraslim laptop of today features top of the line processors like the AMD Turion and the Intel Core 2 Duo and have several gigabytes of RAM.

The ultraslim laptop now has a built in graphics chips and DVD player/burners to let people watch their favourite movies or play online games. These new slim laptops are as powerful if not more so than many people's desktops and in many cases have replaced the desktop completely.