Fond memories. It still looks good.
I remember that complaints about the small screen were rejected with the retort that the type was no smaller than the Wall Street Journal.
“I remember that complaints about the small screen were rejected with the retort that the type was no smaller than the Wall Street Journal.”
The bigger problem was its 4KB of memory: that’s right, 4 KILObytes. You had to insert a floppy disk to write stuff too. We had one of these and I’m amazed what documents and spreadsheets we produced on a machine with such limitations. Compared to what came later, they were ridiculously expensive and extremely primitive. Nevertheless, they were one of the first out of the gate and for that they deserve a lot of credit.
Yeah, but the Kaypro had a 9" screen, was hundreds of early 80s dollars cheaper, and had other capabilities that exceeded the Osborne I. The IBM lasted longer in competing against "clones," but that was with the business market that Osborne couldn't crack with things like single-sided, single-density drives and little RAM.
What an amazing achievement; what an amazing failure.