Future of portable devices (as an IT journalist thought 20 years ago)

New York Times published an article by Erik Sandberg-Diment in December 1985. I have it saved in favorites to remind me how today really is not what we thought 20 years ago it would be.

A few quotes from the article:

The limitations come from what people actually do with computers, as opposed to what the marketers expect them to do. On the whole, people don't want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper. Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.

Yes, there are a lot of people who would like to be able to work on a computer at home. But would they really want to carry one back from the office with them? It would be much simpler to take home a few floppy disks tucked into an attache case.

But the real future of the laptop computer will remain in the specialized niche markets. Because no matter how inexpensive the machines become, and no matter how sophisticated their software, I still can't imagine the average user taking one along when going fishing.

For nostalgic moments, here's the full article: THE EXECUTIVE COMPUTER - NYTimes.com

Kari

Interesting read

Thank you Kari, interesting read. Amazing when you look back a few years & see how far we've come.