The Compaq Laptop: A Reality

Caption

The Compaq Slt 286 is the smallest professional laptop offered commercially today and offers a VGA screen.

Description

New personal portable laptop

Main Article Text

The promise kept is the motto with which Compaq has finally shown the world its first laptop model, in gestation for a long time. Built with the characteristic care and features that the company puts in the design of their systems, the Compaq SLT 286 incorporates a microprocessor 80286 at 12 MHz in the CMOS version, hence lowering power consumption. The internal memory has the standard configuration of 640 Kbytes, to which is added a floppy disk drive with 720 Kbytes (3.5 inches) and an incorporated hard drive which can have a capacity of 30 Mbytes or 40 Mbytes. The overall autonomy of the system , when running on batteries is 48 hours.

The weight is 6 kilograms, and the backlit illuminated LCD screen (blue on white) makes this machine similar to other portables in the 286 range. The innovative idea is to have built a mobile keypad and having built-in VGA functions for video management. In fact, the different shades of gray that this system can produce make it an extremely attractive object for the neophyte. The 1200 Bps modem is built-in. If one wants to expand the configuration, one can install an external box equipped with its own power supply and insert different types of expansion cards that could be used on a desktop machine. The variable price starts from 7.92 million lire to 8.89 million lire and is aligned to current offers in this type of market. Compaq confides that with this announcement it will conquer new areas within the emerging market for high-end laptops (36,000 units in 1989 in Italy).

Roberto Mazzoni