Tandy Radio Shack TRS Model100

I was just chatting with a friend about my new 12" G4 Powerbook and how I like it's small footprint (see NB). I had reason to mention the 12" white iBook which both daughters now use. Something caused me to mentally and visually flash back about 10 years ago to the TRS M100. It was one of the earliest notebooks to be used by many folks. Newspaper reporters are said to have really loved this box cause it kept going and going. It was just about the same size of the 12" mac, maybe just a bit thicker.

My first experience with the TRS M100 was in March of 1983. I was a speaker at the Association of Computers in the Humanities on a panel about the future of the electronic journal. I planned to talk about how BITnet email lists were beginning to fulfill that notion. But before me was this guy in a cowboy hat, older guy, retired from the Army guy. Dave Hughes of Old Colorado City Communications with hat on head and TRS M100 in hand stood up, plopped the M100 on the podium in front of him and proceeded to read his electronic paper to us. At that time he was the Cursor Cowboy on Compuserve (scroll way down to read more here). That was 10 years ago human time --- almost a decade in dog years and a millenium in Internet years.

cool.