Pint-size Computers

As of now, most portable computers are more deadweight than lightweight. Still, if you are looking for a complete business machine to go home to office, you have an increasing number of choices.

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Elegant" is the word computer insiders use to describe a particularly fine example of computer architecture or design. It has never been applied to the Osborne 1, whose less-than-sleek looks are frequently compared with the instrument panel of a DC-3. The introduction of Acam Osborne's brainchild in July 1981, however, touched off the hottest trend in business machines since the microcomputer traveled from the hobbyist's workroom to the businessperson's desk. The Osborne, its ads announced, was a "fully functional computer system in a portable package," allowing users to "go to work at the office, at home, or in the field."

In its first year, the company racked up $10 million in sales; its 1982 revenues were estimated at nearly $100 million. Although most analysts agree that the machine's low price ($1,795 including software), more than its portability, accounts for its success, peripatetic computing power is clearly an idea whose time has come.

In 1982, the industry shipped more than 115,000 units of "full-function" portables, like the Osborne, for revenues of about $285 million, according to Egil Juliussen, chairman of Future Computing, a Richardson, Tex., market research firm. Juliussen predicts that by 1987 shipments will total 1.4 million units, valued at $3.5 billion. While these machines today account for barely 5% of the entire desktop-computer market, he expects that share to jump to 20% by 1987.

At least 25 machines are currently on the market, with a new one, it seems, appearing weekly. They cost as little as $1,795 or as much as $9,000 and weigh from less than 9 pounds to as much as 36 pounds (see chart, page 50). Unlike hand-held computers, these portable machines do all that a desktop microcomputer can do, yet they pack up easily and can be carried from one location to another.

Portables, essentially desktops in a portable package, can be used for budgeting, forecasting, writing reports, creating graphs -- any task a stand-alone system can handle. But to be useful for broad business applications, most analysts agree, a unit should include a standard-size, conventional keyboard; an adequate display; a reasonable amount of internal memory and data storage; the ability to communcate over phone lines and to hook up with such peripherals as a printer; and, most important, the capacity to run good applications software.

"Portability, per se, is not enough," says Richard Dalton in Open Systems, a newsletter he edits on office technology. "There has to be enough utility to make the unit worth porting. But, you might ask, why would anyone want to cart around a computer? Some people don't. They see the portables, though, as a good way to lay their hands on a comparable machine for much less money than they would pay for a desktop. "For 1,800 bucks, you can get an awful lot of computer," says Richard Matlack, president of InfoCorp, a Cupertino, Calif., market research firm. Another lure, he adds, is that many people buying now are those "who want the latest and hottest-looking thing. There's a certain amount of status associated with it."

But once entrepreneurs get involved with using computers, says Isaacson of Future Computing, they want to take that power with them. Just doing a spreadsheet application for budgeting, she says, would justify the cost of a micro. "And half that planning is done at home. An awful lot of computers do go back and forth."

Seaforth Lyle, president of Computer Devices Inc., the Burlington, Mass., manufacturer of the DOT portable computer, predicts that businesspeople will increasingly buy portables as an inexpensive way to spread the computer wealth within an office. "The image is of people running through airports," he says. "The reality is people sharing units." He also predicts that, more and more, salespeople, accountants, insurance and real estate brokers -- anyone who wants to prepare proposals in clients' homes -- will carry computers.

Some people take the machines with them now, squeezing them, as advertised, under their airplane seats. Husband-and-wife team Juliussen and Isaacson hauled their 28-pound Compaq from their Richardson office to their room in the La Costa Hotel in San Diego. "We can run the whole business from here," says Juliussen. But, adds Isaacson, "I will tell you it is not very portable. We broke the handle, and you have to cry to get it on the airline."

It is true that, with few exceptions, the full-function portables are heavy and clumsy. "It's not like carrying your briefcase to work," says David Wilson, a staff scientist at SRI International who is preparing a buyer's guide to portable computers. "After a while I'd be afraid that one arm would get longer than the other."

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