Stare at screen. Turn ideas over and over. Tortoises, bald head, eagles. Hmm. No, can’t be playwright, what sort of person would tortoises instantly dislike?
Midnight …
Stare at screen. Vaguely aware right hand has hit keys to open new file. Start breathing very slowly.
Write 1,943 words.
Bed.
For a day there, thought we weren’t going to make it.
PALMTOP
The Independent, 9 July 1993
You think of these kind of computers as portable, but they aren’t really—you could anchor a ship with my old Olivetti. Mine probably still work—I took good care of them—and although I have no particular need of them, I can’t bring myself to throw away what is now vintage technology.
I remember my first portable computer. It weighed fifteen pounds. The power supply was separate and in many ways resembled a small brick. The damn thing nearly killed me.
The next one was a mere eight pounds, although there was still a (smaller) brick. I thought that was light until I had to run across an airport carrying it.
It dawned on me what was wrong. The important thing about portable computers, the common element, the nub or crux of the whole ethos, as it were, is that you’re supposed to be able to carry them. What’s the good of a machine that won’t fit inside a briefcase along with all the other things you want to carry in there? Even eight pounds isn’t portable. Eight pounds is an item of luggage.
It always puzzled me why the weight of portable machines wasn’t the first thing mentioned in any review. It tends to be in the small print even now, way down the page. This is because reviewers get hypnotized by shiny discs and glittery screens. Let them carry them around for a day, say I. Let them hoick them around so they can get on with their work in studio green rooms and hotels and the backs of cabs.
I grew up reading science fiction and there were always these guys carrying pocket computers which could talk and keep track of their diary and run whole planets. They never got hernias carrying the things. I didn’t see why I should either. I was suffering from the opposite of future shock, whatever that is. Future suction? I don’t want arms reaching to my knees, but I like to have a computer around.
I entered the palmtop world.
Jargon crops up everywhere. Once there were big machines that sat on desks, and there were portables (more or less). Now there are ultraportables and subnotebooks and personal digital assistants and palmtops and pocketbooks. They’re all very loosely defined by size and weight and the whim of the person describing them. Basically, they’re all small and light.
They all occupy the twilight zone between laptops (the aforesaid portables, although now the bulk of new machines do quite a lot more than the ones I’ve had and weigh in at around six pounds plus quite a small brick) and small calculators.
The first acquisition was the Atari Portfolio, several years ago. It weighed in at about a pound, and came with its own built-in software, including the usual “electronic Filofax” yuppie bait of simple word processor, calculator, spreadsheet, and phone book. The word processor wasn’t too bad; I typed tens of thousands of words on it, admittedly not very fast. But it wasn’t perfect.
Rule Number One is: Weight is important. Rule Two is: What else do you need to buy?
Sir Clive Sinclair was able to sell the first sub-￡99 computer by redefining what a computer was. It didn’t need a dedicated monitor, or internal mass storage of data or a standard communications port, or a keyboard fit for steady typing—not if you were prepared to hook it into the TV, store programs on a normal tape recorder, and type very slooowly and carefully. It didn’t need more than one kilobyte of memory. So it didn’t get it.
Since then I’ve always been wary of machines that need extra bits before they start becoming more than a useful toy. The Portfolio needed an add-on module if you wanted to increase memory to something closer to an acceptable amount. It needed a comparatively large plug-in module before it could print, and another one if you wanted a serial port. Without them, everything stayed locked in.
The theory was these bits stayed at home. But I do a lot of typing when I’m away from home for long periods, and you get very nervous if you can’t print out or dump stuff onto another machine.
They also caused trouble at airport security. Security men could accept the basic machine, but the box full of mysterious plastic prolapses upset them. “Show us this working,” they said. “Certainly,” I said, “please get me an electrical outlet and a laser printer.”
I found too many small, light machines that had the word “(optional)” in their descriptions. (Optional) means you’re going to have to pay to do what you want.…
After two years of looking, I ended up with, and indeed am typing this on, the Olivetti Quaderno. It cost me almost ￡600 and must have been one of the first on sale last year (pioneers are penalized; my agent bought one a few months later and they threw in a free add-on disc drive, and now there’s been a sizeable further price cut amid reports of a new souped-up model). What it is, simply, is this: it’s the desktop PC I bought in 1987, shrunk to A5 size, one inch thick and weighing a little over two pounds. I’ve never weighed the little power supply and battery charger—I’ve never really noticed it weighing anything very much. It certainly fits in my briefcase. I can lose it in my briefcase. But most importantly, it runs all my software, accumulated over years of trial and error.
It runs memory-resident programs like Sidekick and the in-comparable Info Select. It runs WordPerfect 4.2 (the classic version). I don’t have to look at a screen like a letterbox, or be forced to use someone else’s idea of the “right” software. It’s got a twenty-megabyte hard disk, which means you can write a novel on it and have it all there, all in one go. There’s half of one on it now.
People say: Yes, but what about the keyboard? Well, it’s better than any other similar-sized one I tried—Hewlett-Packard’s HP 95LZ, an otherwise interesting machine, practically had calculator buttons—and I can touch-type on it.
People say: Ah, but can it run Windows? Not in any way that a committed Windows user would accept. Windows demands high-resolution screens and a 386 processor and a fair amount of RAM and a user who is on a salary so that they can pass away those lengthy office hours by fiddling with the colours or selecting super new icons. I don’t need that. And the Quad’s screen is murky—there’s no backlight, so lighting has to be reasonably good.