This mock up of an alternate Commodore 64, a handheld mobile one, caught my attention when it was posted in a group devoted to the RPG Traveller. In that setting, which blossomed in the 1980s, computers in the far future were almost ludicrously underpowered by our 2020 standards. The Commodore 64 was not that far removed from the portable computer of the nth century.
I am curious: How possible was portable computing in the 1980s and 1990s? Certainly the only mobile C64 relatives which actually existed were at best heavy briefcases, and for good technical reasons. Even so, could there have been chances—different marketing, different plausible technological pushes, something—which might have brought our world of tablets andsmartphones earlier? Maybe the Newton could have worked out, say.
I am curious: How possible was portable computing in the 1980s and 1990s? Certainly the only mobile C64 relatives which actually existed were at best heavy briefcases, and for good technical reasons. Even so, could there have been chances—different marketing, different plausible technological pushes, something—which might have brought our world of tablets andsmartphones earlier? Maybe the Newton could have worked out, say.
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