Adam Osborne, Portable PC Pioneer, Dead at 64

[Guest]

Hail Adam Osborne, father of all we now hold true.

Online Obituary from Reuters.

The attached photos are of the "B" model (blue/gray case), but there are photos of the original tan case available online - just Google "Osborne-1".

He'll be remembered for being way ahead of his time.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[Push 0]

He died at the age of 64? How appropriate.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[Guest]

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He died at the age of 64? How appropriate.

HAHAHA

I missed that! There was a faint bell ringing about the significance of that number. Were I still an Übergeek, I would have keyed on it right away...

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[AggieDave 6]

Yeah, I read about that yesterday.

My parent's have pictures of me at 1 and 2 years old, sitting in my dad's lap at the computer, trying to "help" him get his work done on the computer. The computers were both Osborne-1 B-models. Except we were really high end, we had the 300-baud acoustic coupler modem.

We still have both of those computers at home, sitting nicely in a closet, both are still in very very good condition. I powered one up last summer while I was home and played around. Wrote a quick program in Q-Basic for some laughs and just enjoyed a bit of computing history.

Another memory I have with these was when I was about 4 or so, my dad had to fly to the farm for a business trip, and he took his computer, since that's where he kept all his business data about the farm. I remember going to the St. Louis airport (we were station at Scott AFB at the time) and picking him up. He was walking down the corridor lugging that computer, all 23lbs of its portability.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[wmw999 2,589]

Something that occurs to me is that he got to see what he was pioneering (luggable PCs) really developed and used heavily throughout the world.

He wasn't necessarily the first, but his was one of the first where some attention was actually paid to usability.

That's got to be really cool.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[riddler 0]

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He died at the age of 64? How appropriate.

Should read - he died at the age of 1000000

Edited to add - anyone remember the japanese knock-off luggables? We had a few of those at my college.

[Guest]

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He died at the age of 64? How appropriate.

Should read - he died at the age of 1000000

Edited to add - anyone remember the japanese knock-off luggables? We had a few of those at my college.

Uh, shouldn't that be "40H"?

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[wmw999 2,589]

Not Japanese, but I had an IBM luggable we bought in 1985 so I could dial in from home. By then you could get a 1200 baud modem; I could watch the text build on the screen line by line.

If you jumpered a wire, you could install a full 1M on the motherboard. I never did that, though.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)