Mid-90's laptops > desktops?

[butterburp]

I've been browsing some back issues of PC Mag on Google books, right about the time that Windows 95 was starting to take off, and I'm noticing something strange: laptops around this time seem to be better outfitted than desktops. Oftentimes, laptops would be equipped with 40 MB of RAM, whereas a typical desktop would only have 16 MB, or rarely 32 at the most. Any ideas why? Does it just mean laptops needed more memory, or was the industry thinking that laptops would be the future, and desktops were going the way of the covered wagon? (**NOTE: happy forever desktop user here)

[Flojomojo]

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Can you post some examples?

 

Off the top of my head, could be that desktop computers were aimed at cost-conscious home users, while laptop computers were aimed at "cost is no object" status-conscious business people. Also, the early laptops were unlikely to be as upgradable as desktops.

 

I don't feel that laptops were completely mainstream until 2005 or later.

[pacman000]

Perhaps laptops were bought by professionals who could afford the extra memory.

[butterburp]

Sure, some examples: late in 1996, there was a Dell Latitude and Gateway Solo that both sported a mobile P133 with 40MB RAM, and $4000+ price tags.

 

I think you're both right. PC Magazine is geared toward the business user, with barely more than a few paragraphs per issue on gaming. It might also have something to do with the introduction of the mobile Pentium chip, allowing laptops to match desktop power for the first and only time ever (maybe not, but it's the only time I've ever seen this phenomenon). I guess some companies started seeing dollar signs and went straight after the busy executives who wanted the latest, greatest and most portable.

 

The Gateway one even had an 8-minute promomercial. Not surprisingly, all business...

[Flojomojo]

$4000 in 1996 is like $6300 today. It's amazing that any of these sold at all -- considering the pace of technology improvement back then, they must have had the shelf life of yogurt.

 

I think I subconsciously remember when laptops were impossibly expensive yet cool. Why else would I be so into hoarding bargains from eBay? Laptops still seem like exotic miracles of tech to me.

[S1500]

 

I think I subconsciously remember when laptops were impossibly expensive yet cool. Why else would I be so into hoarding bargains from eBay? Laptops still seem like exotic miracles of tech to me.

 

 

1997 me could never think one could afford a laptop. They always were $2K minimum luxury items. The last 2 laptops I bought within the past 7 years were 600 or under, and pretty well equipped.

[spacecadet]

Yeah, I think the late 90's were around the time that laptops started to become *mostly* on par with at least business desktops, but they were 3 or 4 times the price to get a comparable machine. Or you could still go way down in specs and get a laptop that was a lot less powerful than a typical desktop, but not that much more expensive.

 

My ThinkPad 600X from 1998 was about as powerful as my desktop at the time, with one *big* exception, and that's the graphics card. The mid 90's were also the time when dedicated 3D graphics cards became available, and quickly became standard equipment for most gamers. But even without 3D, desktop graphics were still a lot more powerful than laptop graphics (I remember that being an actual term, "desktop graphics"). I remember before I got my 3Dfx Voodoo II, or maybe even concurrent with it, I had a Matrox Millennium, which was the fastest 2D card on the market. Back then, 2D graphics speed was still a thing you could worry about. No laptop could match it, not even close. And in 3D, forget it. There was no such thing as a 3D laptop. I don't think those first appeared until the 00's, and then they were behemoths.

 

Laptop CPU's at the time were also not generally the same as their desktop counterparts, so you wouldn't get the same performance out of a laptop with a P133 as the desktop version. That's basically never changed, although I think it's easier now to determine whether a desktop and laptop really have the same CPU. A Core i7-8086K is obviously not the same model as a Core i7-7567U, but if these chips were out in the 90's, they'd just call them both "Core i7" and hope nobody noticed the difference.

 

So really, laptops had gotten a whole lot better by then but they still weren't really the same as what you could do with a desktop.

[Flojomojo]

I'm eagerly awaiting the $200 laptop with a nice screen and excellent integrated graphics for games. A netbook like the HP Stream plays old GOG games from 10 years ago just fine (much like tablets and phones) ... it seems it should only be a matter of time before the low end is really really useful.

[mr_me]

In business, laptops were mainstream in the mid 1990s. Not sure about the home market until noname laptops made them more affordable a few years later. Laptops were much more expensive so your job had to justify having one over a desktop. $4000 was not a lot for businesses. In those days you could spend that much on a graphics card or a 21" monitor. With laptops, active matrix displays really added to the cost. Not sure about laptops being fitted with more ram than desktops. The high end graphics desktop workstations should have the most ram and fastest cpus.

[high voltage]

Mid 90s (approx.), my first Laptop, after some Desktops, was the IBM Thinkpad 760. What an awesome piece of computer product. You open the Laptop, and the keyboard slides upwards at an angle towards you.... awesome. Loved the amber coloured TrackPoint, so cool, a mouse between the buttons.

New product price, GBP 3600, I got lucky and seller didn't know the value.

 

 

 

 

Still use Lenovo ThinkPads nowadays, they are still the best

Edited June 28, 2018 by high voltage

[Gamemoose]

Man...weird to think memory in megabytes again.

[Flojomojo]

and an "up to 3GB hard drive" ... for £3,529 ... which would have been like $5,000 in 1995 USD, which would be like $8,100 in 2018 dollars

 

[+LS650]

My first job as a coop student back in 1987 was configuring these for a department of mining engineers:

http://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html

 

Back in the day they were an amazing machine to play with.

[butterburp]

Man, that thing reminds me of the "highly portable" TRS80 Model 4P. I can't judge dimensions to save my life...is that an 8-inch disk drive in the toaster slot on the side?

 

Of course, the real winner is the old IBM 5100 from the 70's. A mere 50 pounds, and the 64k model could be had for just under $20,000.