On a recent drive down highway 249 in Houston I glanced to the left at the HP campus near Louetta Drive. As a native Houstonian who formerly lived near this campus, looking at this huge campus was ...

"Enjoy it while you can, because IBM's gunna have a portable and then it's sayonara." As a computer nerd, it's always fun to see documentaries that explore the history of computers. Silicon Cowboys ...

In 1981, Rod Canion had to make a decision, and fast. He could either continue at his day job, plugging away for the next two years on a project he knew ultimately wouldn't succeed in the current ...

You don’t have to be a cattle driver to be a cowboy. “Silicon Cowboys” documents the rise and eventual demise of Compaq, a small Texas startup that took on IBM to become the largest computer company ...

January 1982 Former Texas Instruments manager Rod Canion comes up with the idea of a portable computer that runs all the programs that operate on the IBM PC without any modification. Canion, Jim ...

The modern laptop has its origins in the mid to late 1980s, when shrinking computer hardware and improvements to battery technology finally made mobile computing practical. But before the now iconic ...

Makers of portable computers have spent the past 20-odd years striving to build systems that answer users' cries for "smaller, faster, cheaper." To a large extent, they have succeeded. One notable ...

(Let's hope I'm posting this in the appropriate forum)<P>I just purchased an old Compaq Portable III "Lunchbox" computer on Ebay. Here is the link to the actual item with pictures.<P>I have fond ...

Who would have thought that a computer prototype sketched on the back of a Houston House of Pies place mat would prove to be a thorn in the side of IBM for the better part of the 1980s? That’s just ...

Although we know the outcome, “Silicon Cowboys” feels like a suspense thriller. This documentary, directed by Berkeley’s Jason Cohen, recounts how Compaq took on behemoth IBM in a battle for ...

In 1981, the first personal computer desktop was launched by IBM. However, the IBM PC had some limitations, such as the lack of a hard drive and too few expansion ports. 40 years ago today, on March 8 ...

A fully functional portable computer that weighs in at only 29 lbs.? Now we’re talking. With features like word processing and a calculator, the 1984 LCD-286 PC computer was like carrying a filing ...