Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He\u2019s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he\u2019s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-18/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Jowi Morales Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
abufrejoval That reminds me of a system I had many years ago, somewhere 1995 or 1996, I believe, of which I couldn't find any trace in the internet, even if I always thought it an interesting pioneer…. It was based on a CMOS variant of the 80286 and was designed for ultra low power and price. I believe it was sold perhaps even exclusively by Vobis Computers, a computer company that used hold a rather large marketshare in the 1990's in Germany, but failed even faster than it rose. It had a passive monochrome LCD display, most likely 640×480 or 640×400 ("Olivetti"), a small 2.5" hard disk with perhaps a couple dozen megabyte, and would have normally run DOS. There is a good chance a floppy drive was external, this was long before USB. It had a much smaller than normal form factor with a reduced size keyboard that was just big enough to touch type on, very cheap, and flimsy plastic material, perhaps slightly better than a Sinclair ZX81, perhaps even narrower than Vaio, but more longish and obviously not a Sony. But the main reason this article reminds me of it is that it was designed to run on a set of AA batteries, although I can' remember if it was 4, 6, or 8 of them. There was no charging support of any type, these could be normal acid batteries or rechareable ones, but in those days those were nickel cadmium at lower voltage and even less capacity, so they didn't last enough to get any work done. Even if it was "low power" by the standards of the days, I ate through batteries with a vengance, so being the clever type, I got myself a lead gel motor scooter battery, which I'd put on the floor, connected that via a cable to the laptop and had it run the computer for hours, way beyond normal laptop endurance in those days. I then also got myself an external power supply, originally a classical transformer, but then these new fangled switching power supplies came out and I got myself one of those, because it was much lighter and thus a much better fit to a machine that was extremely light weight without any battery. I ran GeoWorks Ensemble on it, which was a near ideal fit to the machine, because I believe it was even able to use the extra RAM in the system, typically only accessible via protected mode. I also ran some encyclopedia and translation apps on it, there used to be a couple really good and compact ones to fit on to a harddisk in those pre-Internet and Wikipedia days. That and the battery gave me some serious nerd creds at the time. However, it didn't survive my "clever" thin charger for long, during baggage control on a return flight, I was asked to turn it on to prove it wasn't just hiding a bomb, and while it did turn on, I noticed the screen looked a bit odd and when I tried to use it again later, it turned out to be dead: that switching power supply wasn't stabilized enough and had evidently delivered too much voltage at what little power the machine actually required, killing it far too early. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/pc-building/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/pc-building/enthusiast-rebuilds-aa-battery-powered-pc-sextuples-run-time-to-30-minutes-with-64-batteries-uses-three-voltage-regulators-in-parallel-to-achieve-stability-runs-computer-for-over-30-minutes-on-64-aa-cells#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.