I was lucky enough to have been around - and relatively well-funded enough - in those days, and quite a user of portables, as we called them (laptop was not yet

I was lucky enough to have been around - and relatively well-funded enough - in those days, and quite a user of portables, as we called them (laptop was not yet in the vernacular). As a developer doing support for customer installations across the continent, it was vital for me to have my own computer with me. Writing bug-fixes in the hotel room in the evenings and then having very pleasant customer-paid lunches and so on the following day while the install proceeded - this was a big part of why I insisted my company not chintz out on the "field system" .. which in my case, over a period of the 80's and 90's meant I went through many of the greats: Grid, Atari, Osborne, Compaq, Winbook, Sabre, and then .. that fateful switch to Apple, of all people, when they released the tiBook. So far, in the last decade and a half, as a laptop devotee it has been very, very hard to kick the Apple habit. There simply isn't anything like the MBP out there. There wasn't anything like the first tiBook, either. Its a class Apple seemingly own. In hindsight, this article really brings back some memories, and as well gives a bit of a rear-view mirror look back at the way things progressed. I do recall, back in the days of the Grid machine (which I still hold dear as a device), that the only 'luggable'/'portable'/'laptop'-style people that I encountered in the air lounges were also mostly the developer types; i.e. Programmers, Systems Analysts, etc. It has sort of been with mirth and humor that I've been observing the whole laptop market has exploded into dire consumerism.. So this article really resonates, anyway.