I know that a lot of you dislike "which was first"
discussions, but this one has been bothering me for a
while so here goes.
At VCF 4.0, there was a nice Commodore display with a
timeline that had an entry under "1983" stating that
the Commodore SX-64 was released as the world's "first
color portable computer." If you search the net,
you'll find a number of sites that make the same claim,
although you'll find just as many sites that say it was
first sold in 1984.
It is clear that some version of the SX-64 was
"announced" as early as January 1983 as either the
Executive 64, the SX-100 and later the SX-64. In fact,
it seems that more than one such announcement may have
occurred during 1983. "Announced," however, does not
mean sold.
It is also clear that the SX-64 was "introduced" in
January 1984 at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in
Las Vegas. There were a number of articles documenting
this. One can be read at
http://www.devili.iki.fi/Computers/Commodore/articles/T
he_Winter_CES_1984/. This article seems to suggest
that the SX-64 had been announced under various names
during 1983, but perhaps never sold.
As it turns out, the 1983 vs. 1984 date makes a
difference. On November 22, 1983, TI made a news
release announcing the Texas Instruments Portable
Professional Computer (TIPPC), which came with a 16
color screen. PC Week ran the story in its November
29, 1983 issue noting that:
"The TI Portable Professional Computer weighs
in at 32 pounds, shares the IBM's 8088 processor and
runs the latest version of MS-DOS (2.1). The
basic model, which will sell in 700 retail stores for
$2,395, includes 64K of memory, a built-in nine-inch
color or monochrome display, and one
half-height 5-1/4-inch floppy-disk drive."
Recognizing again that "announced" does not mean "sold"
I did some research and found an article in the
February 7, 1984 issue of PC Magazine stating that the
TIPPC had been "on sale since December [1983]."
So, which was first, if "first" is defined (as I
believe it necessarily must be) as being available for
purchase by the general public? Does anyone have any
information indicating that the SX-64 was actually sold
in 1983?
-W
Received on Sat Apr 21 2001 - 18:18:16 BST