Comment by bartread
7 hours ago
> Therefore its use in the movie does not have any fantastic element in it.
That's very subjective.
I simply didn't know any of this before I saw that clip and was surprised to see a couple of recognisably modern form factor laptops. It sounds like there may have been several models of GRiD Compass but, as of a few days ago, I'd never heard of any of them.
The early to mid 80s was still very much also the era of the luggable, but in 1986 I'd never seen either a luggable or a laptop, and whilst 10 year old me probably wouldn't have been super-impressed with a heavy computer in a suitcase, I probably would have been agog at a laptop. I don't think I even knew what a laptop was until maybe the early 90s when they started to become a bit more commonplace.
When GRiD Compass was launched, I was in high school and I used to read regularly in a public library a magazine named "Electronics", which had been very important between 1930 and 1995 and where many significant news in the electronics and computing industries were announced first.
The launch of GRiD Compass started with a campaign of advertising in that magazine, which had very spectacular photos of the computer demonstrating various applications, especially due to its unusual flat electroluminescent display with a nice bright orange color.
Even if I usually am immune to advertising, I was very impressed by the GRiD Compass advertisements, so I have been remembering them until today, despite never seeing one in real life.
While GRiD Compass made me aware since the beginning of the existence of the laptop format (the word "laptop" has been coined one year after the launch of GRiD Compass by another company, Gavilan, which has introduced a computer copying the clamshell form, but made at a lower price, with a proportionally lower quality), I also had the opportunity of using laptops only many years later, starting in the year 2000.