It’s no secret that technology is regularly getting smaller, specifically during the past ten or twenty years where technology has seen an explosion of progress, moving at blazing speed, and this is maybe most obvious in the advances seen with computer notebooks. First let’s put things into perspective. The very first true program-controlled computer system as we recognize them today, the Z3, was built in 1941 by Konrad Zuse. Also keep in mind that at present as we may already know, laptop notebooks are matching cell phones with no contracts in selling rates which is really great for the computer industry.

It was nearly the size of a small passenger car and weighed roughly 2,200 pounds, had no monitor or display further than a few bulbs that would light to relay simple information, and had a memory potential of about 22 bits. 67 years later in 2008, Apple released a new model of its MacBook Pro notebooks with the surface area equivocal to a dinner plate and only an inch thick, weighing 6.8 pounds, with a 17 inch screen and a memory volume of 4 gigabytes – about 1.8 billion times far more than the Z3. Never before in the history of technology have advances come at this kind of rapid pace, and currently notebook computers are at front side of this onslaught.

The development and reputation of laptop computers came as a natural result of the elevated presence and dependence upon desktop computers. As with most technologies, as soon as desktop personal computers started to be a facet of everyday life, there was a demand to make the technology portable, and so notebooks (the more modern name for the more apt moniker “laptop”) first made their appearance on the scene.

The first commercially available notebooks were the Osborne 1 series, which could hardly be called notebooks but were nevertheless revolutionary in concept. It barely resembled a laptop computer at all, looking more like a lightweight sewing machine. It had only a tiny 5 inch screen, and failed to even run on batteries instead requiring access to a wall outlet, but it was the first personal computer that could be easily transported, allowing users to carry data with them from location to location.

Immediately thereafter, notebooks began to take on their familiar form, which they maintain to this day. Even so, in recent years, new designs beyond the standard fold-out variety have become increasingly common. Subnotebooks are gaining in reputation, due to even more emphasis on small size and portability, and use their reduction in features in lieu of light-weight and slim design as a selling point. The introduction of touch screen technology to the mainstream has also led to the radical redesign of portable notebooks. So called tablet notebooks are now available and are becoming increasingly well-known, consisting of only a few functional buttons and abandoning most of the input commands to the use of a stylus on a touchscreen that covers most of the surface area.

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