Apricot Portable

The Apricot Portable was a personal computer manufactured by ACT Ltd., and was released to the public in November 1984. It was ACT's first attempt at manufacturing a portable computer, which were gaining popularity at the time. Compared to other portable computers of its time like the Compaq Portable and the Commodore SX-64, the Apricot Portable was the first system to have an 80-column and 25-line LCD screen and the first with a speech recognition system. The Apricot Portable was designed to be easily carried in its case, but was powered by mains electricity only. It consisted of a central unit containing the motherboard, monochrome display and a floppy disk drive. It also came with a wireless keyboard and bundled software. The Apricot Portable was contained inside a hard charcoal gray carrying case and consisted of two main parts: the central unit (with built-in monitor) and the keyboard. An optional mouse-like track board was also available. It was used by either pointing the track board at the computer and moving the trackball around with one's thumb or rolling the trackball on a flat surface. A standard serial mouse could also be used via the RS-232 port on the back of the computer. The mouse and the keyboard were both battery-powered, but the computer itself did not run on batteries and needed to be plugged into a wall outlet. The system was 450 mm long, 172 mm wide and 200 mm high, weighing a total of 13 pounds. The Portable's overall design was unusual in that the computer and keyboard were not connected physically, but rather by infrared signal. If an object blocked the space in between the two components, their communication would be disrupted. ACT chose to use an infrared signal communication system because it was cheaper than using a cable connection. The Apricot Portable contained a variety of features including a built-in disk drive, a speech recognition system, and a software bundle. The Portable was known for having the first 25-line liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen on a portable computer.