You don't say...

Ah, that was the picture I saw....

When I was in college, I was amazed when I saw a student with a laptop in class. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80 100 (like this one: [link] which is the first widely successful laptop.

eta: first sold in 1983.

I used a Powerbook 100 in my classes in college. I'm pretty sure the semester I started doing it I was the only student in classes doing it.

Wow, now that I think about it, way to make me feel like college was forever ago. Most people had computers, but not terrrribly many had laptops. And only a few would bring them to class. Nowadays, do any college students still have desktop computers? Though part of it, I'm sure, is that a hell of a lot of them type faster than they write, too.

We didn't have cellphones in college either, but the next couple years was when they got big. Eep!

The "$100 laptop" reviewed. [link] Only $200. Awesome set of features for that price.

OK, actually it would cost most of us $400. For that price, you get two of them, but one gets sent to a child in a poor country (that part is tax-deductible).

I went to college with a slide rule.

I had to learn how to use a slide rule in Jr. high. But most everyone had calculators at that point (1978-ish) so I never had to use one outside of the learning stuff.

I still think they're cool, and am tempted to buy some old fancy slide rule.

I don't remember anyone at college with a laptop.

I went to college with a slide rule.

Me, too. At least the first couple of years. My freshman chem lab instructor had the first calculator I ever saw, a brand new Sharp four function job that he'd paid $295 for. By my junior year I was borrowing my little brother's four function plus sqrt. They were down to about $100 by then.

Still have several slide rules hanging around the house.

I was on the border. A few students had computers. There were Mac labs for the rest of this, with the little tiny macs in them. IBM machines did not have windows, so were only for computer type people. I used a typewriter because I lived at home and it was easier than driving in to use the computer. It had a word processing feature, but I rarely used it. I did become adept at changing typos/revising with white out, and then Xeroxing the paper so that it looked clean (because we were allowed three errors per page without point taken off) This was in 1991-1995. In 1995 students started getting email, but I thought it was weird and didn't like it. Also it was absurdly easy to hack in to as your password was your name. Some of my friends send fake love emails from our department head to students and caused a brou-ha-ha.

I didn't use a laptop until my last master's program...1999-2001.

I was the only person in the program who used one. Once it became known that I took awesome notes with it, I became hugely popular.

There was, of course, the occasional dominoes game...