Daily Giz Wiz 110: Tandy Model 100

Short info

From the Gadget Warehouse: Built and designed by Kyocera of Japan, the Model 100 was sold by both Radio Shack and NEC. If I recall correctly the NEC had a few extra features, but other than that they were almost identical in size and looks. These are considered the world's first laptop computers, sporting a full-size keyboard. They came with built-in software - Microsoft BASIC programming language, a word processor, and modem software for the built-in 300 baud modem. And talk about battery life. It ran for 20 on 4 "buy them anywhere" AA batteries! Of course the screen showed just eight lines of text, 40 characters wide in monochrome, but I thought it was amazing that I could write MAD scripts on an airplane. I think the NEC version accepted external memory cartridges. I also had model 102, which came out in 1986. It was $499 and very similar to the 100 but it featured an amazing 24K built in memory! Talk about an upgrade! It had 4X the memory of the original! Also the newer model took ROM modules which you could buy with various applications burned on them.

(source: twit.tv/dgw110)