Old Tandy laptops

Beats knocking on some dude's door at 11 and co-opting his phone to dictate (which I had to do once upon a time).

 

They had to pry my old PortaBubble out of my cold, dead hands, though.

 

That (c) MicroSoft mention reminds me that, if the story I've heard is correct, the TRS-80 is the last computer program for which Bill Gates actually wrote code.

 

I filed a story on a PortaBubble during a week-long high school state championship tournament. The story included a quote from one coach, talking about the opposing coach he was about to face for the first time: "He's the Godfather of girls basketball in this state."

The PortaBubble, as it sometimes would do in a bad acoustic environment, changed some letters. Instead of a blatant garble the likes of which the desk would see, prompting a re-send or an over-the-phone, word-for-word edit, the garble changed only one word. The story ran with this quote: "He's the Guilliver of girls basketball in this state."

The next day the coach looked at me and said, "Gulliver?" I had no idea what he was talking about until I got home.

 

I used one from the shop back in the 90s, then was fortunate to buy one from Em, who was out the door and headed to write some Catholic mag.
She let it go for $50 and I've still got it, thin pseudo-leather carrying case and all.
I even have those dual "cups" that allow for smoother transmission.
Someone talked about those earlier in this thread. I've filed many a story with the shop's "Shack" and with my own.
Never gonna let it go.

 

Our favorite laptop made MSN's list of the top 10 laptops

 

I remember thinking I had really made it when they gave me my first trash-80 and sent me out to cover my first pro baseball game.

I ended up buying my own trash-80 and then the 200 model. The 200 was much better, but it was a hell of a lot harder to type my story while driving back to the office after covering a prep game. I remember the first time I did it. I got back to my office and my editor told me I only had about 5-10 minutes to write, but I could write as much as I wanted.

When I told him I'd already written about 18 inches on the drive back to the office he said:

"You wrote 18 inches ... while driving on the freeway? That's fantastic. Don't ever fucking do that again!"

 

I've got a Model 100 at home. It is something I will never part with.

In all the times I sent with it, only one story didn't make it through, and that was because the problem was back at the office.

Good memories from this thread.

 

This is one of the all-time great threads ...

 

You're right, Bristol. This is one of the all-timers.

Don't know if anyone else had done this, but I actually screened hotels on some road trips to see if the phone in the room had a detachable clip. On one trip, I went to three different hotels before finding one I could send from -- a Hampton Inn.

 

Just a photographic rememberance of what the Tandys saved us from:

 

So that's what y'all used in the old days, finishthehat? Must've been fun.