Data General Advert - May 1985
From Personal Computer World
The new Data General/One. The only industry-standard PC you can use on a camel
Here's another one of those adverts where it's tempting to question whether the claims made had ever actually been tested in the real world.
It's for Data General's One - the 4.5kg portable launched in 1984 and considered the first battery-powered laptop that was fully compatible with IBM's PC[1].
It appeared to be aimed more at the executive than the working proletariat, given the advert's assertion that "hours spent being driven between meetings" could now become valuable working time.
The One used the CMOS version of Intel's 8086, which was clocked slightly slower than the already-slow 4.77MHz of the IBM PC.
It was also an early adopter of the new 3½" floppy disk format, meaning that it didn't actually sell that well, as most software available at the time shipped on 5¼" floppies.
Date created: 30 November 2025
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