The Datavue Spark was one of the First Laptops Ever Made. It Featured a
Powerful (Back Then) Intel 8088 with a clock Speed of 9.77MHz.
It had a blue 5" x 10" screen (which was big for 1987) made by Epson that supported 16 shades of blueish grey. Plus, it was backlit, which made it very bright and readable.
DOS could be run on this system, but needed a boot disk to do anything.
Due to a very high retail price, very few Spark were sold (at least in Australia). In the US, the price was about $1000-$1200, depending on the amount of memory and whether 1 or 2 drives.
The closest (decent) competitor to the Spark was the Toshiba T-1000. A very well-made laptop, but its screen was only about 3-1/2" x 7" and much less readable.
Datavue made it up until 1993, then the company went under due to the many more powerful laptops on the market at the time. Datavue produced many other laptops.
Thanks to Michael Buchan, Ronald Harper for information.
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system,
please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.
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Just wondering what they are worth now as I have one in great working condition
Tuesday 19th January 2021
Harie Elkiess (Uk)
Hello, I would like to thank you for sharing this useful material. I appreciate reading it. What is more, the material provided here will be useful for a lot of people
This was our first family computer when I was at high school. Mum and dad got it second hand when the local polytechnic sold off their fleet (probably because hard drives were just coming in as an essential...) Many assignments were done using First Choice. Many hours were spent playing Bill and Ted''s Excellent Adventure, and Lemmings. (All in glorious blue monochrome.) in the end it got trashed by a virus and I could never get another boot diskette to work...
