It has been quite a long time since we have taken a stroll down Memory Lane and today’s edition is not exactly technology related, but it was so obvious that we could not resist.  Last week, American Express announced their brand new prepaid card for teens called Pass.  Almost exactly ten years ago, American Express was rolling out a new non-credit card for teens, the Cobaltcard.

Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, indeed saw this whole netbook/nettop trend coming, 8 years too soon.  In 2000, Ellison thought the time was right for a PC replacement that could access the internet and do little else.  He imagined that all work would be done in the browser and data would be stored on servers somewhere [in the cloud].  Sound familiar?

All the news about the Always Innovating Touch Book reminded me of another not quite notebook from tech history that had a very unique form factor.  The Vadem Clio and identical rebranded Sharp Mobilon TriPad were Windows CE Handheld PCs in the same class as the IBM WorkPad z50 and HP Jornada, however the Clio and TriPad had a design like no other.

The Always Innovating Touch Book has many people in the technology business excited, including us.  However, the idea of a tablet that docks onto a keyboard is not as groundbreaking as it first seems.  Case in point, I present you the Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC and its successor the HP Compaq TC1100.

With the latest obsession over kitchen computers, let us go back to where the idea began.  In 2000, 3Com released the Audrey internet appliance.

The Sony Vaio P was one of the big stories of CES 2009.  It features a form factor that is unique among notebooks, being particularly long and narrow.  The Vaio P, however, is physically very similar to a subnotebook from the early days of Sony laptops, the PictureBook.

The AURA is Motorola’s ultra-exclusive luxe-phone that continues its all-caps, four-letter naming scheme.  This phone, however, borrows much from a previous high-end Moto.

AT&T recently came out with the Quickfire, a touchscreen messaging phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard aimed at youngsters.  Basically, this is AT&T’s answer to the T-mobile Sidekick.

Sony Ericsson W350

Ericsson T28

The Sony Ericsson W350 is AT&T’s latest phone and it features the previously thought to be extinct downward-folding flap.  Last seen on the Ericsson T28, this was a classic design for early cellphones.  Unlike its predecessors though, the W350 cannot answer and end calls just by opening and closing the flap.  In fact, the music controls on the front of the flap actually just press through to the keypad buttons behind it.  There are no electrical connections to the flap itself and it can even be easily …

Lenovo IdeaPad S10
To prevent the previous post in this series from becoming a one-off, one-hit wonder, I have been tirelessly searching the past two weeks for another Blast from the Past.  The inspiration came to me when I saw that Lenovo began selling their IdeaPad S10 netbook earlier this week.  Looking at the IBM WorkPad z50 lying next to my desk.  I began to realize the similarities.
Even though the IdeaPad is much more of a full-fledged notebook than the WorkPad ever was, they occupy a very similar niche and have …