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46-450: The Poqet PC is a line of palmtop PCs introduced in 1989 by Poqet Computer Corporation . The eponymous first model was the first IBM PC–compatible palmtop computer capable of running MS-DOS at CGA resolutions. The Poqet PC is powered by two AA batteries . Through the use of aggressive power management , which includes stopping the CPU between keystrokes, the batteries are able to power

92-579: A Poqet has found a way to make a suitable adapter. It also is not totally PCMCIA Release 2.0 compatible, so not all memory cards will work, and, as Bryan Mason says on his Poqet site, only the "PNB Samantha modem, Megahertz 14.4 kbit/s modem with XJACK, and the AT&;T Paradyne KeepInTouch 14.4 kbit/s modems" will work in it. In addition, not all CompactFlash cards work in the Poqet. Users have found that many machines do not work with newer CF cards. The Poqet PC

138-555: A complete business platform. Lotus Software had their own word processor named Lotus Manuscript , which was to some extent acclaimed in academia , but did not catch the interest of the business, nor the consumer market . With the acceptance of Windows 3.0 in 1990, the market for desktop software grew even more. None of the major spreadsheet developers had seriously considered the graphical user interface (GUI) to supplement their DOS offerings, and so they responded slowly to Microsoft 's own GUI-based products Excel and Word . Lotus

184-478: A fully-fledged spreadsheet, graph, database and word processor for DOS, but none of the integrated packages ever really succeeded. Lotus 1-2-3 migrated to the Windows platform, as part of Lotus SmartSuite . IBM's continued development and marketing of Lotus SmartSuite and OS/2 during the 1990s placed it in direct competition with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows , respectively. As a result, Microsoft "punished

230-412: A marketing guru. His ability to develop his product to appeal to non-technical users was one secret to its rapid success. Unlike many technologists, Kapor relied on focus group feedback to make his user instructions more user-friendly. One example: the instructions that came with the floppy disc read: "Remove the protective cover and insert disc into computer." A few focus group participants tried to rip-off

276-522: A number of PDA and office applications pre-installed in ROM, most of them could also run generic, off-the-shelf PC software with no or little modifications. Some could also run other operating systems such as GEOS , Windows 1.0 - 3.0 (in Real mode only), or MINIX 2.0 . Most Palmtop PCs have been based on a static hardware design for low power consumption, and instant-on/off without the need to reboot. Depending on

322-590: A stock of Classics and Pluses. As the owner of the store, Jerry Tessler, put it: "I sold them all in twenty minutes." Unlike running Windows CE, running DOS in near-standard specifications meant that everything from Lotus 1-2-3 to Zork worked as expected. Palmtop PC Palmtop PCs distinguish from other palmtop computers by using a mostly IBM-compatible PC architecture , and BIOS as well as an Intel-compatible x86 processor. All such devices were DOS -based, with DOS stored in ROM . While many Palmtop PCs came with

368-492: A transflective backlit LCD and 2 MB of RAM (640 KB to DOS, 64 KB shadow, and 1-1344 KB for a RAM disk). The Poqet "Classic"'s LCD didn't have a backlight and was more prone to breaking than the Poqet PC Plus. It also only took Type I, Release 1.0 SRAM cards, as opposed to Type II cards and Release 2.0 cards, including flash, SRAM, and a few modem cards. The Plus also had more memory. Despite many improvements,

414-463: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM ). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC , was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles in the business market. The first spreadsheet, VisiCalc , had helped launch

460-607: Is because the lower court's decision that it was not a copyright violation to merely have a compatible command menu or language was upheld, but only via stalemate. In 1995, the First Circuit found that command menus are an uncopyrightable "method of operation" under section 102(b) of the Copyright Act . The 1-2-3 menu structure (example, slash File Erase) was itself an advanced version of single letter menus introduced in VisiCalc . When

506-494: The Apple II as one of the earliest personal computers in business use. With IBM's entry into the market, VisiCalc was slow to respond, and when they did, they launched what was essentially a straight port of their existing system despite the greatly expanded hardware capabilities. Lotus's solution was marketed as a three-in-one integrated solution: it handled spreadsheet calculations, database functionality, and graphical charts, hence

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552-558: The OpenDocument format or other file formats. After previewing 1-2-3 on the IBM PC in 1982, BYTE called it "modestly revolutionary" for elegantly combining spreadsheet, database, and graphing functions. It praised the application's speed and ease of use, stating that with the built-in help screens and tutorial, "1-2-3 is one of the few pieces of software that can literally be used by anybody. You can buy 1-2-3 and [an IBM PC] and be running

598-661: The 50 greatest gadgets of the last 50 years" had a very short lifespan, from only about 1989-1994. After Poqet was bought by Fujitsu, the Poqet was soon axed. For a short time Poqet value declined, with the onset of Windows CE . A similar decline in HP 200LX demand also occurred after the introduction of HP Windows CE machines. However, despite the new machines' power, their operating system soon proved to be inefficient. The Poqets and HP 'LX' DOS machines became very high in demand. Poqets also are in fairly high demand, but fetch somewhat lower prices. A Cherry Hill, NJ business, Disks 'n' Data, once had

644-574: The IBM PC Company with higher prices, a late license for Windows 95 , and the withholding of technical and marketing support." Microsoft did not grant IBM the OEM rights for Windows 95 until 15 minutes prior to the release of Windows 95 on 24 August 1995. Because of this uncertainty, IBM machines were sold without Windows 95, while Compaq , HP , and other companies sold machines with Windows 95 from day one. On 11 June 2013, IBM announced it would withdraw

690-817: The IBM PC and compatibles, while hurting sales of computers that could not run it. "They're looking for 1-2-3. Boy, are they looking for 1-2-3!" InfoWorld wrote. Noting that computer purchasers did not want PC compatibility as much as compatibility with certain PC software, the magazine suggested "let's tell it like it is. Let's not say 'PC compatible,' or even 'MS-DOS compatible.' Instead, let's say '1-2-3 compatible. ' " PC clones' advertising did often prominently state that they were compatible with 1-2-3. An Apple II software company promised that its spreadsheet had "the power of 1-2-3". Because spreadsheets use large amounts of memory, 1‐2‐3 helped popularize greater RAM capacities in PCs, and especially

736-679: The Lotus brand: IBM Lotus 1-2-3 Millennium Edition V9.x, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x V9.8.0, and Organizer V6.1.0. IBM stated, "Customers will no longer be able to receive support for these offerings after 30 September 2014. No service extensions will be offered. There will be no replacement programs." The name "1-2-3" stemmed from the product's integration of three main capabilities: along with its core spreadsheet functionality, 1-2-3 also offered integral charting/graphing and rudimentary database operations. Data features included sorting data in any defined rectangle, by order of information in one or two columns in

782-551: The MDA that allowed bitmap mode. The ability to have high-resolution text and graphics capabilities (at the expense of color) proved extremely popular and Lotus 1-2-3 is credited with popularizing the Hercules graphics card. Subsequent releases of Lotus 1-2-3 supported more video standards as time went on, including EGA, AT&T/Olivetti, and VGA. Significantly, support for the PCjr/Tandy modes

828-549: The Plus also had its drawbacks. The Poqet PC Plus was considerably larger and heavier than its predecessors. It weighed approximately 1.83 lb (0.83 kg) as opposed to the Classic's 1.2 lb (0.54 kg). It also has a very odd miniature 26-pin serial connector for which there is no currently available adapter. However, many Toshiba external floppy drives and dongles used this same JAE connector. An amateur radio hobbyist who uses

874-406: The advent of expanded memory , which allowed greater than 640k to be accessed. Lotus 1-2-3 inspired imitators, the first of which was Mosaic Software's "The Twin", written in the fall of 1985 largely in the C programming language , followed by VP-Planner, which was backed by Adam Osborne . These were able to not only read 1-2-3 files, but also execute many or most macro programs by incorporating

920-538: The case came before the Supreme Court, the justices would end up deadlocked 4–4. This meant that Borland had emerged victorious, but the extent to which copyright law would be applicable to computer software went unaddressed and undefined. Microsoft's early spreadsheet Multiplan eventually gave way to Excel , which debuted on the Macintosh in 1985. It arrived on PCs with the release of Windows 2.x in 1987, but as Windows

966-414: The company could manage was a Windows adaptation of their existing spreadsheet with no changes except using a graphical interface. Additionally, several versions of 1-2-3 had different features and slightly different interfaces. Lotus 1-2-3's intended successor, Lotus Symphony , was Lotus's entry into the anticipated " integrated software " market. It intended to expand the rudimentary all-in-one 1-2-3 into

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1012-523: The computer for anywhere between a couple of weeks and a couple of months, depending on usage. The computer also uses an "instant on" feature, such that after powering it down, it can be used again immediately without having to go through a full booting sequence. The Poqet PC is comparable to the HP 95LX / HP 100LX / HP 200LX and the Atari Portfolio handheld computers. The computer originally sold for US$ 2,000; it

1058-473: The first six months on the market. There were well-known problems with VisiCalc, and several competitors appeared to address some of these issues. One early example was 1980's SuperCalc , which solved the problem of circular references , while a slightly later example was Microsoft Multiplan from 1981, which offered larger sheets and other improvements. In spite of these, and others, VisiCalc continued to outsell them all. The Lotus Development Corporation

1104-583: The larger code size of compiled C into lower-powered machines forced the company to split its spreadsheet offerings, with 1-2-3 release 3 only for higher-end machines, and a new version 2.2, based on the 2.01 assembler code base, available for PCs without extended memory. By the time these versions were released in 1989, Microsoft had eroded much of Lotus's market share. During the early 1990s, Windows grew in popularity, and along with it, Excel, which gradually displaced Lotus from its leading position. A planned total revamp of 1-2-3 for Windows fell apart, and all that

1150-592: The memory and speed of the computer. The application was so compelling that there were numerous stories of people buying Apple II machines to run the program (see article Killer application ). VisiCalc's runaway success on the Apple led to direct bug compatible ports to other platforms, including the Atari 8-bit computers , Commodore PET and many others. This included the IBM PC when it launched in 1981, where it quickly became another best-seller, with an estimated 300,000 sales in

1196-556: The model, the battery could power the device for a period ranging from several hours up to several days while running, or between a week and a year in standby mode. Combined with the instant-on/off feature, a battery would typically last from a week up to several months in practical use as PDA. The first Palmtop PC was the DIP Pocket PC (aka Atari Portfolio ) in 1989. Palmtop PCs include: Some touch-screen computers may also be included in this category: This computing article

1242-491: The name "1-2-3", though how much database capability the product actually had was debatable, given the sparse memory left over after launching 1-2-3. It quickly overtook VisiCalc, as well as Multiplan and SuperCalc , the two VisiCalc competitors. Lotus 1-2-3 was the state-of-the-art spreadsheet and the standard throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, part of an unofficial set of three stand-alone office automation products that included dBase and WordPerfect , to build

1288-499: The power management features. Several years after the Poqet Prime and Classic, and some time after Fujitsu purchased Poqet Computer Corp., the new and improved Poqet PC Plus was introduced. The Poqet PC Plus had significant differences from the Classic and Prime models, some better than others. It features a rechargeable battery pack that holds a smaller charge than the "Classic", enhanced PC Card slots that now support more PC Cards,

1334-458: The printing routines by Paul Funk (founder of Funk Software ). These editions of 1-2-3 for DOS were primarily written in x86 assembly language . These editions of 1-2-3 for DOS were primarily written in C . Lotus 1-2-3 file formats use various filename extensions including 123, wks, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, some of these may open in the desktop applications of Collabora Online , LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice , these can then be saved into

1380-633: The rectangular area. Justifying text in a range into paragraphs allowed it to be used as a primitive word processor. It had keyboard-driven pop-up menus as well as one-key commands, making it fast to operate. It was also user-friendly, introducing an early instance of context-sensitive help accessed by the F1 key. Macros in version one and add-ins (introduced in version 2.0) contributed much to 1-2-3's popularity, allowing dozens of outside vendors to sell macro packages and add-ins ranging from dedicated financial worksheets like F9 to full-fledged word processors . In

1426-403: The same command structure. Copyright law had first been understood to only cover the source code of a program. After the success of lawsuits which claimed that the very " look and feel " of a program were covered, Lotus sought to ban any program which had a compatible command and menu structure. Program commands had not been considered to be covered before, but the commands of 1-2-3 were embedded in

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1472-745: The single-tasking MS-DOS , 1-2-3 was sometimes used as a complete office suite. All major graphics standards were supported; initially CGA and Hercules, and later EGA, AT&T, and VGA. Early versions used the filename extension "WKS". In version 2.0, the extension changed first to "WK1", then "WK2". This later became "WK3" for version 3.0 and "WK4" for version 4.0. Version 2 introduced macros with syntax and commands similar in complexity to an advanced BASIC interpreter, as well as string variable expressions. Later versions supported multiple worksheets and were written in C . The charting/graphing routines were written in Forth by Jeremy Sagan (son of Carl Sagan ) and

1518-442: The stiff plastic envelope of disc carrier. Kapor's recognition that techno-speak instructions needed to be translated to normative English was a strong contributor to the product's popularity. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on 26 January 1983, and immediately overtook Visicalc in sales. Unlike Microsoft Multiplan , it stayed very close to the model of VisiCalc, including the "A1" letter and number cell notation, and slash-menu structure. It

1564-505: The two stress test applications, along with Microsoft Flight Simulator , for true 100% compatibility when PC clones appeared in the early 1980s. 1-2-3 required two disk drives and at least 192K of memory, which made it incompatible with the IBM PCjr ; Lotus produced a version for the PCjr that was on two cartridges but otherwise identical. By early 1984 the software was a killer app for

1610-503: The two together the same day". PC Magazine in 1983 called 1-2-3 "a powerful and impressive program ... as a spreadsheet, it's excellent", and attributed its very fast performance to being written in assembly language . Lotus 1-2-3 assumes that 1900 is a leap year . This is incorrect as while 1900 is a year that is divisible by four, years divisible by 100 are not counted as leap years unless divisible by 400. This bug persists today as its competitor, Microsoft Excel, still incorporates

1656-448: The user could display the worksheet portion of 1-2-3 on the sharper monochrome video and the graphics on the CGA display . The initial release of 1-2-3 supported only three video setups: CGA, MDA (in which case the graph maker was not available) or dual-monitor mode. However, a few months later support was added for Hercules Computer Technology's Hercules Graphics Adapter which was a clone of

1702-420: The user to have a graphics card. At this early stage, the only video boards available for the PC were IBM's Color Graphics Adapter and Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter , the latter not supporting any graphics. However, because the two video boards used different RAM and port addresses, both could be installed in the same machine and so Lotus took advantage of this by supporting a "split" screen mode whereby

1748-462: The words of the menu displayed on the screen. 1-2-3 won its three-year long court battle against Paperback Software International and Mosaic Software Inc. in 1990. However, when it sued Borland over its Quattro Pro spreadsheet in Lotus v. Borland , a six-year battle that ended at the Supreme Court in 1996, the final ruling appeared to support narrowing the applicability of copyright law to software; this

1794-475: Was cleanly programmed, relatively bug-free, gained speed from being written completely in x86 assembly language (this remained the case for all DOS versions until 3.0, when Lotus switched to C ) and wrote directly to video memory rather than use the slow DOS and/or BIOS text output functions. Among other novelties that Lotus introduced was a graph maker that could display several forms of graphs (including pie charts, bar graphics, or line charts) but required

1840-663: Was discontinued after Fujitsu Ltd. bought Poqet Computer Corp. Three variants were produced. The Poqet PC was the first to be introduced and the Poqet PC Prime followed shortly after. (The original version was subsequently renamed the Poqet PC "Classic"). Several years later, the Poqet PC Plus was introduced. The main difference between the Poqet PC Classic and the Prime was the expansion of RAM from 512 to 640  KB and enhancement of

1886-444: Was founded by Mitchell Kapor , a friend of the developers of VisiCalc . 1-2-3 was originally written by Jonathan Sachs , who had written two spreadsheet programs previously while working at Concentric Data Systems , Inc. To aid its growth both in the UK and possibly elsewhere, Lotus 1-2-3 became the very first computer software to use television consumer advertising. Kapor was primarily

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1932-470: Was never added and users of those machines were limited to CGA graphics. The early versions of 1-2-3 also had a key disk copy protection. While the program was hard disk installable, the user had to insert the original floppy disk when starting 1-2-3 up. This protection scheme was easily cracked and a minor inconvenience for home users, but proved a serious nuisance in an office setting. Starting with Release 3.0, Lotus no longer used copy protection. However, it

1978-446: Was not yet popular, it posed no serious threat to Lotus's stranglehold on spreadsheet sales. However, Lotus suffered technical setbacks in this period. Version 3 of Lotus 1-2-3, fully converted from its original macro assembler to the more portable C language , was delayed by more than a year as the totally new 1-2-3 had to be made portable across platforms and fully compatible with existing macro sets and file formats. The inability to fit

2024-468: Was one of the first subnotebooks to exist in the marketplace, and still today is one of the smallest, although it is beaten by the HP 200LX . It was immediately recognized as a milestone in portable computing when PC Magazine awarded the Poqet PC development team ( Ian H. S. Cullimore , John P. Fairbanks, Leroy D. Harper, Shinpei Ichikawa, Stavro Evangelo Prodromou ) its coveted Technical Excellence Award for 1989. The same device that PC World called "one of

2070-438: Was surpassed by Microsoft in the early 1990s, and never recovered. IBM purchased Lotus in 1995, and continued to sell Lotus offerings, only officially ending sales in 2013. VisiCalc was launched in 1979 on the Apple II and immediately became a best-seller. Compared to earlier programs, VisiCalc allowed one to easily construct free-form calculation systems for practically any purpose, the limitations being primarily related to

2116-475: Was then necessary to "initialize" the System disk with one's name and company name so as to customize the copy of the program. Release 2.2 and higher had this requirement. This was an irreversible process unless one had made an exact copy of the original disk so as to be able to change names to transfer the program to someone else. The reliance on the specific hardware of the IBM PC led to 1-2-3 being utilized as one of

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