They had the option of buying huge, luggable products from companies such as Dolch. In weight and size, they were more like the original suitcase class of portable computers of the late '80s, but regular laptops were simply too underpowered for their use.

Performance has made great gains over the past couple of years, and engineers were increasingly found using high-performance laptop computers, which took Dolch out of the business and found high-performance consumer companies such as AlienWare and Apple creeping in.

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