In Pictures: Pocket marvels - 40 years of handheld computers

From the first pocket scientific calculator through '80s organisers to today's tablets, check out 15 ingenious devices that have driven the handheld computing revolution.

2004: OQO Model 01

PDAs weren't powerful enough. Hybrid laptop/tablet PCs were too big. If only there were some middle ground.

Oh, there was: OQO's $1,500 Model 01, a paperback book-sized tablet PC with a slide-out backlit keyboard. The svelte 5-x-3.5-x-1-incher packed Windows XP onto a 20GB disk, using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, FireWire and USB to connect to the outside world. Later models ran Windows Vista.

The Model 01 made it into Guinness World Records as the smallest full-featured computer, and it defined a market (some say evolutionary dead-end) for "tweener" devices called mobile Internet devices (MIDs), Internet tablets or ultramobile PCs (UMPCs). The Samsung Q1, Nokia 770 and a flood of Archos products entered this market, but something else was soon to steal their thunder.

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