The Atari Portfolio Palmtop

        In 1989 Atari entered into the consumer palmtop market with an innovative product call The Portfolio.   The product was designed by an England based company that Atari bought.    Through the efforts of a very loyal and determined Atari employee named Don Thomas, the Atari Portfolio handheld computer was brought to market with a heavy push on advertising which included a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal.   This remarkable little computer was actually an IBM XT about the size of VHS video cassette at about 3/4's the height.   It had a PC Card expansion slot (Not PCMCIA compatible, that spec didn't exist formally for a few more years) that allowed various card based programs to be loaded or could accept memory cards for running larger programs or accessing larger data files.
 
 
 
 
 
 

    It came packaged with MS-DOS 2.2 compatibility, Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet, a simple text processor, phone book with auto-dialing through a built-in speaker, calendar and todo list. The Portfolio had a strong following with several companies introducing software cards, hard drives and floppy drives for it.   One of the more powerful and useful peripherals for the Atari Portfolio was a device from Atari called the HPC301 Card Drive for IBM compatible computers to allow a user the ability to write to an Atari Portfolio Memory Card and then remove it from the Card Drive connected to a PC and then slide the card into the Portfolio and the system could read the Card as a disk drive letter and access all the data.   This made for loading updates and syncronizing data very easy and convenient and gave the user a quick clean system to transport, store and backup data on the go to and from his/her PC and Portfolio.    Several other devices were also introduced like the Smart Serial and Smart Parallel interfaces which not only allowed the Portfolio user the ability to print to Parallel and Serial printers as well as use Modems, the Smart software also allowed data transfer to and from a PC and the Atari Portfolio making the users choice of connectivity options varied to his/her own preference.
 
 
 
 

    In todays market with US Robotics PalmPilots and WinCE palmtops which are all the rage, Atari probably could have faired well with a more updated version of their Personal Organizer.   It may have been a matter that Atari introduced an excellent product at the wrong time to a market they may not have been quite ready for it.     The Portfolio is still widely used and still quite popular in many circles with numerous sites supporting it with system updates and software.   Hardware and accessories are still available from several vendors such as B&C Atari Sales & Service as well as BEST Electronics.