Texas Instruments Professional Computer and Professional Portable Computer


The Texas Instruments Professional Computer and the Texas Instruments Portable Professional Computer were devices that were both released on January 31, 1983. The TIPC was a desktop PC and the TIPPC was a fully compatible, portable version of the TIPC. Both computers were most often used by white-collar information workers and professionals who needed to gather, manipulate and transmit information. Texas Instruments was the first company to release videotape training videos for their computers.
The TI Professional Computer came with a 14", 720x300 pixel color monitor, had 512k RAM and contained state-of-the-art, cutting-edge features, including industry-standard software support, easy expandability, a superior and user-friendly QWERTY keyboard, and natural language database options.
The standard version of the TIPPC had a built-in 9" monochrome monitor; the upgraded version came with a built-in 9" color monitor. The graphical capabilities were far superior to the IBM competitor; the TIPPC featured a maximum resolution of 720x300 pixels. The standard device came equipped with 64k RAM but could be expanded to 768k.
The TI portable professional computer was one of the first portable computers available with a built-in color screen.
The TI portable professional computer was one of the first portable computers that could be connected to an Ethernet network, with the addition of one of 3Com's first Ethernet cards.
Additionally, both the TIPC and TIPPC were equipped with voice recognition software, allowing the user to speak basic commands to the computers. Both computers also featured an Ethernet card, a new device developed in 1983 by 3COM. The TIPC and the TIPPC were superseded by IBM Personal Computers, and compatible machines.