18 Facts About Kaypro

Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based out of San Diego in the 1980s.

Kaypro was founded by Non-Linear Systems to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer.

Kaypro was exceptionally loyal to its original customer base but slow to adapt to the changing computer market and the advent of IBM PC compatible technology.

Kaypro began as Non-Linear Systems, a maker of electronic test equipment, founded in 1952 by Andrew Kay, the inventor of the digital voltmeter.

The Kaypro II was designed to be portable like the Osborne, contained in a single enclosure with a handle for carrying.

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Kaypro II was part of a new generation of consumer-friendly personal computers that were designed to appeal to novice users who wanted to perform basic productivity on a machine that was relatively easy to set up and use.

Computers such as the Kaypro II were widely referred to as "appliance" or "turnkey" machines; they offered little in the way of expandability or features that would interest hackers or electronics hobbyists and were mainly characterized by their affordable price and a collection of bundled software.

Also, while Kaypro machines were generally not upgradeable without factory-unauthorized custom modification, some Kaypro computers that came with single-sided floppy disk drives could be upgraded to double-sided drives, and some that came with only one floppy drive could have a second drive added.

Kaypro's success contributed to the eventual failure of the Osborne Computer Corporation and Morrow Designs.

The relatively high quality of mechanical fabrication seen in the aluminum-cased Kaypro 8-bit computers was a natural outgrowth of NLS's prior business building professional and industrial electronic test instruments.

In late 1984, Kaypro introduced its first IBM PC compatible, the Kaypro 16 transportable.

Early in the Kaypro's life, there was a legal dispute with the owner of the Big Board computer, who charged that the Kaypro II main circuit board was an unlicensed copy or clone.

The Kaypro IV uses different screen addresses than the Kaypro II, meaning software has to be specific to the model.

The Kaypro 10 eliminated the complicated procedures to turn the computer on and off often associated with hard disk technology.

The Compaq was larger and less durable—whereas the Kaypro had a heavy-gauge alumininum case, the Compaq case was plastic, with a thin-gauge aluminum inner shield to reduce radio frequency interference—but rapidly took over the portable PC market segment.

In 1984, BYTE magazine observed "Kaypro apparently has tremendous buying and bargaining power, " noting the Kaypro 10 came with both WordStar and Perfect Writer, plus "two spelling checkers, two spreadsheets, two communications programs and three versions of BASIC".

Kaypro's nomenclature was odd, with the numerical designations for their machines having more to do with the capacity of the drives than the order they were produced.

Kaypro released several different models with the same names, perhaps hoping to capitalize on the name recognition of their older machines.