Apricot Portable

The Apricot Portable, also called the FP, placed the company’s 8086 architecture in a slim transportable form with a wide 80-column liquid-crystal display. Its detached infrared keyboard and trackball could be stored against the system for travel.

Built-in speech recognition allowed a limited vocabulary of spoken commands, a remarkable feature for 1984. Although battery-free and intended more as a portable office system than a modern laptop, its display, wireless peripherals and industrial design were notably forward-looking.

Notable Features

• One of the first portable computers with an 80-column, 25-line LCD.
• Built-in speech recognition accepted a user-trained command vocabulary.
• Infrared keyboard and trackball stored with the transportable main unit.

Historical Significance

• An ambitious British attempt to make a complete 16-bit office computer transportable.
• Combined LCD, speech input and wireless peripherals years before such features became commonplace.

Collector’s Notes

• The LCD, speech microphone, battery-backed settings and infrared peripherals deserve careful testing.
• It requires mains power; the word Portable described transportability rather than battery operation.

Specifications

Technical Information
Name	Apricot Portable
Manufacturer	Apricot Computers
Launched	Thursday, November 1, 1984
Launch Price	£1,965
Country	United Kingdom
CPU	Intel 8086 at 4.77 MHz
Units Sold
Operating System	MS-DOS, CP/M-86 and bundled Apricot applications
I/O	RS-232, parallel, external video, infrared and expansion ports
Keyboard	Detached infrared keyboard and infrared trackball
Storage	One 3.5-inch floppy drive; second external drive optional
Sound	Internal speaker and microphone with speech recognition
Graphics	Monochrome bitmapped graphics
Display	Built-in 80 x 25 monochrome LCD, 640 x 200 pixels
ROM	Portable system and speech firmware
RAM	256KB standard; expandable to 768KB
CPU Speed	4.77 MHz