In search of the oldest working laptop

It’s 2026 and I’m in a museum in Cambridge, England, playing hangman on a laptop that was made back in 1988. It’s the Amstrad PPC512, a portable version of the British company’s desktop computer and an early, primitive example of what we all now know today as the laptop. It’s a sort of greyish beige colour, and its keyboard and screen can be folded together into a convenient package weighing just under five and a half kilograms, which is roughly the same weight of a child’s bowling ball.  Folded up, it looks more like a plastic suitcase or a medicine box with a handle at one end.

Tracking down early laptops 

This is the Centre for Computing History, a charming establishment tucked between a Topps Tiles and an MOT centre on an industrial depot in eastern Cambridge. Old laptops take up but a few shelves in a vast space also filled with Playstations, SEGAs, Nintendo 64s, Commodores, Toshibas, iPods, Casio keyboards, vintage television sets and walls of silicon. The idea here is to preserve historical electronic devices and keep them accessible to the general public. 

Lizzie Salter, the museum’s director, had an Amstrad PPC512 when she was at university back in 1990. “I remember feeling smug because I had a computer and knew enough MS-DOS to be able to operate it. This meant I could turn in printed essays when everyone else’s were handwritten,” she recalls. “My student halls neighbours were not quite so keen, though, as the nine-pin Epson Dot Matrix printer made a terrible high-pitched racket and the walls between rooms were only one breeze block wide.”

I’ve come to Cambridge in search of old laptops that still function well enough to be used for everyday tasks. I was inspired by my own machine, on which I type these words, a veritable antique compared to most laptops currently in use. After several factory resets, a number of harrowing crashes and countless update refusals, my 2014 MacBook Air is still going strong. But as the Centre for Computing History proves, there are machines that put even mine to shame.

The backdrop to this quest is the news that affordable modern laptops might soon become, erm, unaffordable. As data centres and server farms expand around the world to feed the billions invested in AI, they are also buying up an increasing amount of memory chips, creating a worldwide shortage, subsequently driving up the cost of other electronic goods. Critics are calling it ‘RAMageddon’ and estimating that the average laptop, which costs around £667 at the moment in the UK, could be about to surge in price by as much as 40%. 

A trend towards embracing old 

So, do you need the newest laptop on the market? Or, given these circumstances, could you make do with something from yesteryear, or perhaps even a refurbished model? A simple internet search reveals that many are foregoing the latest laptops in favour of something a little more weathered. On a 380k-strong Facebook page dedicated to the 1991 open-source operating system Linux, enthusiasts compare devices from the mid-2000s, made workable thanks to the longevity-friendly OS their owners have installed on them. Here I find people sharing pictures of working Dell PowerEdge 2800s (2008), SPARCbook 3000STs (1998) and MacBook SEs (dated around 1990), including details of the software they’re using to keep their devices going. 

Alternative operating systems like Linux are considered necessary by some people because they fear that the regular updates required by Windows and MacOS will eventually make any laptop unusable, possibly by design. Asked about the relatively short lifespans of modern laptops, Zbigniew Stachniak, a senior scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York University, Ontario, invokes memories of the 1960s; back then, he says, giant computers like the IBM System/360 Model 30 could be bought for around $130,000. 

“In the era of mainframes, computers typically remained in operation for a decade or more,” he says. “In contrast, today’s laptops are relatively inexpensive. However, rapid advancements in AI, networking technologies, security solutions, display technologies, and other areas demand faster and more capable CPUs and GPUs. Additionally, the compact design of laptops makes hardware upgrades — if possible at all — expensive relative to their market value.”

He explains why Linux is preferable to some. “The core principles of the Linux philosophy — such as efficiency, simplicity, and customisation — emphasise minimising hardware resource usage,” he says. “This, in turn, implies that older hardware can remain usable for longer periods.” 

Keeping tech history working 

Yet installing Linux is not essential to the survival of a laptop. Back at the computer museum in Cambridge, after losing a sixth successive game of hangman on the Amstrad, I turn my attention to some of the other machines on display. Not all of them can be switched on, but those that can are running with their original operating systems in full (or half-full) swing. 

I peer into the screen of an Apple iBook G3 Clamshell (1999). The iBook has Internet Explorer installed as its default web browser, but no internet access. “The tech team had to cannibalise like three other machines to get it working,” says Adrian Page-Mitchell, the museum’s Collections Officer and a former volunteer who started coming here more than a decade ago.  He tells me he has a private collection of vintage laptops at home, a growing addiction that started with an impulse purchase at an antiques fair a few years ago and has mushroomed ever since. “From then I knew I was doomed,” he says. “Doomed to just keep buying more and more.”

"I feel compelled to keep these laptops going. It's like having a house plant and wanting to keep it alive"  - Adrian Page-Mitchell, a retro laptop collector

Page-Mitchell owns a number of machines from as far back as the 80s and says his only “modern-ish” laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad (2014), which he still runs on its original Windows OS. “It keeps complaining that it needs Windows 11,” he says. “And I can't install Windows 11. I don’t like being forced to upgrade. But Linux is a little bit above my tech level.”

Also in his collection is the Cambridge Z88 (1988), a locally made machine originally developed by the late British inventor Clive Sinclair, before he sold the naming rights to businessman Alan Sugar’s company Amstrad. All of Adrian’s own laptops are still in working condition. “You have to keep them going,” he says, talking about them like plants that need watering or maybe pet gerbils in need of food. It’s proof that for some, keeping old technology working is an obsession. 

There’s also a Z88 in a glass display cabinet at the museum. Adrian unlocks it and flicks open the back of the device with a pair of pocket scissors, then shoves four AA batteries inside. The screen suddenly flickers into life. Arriving before the widespread adoption of the foldable “clamshell” laptop design, the Z88 is a flat machine comprising a narrow screen just above a standard keyboard. Among its software are a digital diary and PipeDream, a built-in word processor and spreadsheet program. 

Going back to 1981 

Adrian says they recently had a visitor who waxed lyrical about the Z88 and said he still used it for note-taking all the time. Because of its rubbery keyboard, it produces none of the clicks and clacks that can be heard in most modern cafes and libraries, making it great for smooth typing.

Next, I move on to an Osborne 1 (1981), widely regarded as the first commercially successful portable computer. It weighs north of 11 kilograms (that’s the weight of a small microwave) and retailed for about £1,400 when it first went on sale. It would not fit in a satchel. The one in the museum still functions, and invites me to solve a series of riddles that flash across its five-inch screen. 

“What do you think this is?” it asks. I type in “clamshell”. “Good try,” it responds. “The answer is CLAM ON THE HALF SHELL.” I attempt nine further riddles. “You had 1 correct, 5 close, and 5 wrong,” it tells me, signalling an end to my latest humiliation…at the hands of a machine built nearly half a century ago. “Thank you.” 

While the Osborne 1 may still work 45 years after its creation, my iPhone battery life is flagging tediously less than two years after I bought it. Many people think the transient nature of modern laptops, smartphones and tablets is built in, the result of so-called planned obsolescence (devices that will eventually stop receiving updates and will subsequently be tanked). “I wish they didn’t do it, but they definitely do,” says Adrian, settling down in the museum foyer. “I might have just libelled them,” he adds as a worried look crosses his face. I reassure him that the vagueness of referring to Big Tech companies as simply “them” should act as protection against any lawsuits. 

Ontario-based scholar Zbigniew sees things differently. “Although some anecdotal evidence could be provided of ‘planned obsolescence,’ the reality, in my opinion, is more complex,” he says. “To remain competitive, computer hardware must meet increasing demands such as multitasking and high-resolution, high-refresh-rate displays, while also addressing critical concerns like security, all at a competitive price. 

“To keep prices low, manufacturers often use cheaper materials and components — plastic enclosures that wear faster, keyboards that fail sooner, and batteries that degrade more quickly. These trade-offs reduce physical longevity and can create the impression of planned obsolescence.” 

Cementing a legacy of old laptops 

Make your own mind up. Either way, Adrian worries whether future generations will have the same interest in old machines as their parents do, despite increasingly frequent reports about Gen Z’s embrace of old tech. “At the moment we’re riding a wave of nostalgia, so dads are coming in like brilliant, I used to have this Spectrum or this Amstrad…” he muses. “That’s not going to happen in a few years’ time. The kids who are leaving school now, they’re not going to ever look at this and go wow, do you remember that Samsung A53?!” 

"Laptops used to be made to last a lot longer, but not anymore" - Zbigniew Stachniak, computer scientist

He points at his own mobile. “I'm not going to remember this phone in a few years.” He holds it to his mouth and whispers: “Sorry.” To him, devices like phones and laptops are almost like living things with their own personalities. “These machines were built with a bit of an identity,” Adrian says. “It’s sadly lacking now. If you look at a Sinclair product, you know it’s a Sinclair product. If you look at a Commodore, you know it was made by Commodore. People could be fans of Apple or what have you, but it’s a brand. It’s not the actual object.” 

As I say my goodbyes, the sun is shining outside the museum doors. Thin columns of water are now cascading to the floor from the leaky ceiling. Before hurrying off to battle the puddles taking up an increasing amount of space on the museum floor, Adrian shows me photos of when the place actually flooded — water came through the floor, not the roof — during the pandemic. The carpets were ruined, but the museum’s myriad machines remained unharmed, saved by regulations dictating that all of them must be kept a certain number of feet off the ground. 

Old tech companies like Amstrad and Sinclair may now be little more than curios from the past, but the machines they left behind survive. They live on despite the changing times, despite floods, and despite the near-omnipotence of Big Tech. They’d probably survive an apocalypse. They may be heavy, or loud, or slow, but these old laptops are charming, beautiful relics of a bygone era, with a role still to play in our world today. Adrian says there are valuable lessons to be learned from these machines. 

“We're doing this project at the moment, Broken Tech Broken Earth,” he says. “Which is showing the increasing pressure that technology is putting on the environment. Modern phones aren't going to be around in 40 years’ time, so I think they need to look back at what made these machines a bit special. They weren't just a beige object. They were a unique-looking thing.” 

He hopes the Centre for Computing History can remind a small number of people that if tech machines have more personality, people will feel more motivated to make them last longer. “They should perhaps try and bring some more of that back in, do some more with the branding so that, you know, if you've got a laptop and it looks a bit more special, a bit different to what else is around, people might want to carry that on. That would be nice, wouldn't it?"