Uh, what's your definition of portable? I'm talking about the common usage of the word, which means something easily carried or conveyed by hand. This would include laptop and notebook computers, and netbooks.
I'm thinking more along the lines of portable as in the building- for example, my high-school had a number of classrooms in buildings called "portables" outside. These buildings were more portable then the main building itself, but still required a lot of effort to move. Much in the same fashion as some early "portable" computers that used a CRT screen.
Really, I think of portable as "movable, but requires effort and cannot be used while being moved"- a portable building cannot be used while being moved- nor could the early portable computers, since they didn't have batteries.
Rather, for laptops, cellphones, ipods, MP3 players, and handheld devices, a more applicable word is "mobile". Portable does apply, but it's hardly the most precise word that you can use, since it hardly highlights <how> portable a machine is.
Definitions generally make it so a laptop is portable- which is true, you can use it as you would use a portable (luggable, would be the more modern term).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_computerBut there is no way anybody can consider that the Compaq Portable is even in the same class of "portability" as a modern laptop.
