WorkSlate

The headline crosses the gutter in a type size usually reserved for a grand idea: “You need a Workslate.” Beneath it, the device is placed on a leather portfolio, as though it belongs among a businessperson’s daily papers. The screen shows rows of figures, not a game or a futuristic scene. On the other panel, a dense column explains the promise. The page makes a portable computer feel both new and already familiar: another tool to put in a work bag.

The list of tasks is revealing. Budgets, taxes, expenses, and stock portfolios lead; a microcassette recorder, calculator, speaker phone, auto-dialer, phone list, calendar, notepad, and terminal follow. WorkSlate is offered as a portable bundle of office devices. The claim that it has the power of many personal computers is the advertiser’s comparison, not a benchmark on the page. The three-pound weight and roughly letter-paper dimensions in the fine print are more concrete. So are the ComputerLand and BusinessLand outlets and the dealer phone numbers: the buyer is expected to find the machine through a retail network.

The ad treats making decisions as an everyday form of labor that can move between office and home, even “thousands of miles from both.” Today a phone or laptop can cover many of these functions, and often connects to shared data continuously. Here the possibility of taking a spreadsheet and an electronic phone list away from the desk is itself the novelty. The page shows an early version of the always-carried workplace, without presenting the social cost of always carrying it.

For a young copywriter, “need” is doing more than selling hardware. The opening assertion is softened by the particular jobs in the body; the closing “It’s all you need” turns the list into a single promise. “Much more than a computer” followed by “much less” makes compactness sound like an advantage rather than a compromise. When a new device combines several known tools, naming the old jobs can make the new category legible.

The Smithsonian identifies the WorkSlate as a portable computer introduced by Convergent Technologies in 1983. Convergent later passed into Unisys; the WorkSlate survives as a historical product rather than a current line. Contemporary reporting says its production was halted in 1984 after sales lagged expectations.

The promise of doing business work wherever one happens to be remains familiar. The microcassette, separate auto-dialer, dealer network, and notion of one machine as the last decision tool anyone will need mark the ad’s moment. Its most interesting move is to sell mobility through a portrait of ordinary administrative work.