Laser 50


Laser 50 is a small and cheap computer, nearly a pocket sized. It was sold as an educational computer (it's written on it), and in France it was sold in a suitcase along with an initiation cartoon-book....As with most of the Vtech computers, the conception of the machine seems "cheap". The tiny screen offers only 1 line of 16 characters and the memory size is only 2 kb RAM. Hopefully, it was possible to expand it to 16 kb with a memory expansion, which is inserted in a slot underneath the computer. On the other hand, the typewriter keyboard is a good point for a computer of this category, even if it looks a bit "weak"...

Of course the whole thing is programmed in Basic. One special feature is that the Laser 50 powers off automatically after 2 min 1/2, thus not wasting the 4 "AA" batteries used to power it. When it was produced, Vtech claimed that the Laser 50 could last at least 200 hours with 4 batteries, and it was right! It also has a LCD contrast adjustment and little knobs to bring up feet so you can tilt the keyboard as on modern PCs. You can also use the Laser 50 as a simple calculator. Indeed, Laser 50 can operate in 6 different modes:
Mode 1 : Computer (Basic)
Mode 2 : Calculator
Mode 3 : Trace on
Mode 4 : Trace off
Mode 5 : Degree
Mode 6 : Radian
Finally, Laser 50 can also maintain 10 separate program spaces (P0 - P9).