Tote that barge, lift that bale… Germans love solidity in everything and believe that electronic instruments should be built like tanks – we remember an amazing machine for measuring antenna performance from Rohde & Schwartz AG called the Diagraph, which was a wonderful machine until you had to hump it up onto the roof: that was many years ago, but the tradition still lingers as Newsbytes reports from Comdex – there a German company called Westcomp Systems GmbH was demonstrating computers with keyboards and cases hand-made from hardwoods – a process that takes two months per computer to complete: there is a mahogany model designed as a briefcase that opens to reveal a screen built into the top and a gold-plated 3.5 floppy drive, with the keyboard also made of wood, but with plastic keys, and there is also a desktop model made from teak; each computer is custom-built to the user’s individual specifications; weight is not a consideration, says Newsbytes airily, adding that Helmut Weber, who owns the company, admits that the computers are quite heavy when completed – just the thing for royalty, petty despots, slavemasters and anyone else that always has some minion on hand to carry their luggage…
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