Laptops were a thing well before 1995. Mine was a 486, I don't remember seeing any laptops before 386s but they existed and Apple had laptop/notebook machines in the pre-PPC era as well. But $3000-5000 was totally normal for laptops till the late 1990s.
Technically they were already "notebooks" in 1995. Everything today counts as a Notebook I think if you consider the original definitions. Something like the "Macintosh Portable" would have been a "laptop" but not a "notebook" by the old school definitions. Modern definitions basically say a laptop is a big huge notebook with fans and optical drive whereas a "notebook" is basically an Ultrabook.
In the 80s laptop and luggable were different things. The entire computer didn't fit into the screen + keyboard portions of a clamshell.
When I went to college (for CS) in 1995 it was rare to have a personal laptop, slightly less rare to have a desktop PC. By 1997 all the incoming freshman at the school had IBM Thinkpads.
Technically they were already "notebooks" in 1995. Everything today counts as a Notebook I think if you consider the original definitions. Something like the "Macintosh Portable" would have been a "laptop" but not a "notebook" by the old school definitions. Modern definitions basically say a laptop is a big huge notebook with fans and optical drive whereas a "notebook" is basically an Ultrabook.
In the 80s laptop and luggable were different things. The entire computer didn't fit into the screen + keyboard portions of a clamshell.
When I went to college (for CS) in 1995 it was rare to have a personal laptop, slightly less rare to have a desktop PC. By 1997 all the incoming freshman at the school had IBM Thinkpads.