The Commodore SX-64 is a portable (“suitcase”) version of one of the most popular computers of the 1980s, i.e., the Commodore C64. It is also the first portable computer equipped with a colour screen (a 5-inch CRT monitor). It has 64 kB of built-in operating memory. As business users were the main target group for the computer, it was also marketed under two other names: Executive 64 (in the USA) and VIP-64 (in Europe). A prototype of the device was presented during The Winter Consumer Electronics Show organised in Las Vegas in 1983. The computer went on sale in 1994, and production ended two years later.
Technically, the device is fully compatible with its desktop version, and it supports the same software. However, while the Commodore 64 was a computer intended for a wide group of users, the SX-64 was designed with business users in mind. The computer was supposed to serve people who travelled frequently, as well as those worked both in the office and outside of it. For that reason, it was advertised in the American press with the slogan “designed for the movers of this world”.
The device was sold during a period of accelerating globalisation. It was also the period when Ronald Reagan was President of the United States and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK, a time when the neoliberal free-market economic model, with a global reach, was forming. One of its components is the mobility of people, services, production, and technology. In the end the SX-64 did not fulfil the hopes it raised, mostly because of the lack of advanced software for business purposes.
Contrary to the home computer models manufactured in the 1980s, the SX-64 occupies a separate development line of portable computers. Commercial sales started in 1975 with the IBM 5100 model, a development of the SCAMP prototype of 1973 built by the same company. The assumption was that portable computers were to be relatively small and lightweight. The SX-64, whose form resembled a suitcase with a detachable keyboard panel (in the international QWERTY layout), weighs around 10 kg, making it lighter and smaller than the computers produced at the time. The model, however, does not have a built-in battery, which makes it necessary to use a mains power source and prevents the device from being used while travelling. In contrast to the Commodore 64, the computer has only one built-in 5.25-inch floppy disk drive (model Commodore 1541). In addition, its ports allow connection of peripherals such as a tape recorder, audio-video devices, or an external monitor.

Authors: Marek Więcek, Filip Wróblewski