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Before laptops became physically possible due to LCDs there were portable computers [1] (yes, I played with one my high school lab had).

I suspect in the future we'll have curious historians trying to figure out how the phrase "personal computer" ended up being shortened to "phone".

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_computer

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I like how minicomputer used to mean "computer that's only as big as a chest freezer." Every now and then I hear laypeople use the term "mini-computer" to mean a computer that's really small by their standards, like a raspberry Pi.

And then we had "microcomputers" (desktop PC sized). Rather disappointed we didn't call laptops "nanocomputers" and phones "picocomputers" :)

In Swedish, the term "stordator", literally "big computer" refers to a mainframe.

I really like your idea of nano and picocomputers. It's consistent, and really reflects on the miniaturisation that we have seen since since the invention of the computer.

Since "computer" pre-dates digital, it might be a good time to come up with a more apt base term too. It's not as if most people's usage of them (at least as far as they know!) is performing arithmetic.

In Norwegian, it's "stormaskin" for mainframe.

So, would a smartwatch be an "attocomputer"?

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