Well Die Hard 2 fans! This is the moment you’ve been waiting for… What laptop was Holly Gennaro-McClaine using on the plane???
It turns out the answer is A Psion MC400: Ie an early 1990s notebook computer! There aren't many shots of the computer in the movie and the only purpose they seem to serve is to contrast Holly's pro-technology attitude with John's anti-technology attitude. We'll start with the last shot where she packs it away, at about 1:16h into the film:
It's quite clearly the same computer, you can see the PSION insignia at the top left; the ribbing going through the centre, the model name on the metal band on the bottom.
There's more to the Psion MC400 than the outside. At 2:20 you get a fairly decent shot of the keyboard. I enlarged it so you can see it against a stock image.
It's really satisfying to do this, for three main reasons. The most important is that I've worked it out and I can't find any other reference to it on the net (I've tried googling "Die Hard 2" and "Psion MC400"; and I've tried looking at the excellent website: "Starring the Computer" and it doesn't appear in either).
The next reason is that it was only when me and my wife saw the movie at the beginning of January 2024 on BBC iPlayer that it occurred to me that I could find out what computer it was and given that even in the late 80s and early 1990s, there were probably a number of laptop style computers it could be, tracking it down from the few clips we have of it seemed like a tantalising, but challenging exercise. The weird thing was that when I looked at the computer, I felt I’d seen that computer before, and it wasn’t long before I guessed it might be a Psion MC series, because of the light keys against a dark casing (all PC laptops of the time were either too big to fit on an airplane seat (eg Toshiba T1000) or had a beige case, or both). So, really, the first computer I tried to check it against was the Psion MC400.
The third reason is to do with the nature of the MC400 itself, because it was a remarkably advanced computer from a British company and also very unusual, partly because it wasn't very successful. Seeing a British laptop in a US film is particularly remarkable.
You can see how advanced the MC400 looks in comparison with e.g. a Toshiba 1200 from 1989 (when the movie was shot, assuming post-production took 6 months). Can you imagine Holly lifting it with one hand to put in a bag or it even fitting on the tray table for her seat?
And this tells you why the MC400 was the perfect laptop for demonstrating hi-tech Holly in the movie, because the computer can be handled easily (only about 2kg) and fits nicely on the tray shelf; something that isn't possible for any other laptop machine. I have to be careful with the phrasing here, because there were palmtops at around the same time and also some awkward notebooks like the Epson PX-8, but they were quite clearly not like a modern laptop.
To illustrate why it was so progressive: One of the cleverest things about the MC series is the trackpad, which is above the keyboard. As I try to remember from v brief the time I used one; it used absolute positioning (top-left, bottom-right = top-left, bottom-right on the screen) and accurate placement involved rolling your finger on the pad. At the time, laptops either had no mouse/trackpad/trackball (because PCs didn't have Windows); or you'd plug in a serial mouse (like most people still do with a PC laptop) or in a few cases and maybe this is a few years later, you could get a weird mini trackball that plugged into the side of the keyboard.
After the failure of the MC series Psion re-used its multi-tasking architecture and OS (Epoc) in a new product, the first (& incredibly successful) useful PDA, the Psion series 3 🙂 !
You can see how it shares some of the design language of the MC400 series, with the ribbed casing silver logo followed by the dark model name banner. In addition the keys have a similar colour scheme. The big difference is the screen size (240x80 pixels vs 640 x 400) and built-in apps.
It was only the arrival of the PowerBook 100 in 1991 when the trackball/trackpad was moved to the front (and Apple [nor anyone else] used a trackpad for at least another 5 years, which, again shows how advanced the MC400 was).
After the PB100 appeared, all laptops were set out this way (apart from IBM's flirtation with the ThinkPad 'nipple'):
The MC400 (and Psion Series 3) had one last trick up their sleeves, they were based around a pure solid state storage model, involving SRAM and serial Flash cartridges that plugged into the unit rather like modern USB memory sticks, except that they would fully insert.
Ground-breaking machines!
