Recent reports suggest Apple is developing a laptop computer that makes use of solid-state Flash memory instead of a conventional hard drive. True or not, I can’t help thinking “Oh no, not again”.

I saw my first solid-state laptop, the Psion MC 400, in 1989. Although it weighed next to nothing, booted up in a couple of seconds and ran for 20 hours on its NiCad pack (or up to 75 hours if you used eight standard AA batteries), it was doomed to failure because no-one would take it seriously. Business executives don’t like their laptops to be lightweight and silent, they want them to be big, flashy and noisy so that they get noticed.

Just to make certain of utter failure, though, Psion sold its own proprietary solid state disk (SSD) modules – a forerunner of today’s Flash storage – at ludicrously high prices. Psion then went on to cram pretty much everything that the MC 400 could offer into its cheaper and considerably more successful Psion Series 3 handhelds.

Ironically, Apple revealed the Macintosh Portable, one of the more laughable attempts at mobile computing, in the same year. My recollection might be faulty, but my abiding memory of this unwieldy device was that it felt even more plastic than the Psion MC 400, ran for about 17 seconds between battery recharges and required a forklift truck to move.

Amusingly, much of the so-called informed comment on the current Apple rumours is of the opinion that Apple had better hurry up and bring its product to market before it gets overtaken by someone else. Heavens above, this must mean several other manufacturers are developing Flash-based laptops too. What on earth are they thinking? Surely there are more productive ways of disposing of their money, such as burying it on a beach or throwing it on a fire.

Besides, Apple has already shipped a Flash-based laptop. It did so precisely 10 years ago. It was called the eMate 300, designed for the education market, and it was in many ways a wonderful machine – if you didn’t mind typing with one hand while pointing a torch at the murky screen with the other.

Despite great reviews, the eMate was another miserable failure and was canned less than a year later. Why? The moment that business people realised the eMate was just an overblown handheld in a clamshell case with a (lovely) keyboard, no-one could take it seriously.

In other words, these laudable efforts from Apple and Psion suffered because users thought they were handhelds in a bigger box. This is ironic, because it is a very apt description of the average laptop computer, at least in terms of the way many are actually used.

If Apple wants to develop an oversized iPhone with a keyboard, I’ll be first in line to get one. The problem is that there will be few others in the queue behind me.