The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

Computers, like nostalgia, were so much better in the old days.

These days, computers have become boring and the path of progress predictable (often leaked in advance). Formats are pretty fixed, technology is global and there's rarely anything exciting that might be pulled off a boat from Hong Kong or Tokyo to completely change the world of computers, at least as you know it.

But back in the 1980s and 1990s, before the PC became the standard, there was an exciting maelstrom of machines for computer buyers to choose from. And, not only did all computers all look very different, they were based on a variety of chip architectures and offered different operating systems, with their own operating systems and versions of Basic (often building on Microsoft Basic).

It wasn't until the middle of the 1980s that graphical user interfaces* started to emerge, and even then it was some time before the Windows "standard" (with Linux and Mac OS for contrarians) emerged. You could walk into a computer shop** and be blown away by a computer you'd never even considered before. Next month, it might be gone, never to return.

This really was the era of the "white heat of technology", 20 years after the term had first been coined.

So, presenting Computing's entirely arbitrary, unscientific and arguably unfair top-10 of the best-ever home computers. Feel free to flame away below the line over any errors, omissions, inclusions, corrections or just feel the urge to reminisce about your old Jupiter Ace, Sharp MZ80K, Sord M5 or Camputers Lynx.

[Next page: At number 10, the utterly fabulous*** Acorn Archimedes...]

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* Or windows, icon mouse and pointer - WIMP for short
** This was before PC World. They were a bit like Maplin, only typically smaller and shabbier
*** In our completely impartial and unbiased opinion

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

10. Acorn Archimedes

Acorn's RiscOS (originally called "Arthur") in full flight was a marvel. The three-button mouse enabled context-sensitive menus with a click of the middle mouse, which enabled users to positively zip around the screen. And being embedded in ROM, rather than booting from a hard disc, meant the Archimedes started-up quickly and the machine was superbly responsive.

However, the 32-bit Archimedes didn't appear until June 1987 and at the princely sum of £799, plus more for the monitor - and they weren't cheap in those days, either.

Hence, the cool kids all had Commodore Amigas and the slightly less cool kids were making do with slightly cheaper Atari STs, while schools tended to stick with Acorn, which made them deeply uncool.

By the time the Archimedes A3010 was released in 1992, which was reduced in price to £399 a year later, the long shadow of the PC was already looming large over the market - even the education market where Acorn had sheltered for the past decade.

A flurry of big-name games and other software packages for the new, cheaper machine unfortunately didn't flush out sufficient numbers of new buyers and the writing was very much on the wall for Acorn by 1995.

The Archimedes, however, remains a cracking machine. It easily outbenchmarked the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, even if it never came close to outselling them.

If it wasn't as popular as these machines it also deserves a place in our top-10 for being the original home of the ARM - Acorn Risc Machines - microprocessor. The first Archimedes packed an ARM2 microprocessor (the ARM1 being the prototype) with models sporting a 25MHz and 33MHz ARM3 coming out in 1990.

For that, though, you had to lash out at least £999 for an A5000, budgeting extra for the monitor. It really shouldn't have taken until 1993 for the budget-priced A3010 to emerge.

Microprocessor: ARM 2
Memory at launch: 512K
Max graphics resolution: 640x256 in 256 colours
Produced: 1987-1998
Estimated units sold: N/A

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[Next: Number nine, the Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

9. Commodore PET

When MOS Technology unveiled the 6501 and 6502 microprocessors in 1975, at prices of around one-sixth of rival products from Intel, Motorola and others, it sparked a flurry of excitement - and the home computer was born.

Initially, the market was split between attempts to produce relatively cheap computers - many of them in kit form - and machines that were still too damned expensive for most people.

The Commodore PET, though, was arguably the first home computer that actually looked like what most people at the time thought a computer should look like, at a price that wasn't (too) outrageous - just $495 in the US compared to the starting price of $1,298 of the Apple II, launched in the same year, which the PET easily outsold during the 1970s.

That price included an integrated computer and keyboard with tape drive, with a natty nine-inch black-and-white monitor plonked on top. The 6502 microprocessor, meanwhile, ran at a wind-in-the-hair 1MHz, while the computer had a whole four kilobytes of on-board memory and offered Microsoft Basic.

It was a pretty decent package from a company that had hitherto only made calculators, although it also introduced the home computer tradition of building unreliable machines around catastrophically bad keyboards. The first versions used a chiclet-style keyboard that would've given any touch-typist carpal tunnel syndrome.

As it became more popular, Commodore's aggressive founder and CEO Jack Tramiel cranked up the price to $595 - and doubled it again when it launched the machine in Europe, despite the only difference being the 220-volt power supply.

Commodore had acquired MOS Technology in 1976, a year after it introduced the 6502 microprocessor, with the intention of using it to design the integrated circuits for electronic calculators. It was only when lead designer Chuck Peddle told Tramiel that calculators were a waste of time, and that computers were where it's at, that he wisely switched tack.

Fun fact 1: The early Commodore PET models could be opened like a car bonnet for servicing, upgrades etc.

Fun fact 2: According to Oldcomputers.net, if you type in the command WAIT 6502 in later models the screen will fill with the word "Microsoft". This, it claims, was inserted by Bill Gates himself in order to assert Microsoft's copyright over PET Basic following an argument with Tramiel.

Microprocessor: MOS Technology 6502
Memory at launch: 4K
Max graphics resolution: 40x25 (text), later upgraded to 80x50
Produced: 1977-1986
Estimated units sold: Not known.

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[Next: Number eight, the Amstrad CPC-464]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

8. The Amstrad CPC-464

There was a time when Lord Sugar had a reputation as a far-sighted technology visionary.

Only kidding! Rivals and critics have always looked down their noses at Lord Sugar. So, when word got out that Amstrad was planning to release a home computer, the British computer industry wasn't exactly scared. They expected the computing equivalent of the £17 Amstrad 8000 Amplifier, which even Lord Sugar has described as "crap".

But the product that was unveiled in mid-1984, was a pleasant surprise.

Rather than trying to produce the cheapest product on the market, as he'd done in the past, Sugar had put together a home computer with built-in storage (okay, a tape deck) and a decent-quality monitor - even if the computer's 'edge connectors' and lack of a metal housing meant it failed fussy German regulations on electro-magnetic emissions.

Whereas Commodore expected buyers to fork out £50 extra on a special tape drive to actually use the Commodore 64, and others expected you to play the tape-recorder lottery (home computers might only play nice with particular models of tape recorder), Amstrad threw one in, with the whole package priced less than the cost of one BBC Model B - £359 at launch, with a colour monitor, to the BBC's £399.

It looked decent, too. It was even reliable and offered the excellent Locomotive Basic, which no doubt have kicked off hundreds of thousands of careers in IT (for better or for worse) - thanks, in no small part, to the excellent manual that came with the machine. The features were ratcheted up with the CPC-6128 featuring a 3-inch floppy disk drive instead of tape and 128 kilobytes of RAM in late 1985. The less said about the short-lived CPC-664, the better.

The launch of the CPC-464 more-or-less coincided with the end of the eight-bit home computer boom, though, but the machines that were to replace them started at £800 and therefore certainly weren't mass-market machines.

Ultimately, while Lord Sugar had the last laugh over critics who had sneered at the idea of an Amstrad home computer, he failed to follow it up with something to compete with the Atari ST or Commodore Amiga. Instead focusing on grown-up PCs - until that incident.

The less said about the GX4000 CPC-based games console, the better.

Microprocessor: Zilog Z80
Memory at launch: 64K
Max graphics resolution: 640x200 in two colours
Produced: 1984-1990
Estimated units sold: Three million

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[Next: Number seven, the Commodore 64]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

7. Commodore 64

Whaaaat? Only number 7? Yeah, we can hear the complaints of Americans from all the way across the Atlantic. But this is our top-10, not yours.

The Commodore 64 was globally popular, possibly even the most popular home computer of the early 1980s. This was despite its price, which at around three hundred of Her Majesty's fine English pounds wasn't cheap.

On top of this, it also required buyers to purchase the 'optional' extra cassette player needed to save and load software - an ordinary cassette player connected via a proprietary interface and given an eye-watering £49 markup.

It did, though, have a decent, if a bit spongey, keyboard; a couple of joystick ports; and, a good all-round specification - except in one respect. Its implementation of Basic, the language most of us learnt and programmed in at the time, could only be described as, well, basic.

This made it a bigger challenge for nascent programmers to learn computing and start coding their own programmes. On the plus side, though, that was the perfect excuse to load up 'Wanted: Monty Mole' and to play that instead.

The success of the Commodore 64 helped propel the company from annual sales of just $100m in 1980 to just over $1bn three years later, whereupon founder and CEO Jack Tramiel promptly walked out following a disagreement with chairman, shareholder and backer Irving Gould. Just months later, Tramiel bought Atari from Warner Communications and plotted his revenge.

Microprocessor: MOS Technology 6510 (a 6502 with additional I/O and ability to address more RAM)
Memory at launch: 64K
Max graphics resolution: 320x200
Produced: 1982-1994
Estimated units sold: 12.5 million

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[Next: Number six, the Apple iMac G3]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

6. Apple iMac G3

When the prodigal son returned home to Apple, the homestead was in a pretty bad state. The "professional" CEOs who'd run the place since Jobs had been ousted in the mid-1980s had allowed the place to atrophy, and this was reflected in a humdrum line-up of over-priced beige boxes.

Back in the mid-1990s, no-one got too excited about Apple's latest machines. Instead, people queued all night to be the first to get their hands on Microsoft Windows 95. Windows 95! That's how bad things were back then.

After persuading Microsoft to bung the company $125m in return for withdrawing claims that Microsoft had ripped off Apple's GUI wonderfulness*, Jobs set about injecting a bit of cheap sparkle into the company.

Brushing up the operating system might take a bit of time, but making his mark on the hardware and aesthetics could be done more quickly.

Instead of beige boxes, the new iMac G3 was initially offered in "Bondi blue" transluscent plastic, which curved sexily around the 14-inch CRT monitor. Later models were offered in a range of colours to suit all interior decorating schemes. At the heart of the machine was a Motorola PowerPC 750 running at a respectable 233 MHz.

"Traditional" Apple connections, such as the ADB, GeoPort and SCSI ports, were dumped in favour of USB, and all ports were tucked away behind a neat panel on the monitor. Three-and-a-half inch disks were ditched, too, with Jobs making the call that recordable CDs and the internet were the future.

To that end, the machine also came with a built-in 56 kilobits-per-second dial-up modem, reflecting the fact that his machine was resolutely aimed at home users, not the business. But the bright, new aesthetic pioneered by the iMac G3 would soon be seen throughout Apple's newly stylised line-up.

For the first time in a long time, Apple was offering a desirable machine that was not just a competent computer, but which looked good too (as good as any CRT could look).

It was also a useful stop-gap until Apple was finally able to release OS X in 2001, which would help complete the transformation of the moribund company that Jobs had walked back into.

Microprocessor: 233 MHz Motorola PowerPC 750
Memory at launch: 32MB
Graphics: ATI Rage IIc with 2 MB of SGRAM
Produced: 1997-2002
Estimated units sold: Not known

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* Microsoft was keen to keep Apple going as pretty much its only rival in operating systems in a bid to keep the US Federal Trade Commission at bay.

[Next: Number five, the Sinclair ZX81]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

5. Sinclair ZX81

By 1980, the race was on to produce home computers that were both cheap enough and functional enough for the mass market.

In the UK, kit computers had attracted a hard core following of electronics buffs and hobbyists with such machines as the Science of Cambridge MK14 (which was little more than a programmable calculator), the Acorn System 1 and the Tangerine Microtan-65.

While kit computers were cheap, little things like keyboards and cases were invariably optional extras. This therefore would also mean making your own case for both the keyboard and the computer in, for example, metal work classes at school.

They weren't especially elegant either. What was elegant, though, was the ZX80 - the first proper computer in the UK launched in 1980 and available, ready assembled, for under £100. It proved so popular that there was a waiting list for buyers. Sure, the screen - a standard TV - flickered annoyingly when you punched in instructions on the equally annoying membrane keyboard, and it overheated, but it did out-benchmark the likes of the Tandy TRS-80.

The ZX81, released in March 1981, was more the finished model - or as finished as anything from Sir Clive Sinclair ever would be. Although the specifications were similar, the ZX81 cut the number of components right down by integrating multiple functions onto one single uncommitted logic array (ULA), making it cheaper and easier to manufacture.

Sure, you could buy it in kit form if you wanted, but what helped turn the Sinclair ZX81 into a mass market machine was the exclusive deal Sinclair struck with WH Smith, which back then was a decent retailer. Wowed by the graphical sophistication of 3D Monster Maze, and the prospect of their kids growing up to become highly paid computer programmers, the ZX81 sold by the hundreds of thousands, and to families, not just musty-smelling hobbyists.

Sinclair also cut a deal with watch-maker Timex Corporation, and enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the US, providing a cheap introduction to real computing to Americans who couldn't afford a Commodore 64.

Of course, being a Sinclair, the ZX81 naturally had reliability problems. While only about 70 per cent of the logic gates on the ULA were supposed to be used, Sinclair used the lot, which cut costs but resulted in over-heating. The membrane keyboard was also pretty awful, although the built-in syntax checking made it a good machine to learn Basic.

While the ZX80 sold about 50,000 units, the ZX81 sold 1.5 million. Home computing had hit the big time in the UK, but would people be satisfied with black and white block graphics, no sound and a nasty keyboard?

Fun fact: Author Terry Pratchett used his ZX81 for,what he described as, "very primitive word processing". He must've been crackers.

Microprocessor: Zilog Z80 or NEC Z80
Memory at launch: 1K
Max graphics resolution: 64x48
Produced: 1981-1983
Estimated units sold: 1.5 million

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[Next page: Number four, the Atari ST]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

4. Atari ST

Back in 1985, it was already becoming apparent that 8-bit computing was reaching the end of the road. The MOS Technology 6502 had been introduced in 1975, while the Zilog Z80 was introduced a year later. Between them, these two low-cost parts had helped spark the home computer revolution. But a decade or so later, they were looking somewhat long-in-the-tooth.

Computer makers were in a quandary. The 16-bit Motorola 68000 microprocessor technology had been unveiled in 1979, but was initially focused on high-end Unix servers and priced accordingly.

Home computer makers therefore bumbled around with alternatives - Acorn designed its own, which became the ARM microprocessor; while others, such as Amstrad and Oric, tinkered with PC compatibles.

Atari, though, opted for the 68000 - first unveiled by Motorola in 1979, but far too expensive for home computing back then - and hurriedly threw together a machine after rival Commodore purchased Amiga Corporation, a company set-up by former Atari engineer Jay Miner, which had been developing a 68000-based machine itself since 1982.

While the Commodore Amiga debuted in mid-1985 and cost $1,295, plus $300 for a monitor, production problems kept it out of shops for a year. Meanwhile, the new Atari 520ST cost $799 and came with a monochome monitor. Released in June 1985, the ST also made it to market first. While the Amiga proved more popular in the US, the Atari ST was the better seller in the UK and Europe, after having been launched first in Germany.

For many people, the Atari ST was their first experience of a GUI interface, and provided a huge leap forward in terms of graphics and sound. This was at a time when the standard PC was still very much stuck in the DOS command line era, while the Apple Mac, although pretty, was too expensive to be a home computer in all but the most prosperous of homes.

Like Commodore with AmigaOS, Atari also looked further afield for its operating system. The Atari ST sported GEM, which it got from Digital Research. This caught the eye of Apple, which accused Digital Research - rather than Atari - of ripping off Apple, but left Atari well alone. In the grand tradition of home computing, too, the operating system itself initially had to be booted from floppy as it wasn't quite finished on launch.

But one of the most intriguing design decisions, especially for a hurriedly put-together computer, was the built-in MIDI port, the first computer to do so, which made it widely used in the music industry - until that market was assimilated by the PC, too.

Microprocessor at launch: Motorola 68000
Memory at launch: 512K
Max graphics resolution: 640x400
Produced: 1986-1993
Estimated units sold: Not known

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[Next: Number three, the Commodore Amiga]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

3. Commodore Amiga

When Commodore founder Jack Tramiel was booted out in 1984, everyone at the company could breathe a sigh of relief. Tramiel was easily angered and a fastidious micro-manager to boot. Every expense of any size had to be personally signed off and when he went on holiday, invoices simply went unpaid.

As such, Tramiel had no need of budgets for development projects. As every expense had to be justified to him personally in order to be signed off, reasoned Tramiel, so a formal budget would simply be a licence for project managers to waste money.

Tramiel's micro-management, his habit of going through senior executives and his tight-fist on spending meant that when he abruptly departed, Commodore was left rudderless. Hence, instead of developing its own next-generation machine, it acquired a company that had spent much of the 1980s building its own without actually getting round to releasing the thing.

Rumours had swirled for some years around the technology that Amiga Corporation was developing. Led by Jay Miner, who had worked on the Atari 2600 games console and its family of eight-bit computers, the company had initially been established to develop a games console, code-named Lorraine, based on the 16-bit Motorola 68000 microprocessor.

Tramiel - who acquired Atari in mid-1984 - was interested in the computer they were developing, but clearly less interested in acquiring the staff. Commodore therefore swooped, and bought the company, lock, stock and barrel. Not only did this provide Commodore with the next-generation machine that it needed, it also had the satisfying effect of enraging a gazumped Tramiel to boot.

When they finally finished the machine in mid-1985, it was still another year before shops could stock it in volume due to manufacturing difficulties. But it was worth waiting for. In addition to the Motorola 68000, running at a nippy 7MHz, the machine also boasted custom chipsets for graphics and sound enabling an easy-to-use GUI and games far in advance of anything a Sinclair Spectrum could handle.

Furthermore, the AmigaOS operating system offered pre-emptive multi-tasking, which was advanced for its time. Intriguingly, as the Amiga was perennially late, AmigaOS had been based on TripOS, a multitasking operating system written in BCPL in the 1970s for minicomputers, but later experimentally ported to the Motorola 68000.

As Commodore 64 sales nosedived and the company's cash flow followed sales south, a new COO cut back developments and focused the Amiga on a high-end, professional version - the Amiga 1000 - and a cheaper home computer, the Amiga 500, which finally emerged in 1987.

The high-end Amiga quickly found favour in the creative communities, where it was widely used for video work due largely to its graphics modes, colour palette and, most important of all, setting transparency enabling users to overlay external video sources with graphics.

A low-end version, meanwhile, proved popular as a home computer. As production glitches were overcome the Amiga quickly overtook the Atari ST in popularity as the more powerful machine with, let's face it, much better games.

Fun fact 1: TripOS originated in the computer labs at the University of Cambridge, while the 68000 version was started at the University of Bath

Fun fact 2: If you crack open an Amiga, the chances are that it will contain references within to the B52s - the pop group, not the 1950s American bomber - as code names used for each of the models. A500s had the words "B52/ROCK LOBSTER" silk-screen printed onto the PCB, while the Amiga 600 had "JUNE BUG" and the Amiga 1200,"CHANNEL Z".

Microprocessor: Motorola 68000
Memory at launch: 256K
Max graphics resolution: 640x400
Produced: 1986-1996
Estimated units sold: 4.85 million

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[Next: Number two, the BBC Model B]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

2. Acorn BBC Model B

You could tell people's wealth and social aspirations in the 1980s by the kind of home computer they had: a Sinclair Spectrum or Commodore 64 was for the masses; an Oric or Dragon 32 for the contrarians (who secretly wished they'd bought a Spectrum, but would never admit it); and, a Memotech, Camputers Lynx or Jupiter Ace were for the kind of people who like talking to themselves.

If it was a Laser 200, Mattel Aquarius or Comx 35 they would rightfully be treated as social pariahs, of course, and shut out of all polite society.

But if you (or, more accurately, your parents) had a few bob to spare, you had a BBC Model B (never a Model A - not enough memory). Regardless of what you had told your parents, this meant that you could play Elite!

After you'd achieved Elite status, you could turn your attention to programming with the BBC's excellent built-in implementation of Basic, BBC Basic, or any of the other development and educational tools produced for the BBC.

The BBC wasn't just the computer of choice for the well-to-do and the national broadcaster, but also Britain's schools. It wasn't just the imprimatur of the 'BBC' name that proved persuasive, but also the low-cost and relatively easy to implement Econet* networking system that Acorn had devised and introduced in 1981.

The finishing touches to Econet were actually made by Acorn's Australian distributor in response to an RFP from the Tasmanian Department of Education. With support for floppy disk drives (ask your dad) and local area networking, the BBC computer swept the Apple II out of schools across Australia and New Zealand, not just Tassie.

And, despite the BBC computer being knocked together in double-quick time in order to make it in time for the competition that the BBC was running, it was pretty decent and well-made. It was the computer everyone really wanted (at least, before the Atari ST and Commodore Amigas were released).

Acorn, of course, was almost bankrupted by the sudden end of the home computer boom in 1984. Whereas, for example, Lord Sugar had the good sense to sell his computers while they were still in the factories, the amateurs running Acorn had tens of thousands of machines they couldn't sell stacked up in warehouses when it came to the crunch.

In order to buy some time until its next generation computers were ready, in 1986 Acorn tarted up the Model B, bunged in 128 kilobytes of memory (with an option on an 80186 if you wanted to run CP/M) and called it the BBC Master.

By then, though, the magic of eight-bit computing was well and truly over. Acorn's focus had switched, first, to avoiding bankruptcy; and second, to the Archimedes and the idiosyncratic microprocessor it had designed itself to run in it. Well, how hard could that be?

Production of the BBC computer only ceased, though in 1994 - 13 years after the first BBC computer was launched. How many other computers have been commercially produced for that long?

Microprocessor: MOS Technology 6502
Memory at launch: 64K
Max graphics resolution: 640x200 in two colours
Produced: 1981-1994
Estimated units sold: 1.5 million

* Acorn reportedly received an offer from rival Commodore to licence Econet but turned it down

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[Next: The very best home computer of all time...]

The top-10 best-ever home computers

Computing's completely partial and biased guide to the very best home computers of all-time

1. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Okay, many overseas readers will be unimpressed with this choice. A rubber keyboard? A record for reliability that made British Leyland look good? A tinny speaker that struggled to do more than 'beep'?

Yep, but it was also the first low-cost colour computer on the market and popular not just in the UK, but in markets across the world. Timex even had a punt trying to sell it to the yanks, but they weren't so easily pleased. But it was so popular that software developers worked hard to stretch its meagre specs to the limit, enabling better software to be released on the Spectrum than for some of its arguably far better rivals (like the Oric Atmos).

While many old computers are kept going in emulation - even the dire Comx 35, Laser 200 and Mattel Aquarius (haven't you guys got anything better to do?) - the Sinclair ZX Spectrum remains so well loved that it was recently relaunched as not one, but two proper products and appears to be doing brisk business.

Indeed, many a career in IT - and a few successful businesses - were forged over a piping hot rubber Spectrum keyboard, whether tapping in an exciting* game from Your Sinclair or learning the finer points of Basic or even machine code

And let's face it, the kids who beat each other up in the playground over whether the Oric Atmos or the Dragon 32 were the better computer** really wanted a ZX Spectrum.

Remarkably, the ZX Spectrum continued in production in various different forms until 1992 when Lord Sugar, who'd acquired the carcass of Sir Clive Sinclair's ailing company in 1986, could no longer wring any further pennies from it.

However, the Amstrad ZX Spectrums, mercifully, did away with the awful chiclet-style keyboards that Sir Clive loved, gave them proper keyboards, bunged in 128 kilobytes instead of 48k and built-in tape drives or, later, disk drives.

Fun fact: Sir Clive Sinclair doesn't use computers and prefers the telephone to email, according to a 2010 interview. It's probably fair to say he's not on Twitter, either...

Footnote 1: A lot of people who weren't around at the time wonder why home computer keyboards were so different/bad - why didn't the manufacturers just buy something off the shelf from a factory in China?

Well, back then, China wasn't really a 'thing' in manufacturing and there were no standards for connecting different keyboards to different machines. As a result, even basic keyboards without cases were horrendously expensive. Home computer makers therefore designed and produced their own keyboards in order to keep costs down.

Footnote 2: The Sinclair Spectrum was also widely ripped off in parts of the world where home computers were considered an unnecessary, bourgeois frippery. The reason? It's design was relatively simple, and the large number of the machines made meant that plenty of them infiltrated the Iron Curtain.

Microprocessor: Zilog Z80
Memory at launch: 64k
Max graphics resolution: 256x192 in eight colours
Produced: 1981-1992
Estimated units sold: Five million

Pictured:

All Sinclair Spectrum images via Wikipedia

* mundane. You would almost certainly spend more time typing it in than playing it
** definitely the Oric Atmos