ZX-Spectrum with 16K RAM cost £100. With 48K RAM it cost £130. The keyboard was bad. Basic commands were assigned to combinations of keys, not typed letter by letter. The cpu was Z80A at almost 4MHz!
Most popular, as it was very compact. Could be smuggled across customs hidden under the coat. Usually from West Germany. :-) My then country (YU) had banned importing a computer more expensive than 50 DEM (25 Eur). Knew of many kids that had ZX-Spectrum.
Commodore-64 had 64K RAM (not all addresable at once), much better keyboard. It cost £200. Basic programs could be typed normally. Learned Basic and 6502 assembler on it. The cpu was 6510 at almost 1MHz, had few memory mapped io ports too.
My parents relented after 2 years of pestering and bought me one from an authorized dealer. They were not rebelious enough to risk smuggling of ZX-Spectrum clandestine op. :-) The excise and duty paid were astronomical. It cost them £470 or sth like that. Eternally grateful to my parents for that. It changed my life. Knew couple of kids with C64 in addition to 2 of my closest friends.
BBC Micro B was £400. It was exclusive, like royalty, I knew of only one kid that had it.
Trip down the memory lane. :-)
Jump forward twenty years and I got my first Western programming job for the then-unimaginable 5000 USD a month. This company also happened to be headquartered in Vancouver where I decided to immigrate to and they helped me doing so. And when this company got acquired four years later, I got a salary high enough to buy my own apartment on the beautiful seashore of Vancouver.
Thanks Speccy for what my life could become.
Although I didn't move to Canada, it lead to the similar outcome of a good IT career. In essence, cheap home computers opened our eyes as to what oportunities exist, and that we are not bounded by borders where we were born in. I'm sure there are many success stories from East Europe which started with Spectrum, C64, or even Atari 800XL.
The UK was very into ZX - first the ZX80 and ZX81, and then the Spectrum. For that generation, in the UK, Spectrum is the start of everything.
I was an Apple child myself (a function of the machine my dad brought home), a BBC Micro at school (because... education), but in the mid 80s the Apple switched to IBM, and I've been on the PC track ever since.
I've met other groups for whom Vic 20, Commodore 64 and especially Amiga hold that first-love status. I'm just blessed to be that generation where the hardware was there at the right time.
https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
But yes they were everywhere when I was a kid, the BBC was in schools, and a few people had different things, but the Speccy was cheap and cheerful enough that it was the machine of choice.
I remember being mightily impressed by 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81
It's tagline: “Learn programming for fun and the future”
https://archive.org/details/inputmagazine
It had tutorials on BASIC ... and introduced the strange and mysterious world of machine code via PEEK and POKE (!)
On a side note, I think one of the most iconic manual cover for a computer is the ZX81 one. Designed by John Harris, it's a masterpiece. I think he designed the Spectrum manual too but it was not so great.
We had beautiful computers at the time. I would say, in order of appearance, the Atari VCS, the ZX81, the Spectrum, the Commodore C128 and the Amiga 500 (inspired by the C128), the Apple IIc Plus. The original Macintosh eventually. It was just like having a piece of art at home.
The Spectrum Next, still designed by Rick, is beautiful too.
Thank you for highlighting Rick Dickinson [1], it's probable very difficult to communicate to newer generations how form factor or plain aesthetics played in the 80s where a desktop PC is just a box. This clearly include calculators like the HPs ones. For the ones with sensitive clear memories, touching and using this devices make an echo in your spirit. Even when you think that the ZX81 had a membrane keyboard, there was something "mystic" about finding devices with such different design. We might even use the "kinky" term for devices like the Casio CZ-101 [2].
The Show Must Go On [3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-15C
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Dickinson
[2] http://weltenschule.de/TableHooters/Casio_KX-101.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Show_Must_Go_On_(Queen_son...
Talking about design, some of the Nintendo Game & Watch series were particularly lovely. It's the first "computer device" I can think of which was elegant.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithmidson/8082061808/in/phot...
https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/mickey-mouse-game-watch-nintend...
Finally, I often think about a "dumb" calculator with a great form factor, a keyboard and display combo, that functions purely as a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi terminal for a computer we already own or even connecting to the cloud.
The keyboard was cost effective. We need to remember that constraints exist.
How long did you spend in that department store? How did you charm the personnel into letting you keep at it?
Interestingly, Vickers co-created another interesting machine from the 80s - Jupiter Ace which used Forth instead of Basic.
Speaking of games... I've lived in US for a long time and I'm intimately familiar with both the US gaming history (My dad had an Apple II) and the current gaming market. With this said, if you like videogames, you should absolutely try Spectrum games; not the conversions, which are generally poor, but the homegrown British games from the 1980s.
The Spectrum-centric, British gaming culture from the 1980s is the closest thing we have to a gaming culture from an alien civilization. I mean no offense to my British friends here, it's actually a compliment to its uniqueness. The Spectrum scene was very much like the current Steam-centric indie gaming scene, but with a particular British (let's not forget Australia and Spain) flavor that is hard to emulate.
So many homegrown games, so many small 1/2-people gaming shops, so many amazing gems unlike everything else you've ever played. If you are a serious gamer, you owe yourself to spend a few weeks looking into the Spectrum library.
By the way, you can get a taste of it in Black Mirror's "Bandersnatch" episode.
Plus, cheap enough to be affordable for most families.