A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Who says you can't improve on the best?

Announced in July 1985 in this glossy gate-fold four-page magazine insert, the BBC Plus, or BBC Micro B+ to give it its full name, was the long-awaited update to the original BBC Micro - the influential...

When you're left on your own, you're not alone.

1993 might have marked the tail end of the home computer era - only Commodore's Amiga and Atari's ST were still on the market - but it also marked the dawn of another: the World Wide Web. Although you...

There is a place in this world for DOS and Windows. And you're looking at it.

OS/2 was an operating system originally intended to replace Microsoft's PC-DOS on IBM's then-latest IBM PC - the PS/2. Intended as a multi-tasking and windowing operating system, it was initially co-developed...

No wonder our customers love us

It's another advert for Dell, and one which effectively sums up the end of the home computer era. The entry-level Dell System 333 s/L shown in the advert was available for £859 plus VAT, which is around...

The new Apricot Xen-LS II. Everything you could unreasonably demand from a computer.

Apricot, or ACT - Applied Computer Techniques - had started out as a mainframe accounting bureau in 1965. The company launched its first computer - the ACT Series 800, in 1980. This was actually built...

The advanced PC. For beginners.

It's nearing the end of the line for Amstrad's micros, although unlike many other companies which went bankrupt or suddenly exited the industry to avoid bankruptcy, Amstrad seemed to simply get bored...

The new Data General/One. The only industry-standard PC you can use on a camel

Here's another one of those adverts where it's tempting to question whether the claims made had ever actually been tested in the real world. It's for Data General's One - the 4.5kg portable launched...

The new Sharp MZ5600. It makes the competition look positively untogether.

Launched nearly two years before in September 1983, Sharp's MZ5600 - the name trying to hold on to a lineage going back to the MZ-80 - was an MS-DOS-compatible IBM sort-of-clone, but running a true 16-bit...

Prestel - the biggest breakthrough in communication since the telephone and television

By late 1981, Tangerine - a company founded in 1978 as a video display card manufacturer but which by now was more famous for its Microtan 65 computer - had released the Tantel Prestel adapter, via its...

Step by step with the computer system designed for tomorrow

Tangerine Computer Systems had been founded in 1979 in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire - once the home of Clive Sinclair's Radionics company. Its first product had been the well-received Tan 1638 video-adapter...

Choose Atom Power

Right on the cusp of Acorn's launch of the Proton - the computer better known as the BBC Micro - comes this advert for its existing Atom, the 1980 machine which evolved from the even-earlier System 1,...

Tandon introduces the computer that doesn't add up

It's 1990 and laptops still haven't quite reached the proportions of what would be considered a "modern" laptop, however the price - according to Tandon at least - does seem to have reached the point...

The Attaché Business System - The only system designed and supported exclusively for business applications

Launched in the UK in May 1979, the Attaché was said by PRAC in its May 1979 issue to be "in a sense, Pertec's first microcomputer", in that unlike the company's previous offerings, which were based upon...

If you can buy more on one board for under £300 - buy us one too!

This is the advert which launched the Nascom 2 - an update of the popular Chris Shelton-designed Nascom 1, which was first launched in 1977. The Nascom 2 came with the faster 4MHz Zilog Z80A, an improved...

New from Texas Instruments. The world's most powerful pocket calculators. For the easiest problem solving ever.

From the company which "made micro-electronic calculators and watches possible" - Texas Instruments - comes a contender for Commodore's "button monster" crown, albeit with a mere 45 buttons compared to...