A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

To become the leader in terminals, Televideo had to give you more

TeleVideo was one of several companies - like Intertec - that had started out as terminal manufacturers, in its case in 1975. However unlike most other manufacturers from the 197...

That's it! The VisiSeries from VisiCorp

Any history of the early microcomputer industry would not be complete without a mention of VisiCalc - the first ever "killer app". Not only did VisiCalc create an entirely new ca...

Above all else, there is Apricot

This advert from Apricot shows the company clearly aiming at the Desktop Publishing market that Apple was coming to own since the 1985 release of Aldus Pagemaker, and Apple's even...

Now you can write 450 A4 pages into an A4-size computer

It's over three years since the launch of Clive Sinclair's Z88 portable computer, and not much has changed, except that the price is finally back to its original launch price of £...

A new kind of computer to revolutionise the way you work

Here's a nice advert ticking all the mobile-worker cliché boxes, not least the one of the dude on the train who's actually lucky enough to get a group of four seats all to himself...

Psion MC400

Launched in 1989, the Psion MC 400 - for Mobile Computer - was Psion's first entry into the nascent "netbook" market. Although based on a CMOS version of Intel's 8086 - the 80C86 ...

If only all personal computers were this big

The Psion Series 3 - launched in 1991 - was an update of the popular Organiser II (itself an update of the original Organiser), which by 1989 had sold a combined 300,000 and prope...

Announcing a computer that thinks in BASIC for only $298

Ohio Scientific seemed to only ever advertise variations of its Challenger series of sometimes-fridge-sized microcomputers, however here is the exception that proves the rule - th...

PIPS: We've cracked the BASIC problem

Sord seems to be advertising in reverse as it's starting out advertising software before any of its actual hardware, but that's probably because this is really an advert for poten...

I think, therefore IBM won't get my PC order

Atari released its first IBM compatible - the £400 entry-level 8086 Atari PC - in June 1987, although it had been previewed at the Atari show held in London during April. Atari's...

Amstrad's new baby is even smaller than most miniature PCs

It's five years since Amstrad purchased Sinclair and moved into the computer business, going on to sell a range of highly-succesful home micros, word processors and, later on, bus...

Amiga 1500 - the world at your fingertips

The Amiga 1500 appears to be considered very much the mystery. It was essentially a cut-down version of the existing Amiga 2000, but shipped with an extra - but empty - CPU slot, ...

Golf Portable: Small by design - big in business

Goupil - or more properly Societé de Micro-informatique et Telecommunications (SMT) Goupil - was a French company that had been established in 1979 and which mostly produced compu...

Kaypro: if you want inside information... freephone 100

Another week, another clone: this advert focuses on Kaypro's 286 computer, which was the first IBM AT clone launched back in 1985. Although 80386 machines were around - not leas...

Tulip sharpens your image

This is an advert from Tulip, formerly known as Compudata of the Netherlands, for its LT 286 laptop, based on Intel's CMOS 80C286 CPU plus the 80C287 maths co-processor. It was Tu...