1987 adverts

If it weren't a handheld computer, it would be an XJS juggernaut

Psion had started out in 1980 as a producer of software for Sinclair's ZX80 - although founder David Potter's first output had been some utilities for Acorn's Atom - and went on ...

Compatible with you know who, priced as only we know how

At £449 (£1,640 in 2025) Amstrad wasn't wrong, although that was for the machine which only had a single floppy. The more useful version with a 10MB hard disc drive retailed at ...

The new Epson PC Plus. It makes others look like PC Plod

This is yet another entry in the pantheon of almost-identical beige boxes that came to define the industry for years. It's the hard-disk-based update of Epson's previous and uni...

Our new thoroughbred has lots of room for growth

Perhaps confusing the world of thoroughbred horses for that of pedigree dogs, this advert from Ferranti is for its new XT IBM-compatible personal computer. It's a bit confusing t...

As recommended by the inventor of the PC modem

Hayes did not really "invent" the PC modem, as the devices - a contraction of modulator/demodulator - had been around in some form since the 1920s, although they weren't commercia...

How much computer can you buy for £450?

It's another advert for Amstrad's PC 1512, this time featuring a nice bit of analogue Photoshopping showing competitors' micros chopped up to represent how much you could get for ...

In a class on its own: Opus PCII

Opus was another of those companies (like Memotech) that had started out as a technology supplies company, selling things like the Discovery system for the Spectrum (this combined ...

Never in the history of business systems has so little done so much

Both the "budget" Amiga 500 and higher-end A2000 were announced at the same time during the winter CES show in Las Vegas in 1987. However, Commodore actually managed to start shi...

From Clive Sinclair: The No-Compromise Z88 Computer

After the financial turmoil bought on by the QL fiasco - late delivery, dodgy early firmware, and the curse of the Microdrive - together with other disasters like the Pocket TV an...

Altos Computer Systems offer you the drive to succeed absolutely free

Altos was one of relatively few microcomputer manufacturers that made the transition from the 1970s through the era of the IBM PC and was still around on the other side. From 197...

Available now! The Tandy 1000EX

Pitched as a competitor to IBM's ultimately-doomed PC Jr., Tandy's 1000 EX was a version of its Tandy 1000 IBM-compatible PC, with everything built into a home-friendly all-in-one...

Atari 520STM: To help you destroy the aliens, we've massacred the price

The Atari 520STM was fundamentally the same machine as the previous ST model, except that it came with a built-in TV modulator and had its OS and GEM graphics manager supplied in ...

Get your hands on the new Sinclair 128K +2. Before everybody else does

Released under the management of Amstrad, which had bought Sinclair for its name and assets on April 7th 1986, the Plus 2 was launched without much fanfare in the August of the sa...

Atari 520 ST: It's not all fun and games

Here's another advert for Atari's 520 ST - for Sixteen/Thirtytwo - the Motorola 68000-based machine with 512K RAM and which became popular amongst musicians, thanks to its built-i...

You'd better believe this... or you won't believe our prices

Michael Dell started out at the age of 13 selling mail-order stamps, and by the time he was at High School he was earning some $17,000 a year selling newspaper subscriptions with ...