Kaypro Advert - May 1986

The earlier Kaypro 2 luggable, built by Andrew Kay's Non-Linear Systems as a direct competitor to the Osborne 1, was very successful, selling around 10,000 units a month at one point^[1]. Its popularity was even said to have contributed to the collapse of Osborne.

However, Kaypro was said to be slow in adapting to the IBM PC, and it faded away under the mass of mostly-identical IBM clones in the latter half of the 1980s, eventually going bust in 1992.

This advert is for the company's imaginitvely-named Kaypro PC - a fairly standard IBM compatible, with a claimed 100% compatibility with the IBM PC or newer XT. It did however have more than the usual number expansion slots available, at nine.

Keeping up with the same business model established by Osborne, that of bundling in free software - a move which significantly helped the popularity of the luggable machines - the Kaypro PC comes with "a generous collection of quality business software", including WordStar, Mailmerge, telecomms package Mite, and MS-DOS.

It had been launched at Comdex Fall, in Las Vegas, at the end of 1985, and was seen as something of a step backwards as its competitors were launching AT clones instead. It was also notable as it was the first Kaypro machine to abandon the blue steel casing that had once been described as looking like "Darth Vader's lunchbox"^[2].

The floppy-disk version of the Kaypro PC retailed for £1,250 + VAT, or about £5,210 in 2024. Its launch price in the US had been $1,595.