Adverts featuring the Commodore VIC-20

The first ever computer to sell over one million units, Commodore's VIC-20 - for Video Interface Chip, plus a number picked at random which sounded "friendly" - was essentially a colour PET, the world's first true personal computer in the modern sense.

With only 3.5K of available memory, thanks to its re-purposing of a glut of small memory chips Commodore had floating around, and an unusual 23-column display, the VIC did have the advantage of being very well built, and came with a particularly good keyboard.

And with its 1MHz MOS Technology 6502 processor and a minimal, if almost hostile, BASIC, it was also suprisingly fast, often coming in near the top of the league table in performance.

It was even faster than machines like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, even though the Speccy shipped with a 3.5MHz Z80.