"But they were Just Good Enough, and a much larger percentage of those 3 million people could afford to buy one for themselves, or their children, as compared to the luxurious American/Japanese imports or even the British equivalents such as the BBC micro and Acorn Atom."
This right there! My Dad got me the 16k Spectrum, we couldn't afford the 48k model, but friends at school thought we must be rich because we had a computer! Far from it. Had saved pocket money for ages to get a ZX81 and then saved again to get the extra 32k ram kit for the Speccy.
I think a couple of years later, maybe by the time I got to the 6th form nearly everyone had a Spectrum, a BBC or C64 when prices came down even more and the Micro boom really took off.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
