One thing I've never gotten an answer to is why the "standard C64 colours" seen on emulators, etc. are so washed out. This is not what the C64 looked like, at least on the 1702 monitor that was its standard display. The colours were much more vibrant.

Any reason you wouldn't opt for the 4090 or 5090?

There was also the Nord-5, which beat the VAX by another couple of years as a 32-bit minicomputer.

Laser focus to the main topic, I remember that the Sinclair appeal in Latin America was the price and that low barrier to entry enables much more success, like top Spanish magazines focused on the Sinclairs and the Commodores. It is important to memorialize that even if your family can afford a more expensive device most conscious parents found that these were expensive game devices more than a computer. Even programming was about being fun, not an industry! The first one I saw was a father who was an accountant and complemented its kids fun with calculations he should do, so the father learnt how to develop software in the same way, kind of, you learn how to program an HP-15C calculator [0]. I knew several accountants at that time that followed that route before even using VisiCalc.

Thank you for highlighting Rick Dickinson [1], it's probable very difficult to communicate to newer generations how form factor or plain aesthetics played in the 80s where a desktop PC is just a box. This clearly include calculators like the HPs ones. For the ones with sensitive clear memories, touching and using this devices make an echo in your spirit. Even when you think that the ZX81 had a membrane keyboard, there was something "mystic" about finding devices with such different design. We might even use the "kinky" term for devices like the Casio CZ-101 [2].

The Show Must Go On [3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-15C

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Dickinson

[2] http://weltenschule.de/TableHooters/Casio_KX-101.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Show_Must_Go_On_(Queen_son...

With Commodore-64 you also had to buy their tape recorder (same thing as with Atari 800XL), while Spectrum worked with any existing recorder, which every house already had at the time.

It's crazy how fast things moved back then. Home computing went from Spectrum/C64 to Amiga/Atari ST in a few short years, and the advance was gigantic. Nowadays, I lament that my 2012 PC will lose support when Windows 10 reaches end of life next year - there's not anything especially different or exciting in this year's PC. Yes, it's faster for some use cases, but for 90% stuff it's the same thing.

When I was 10 I had a BBC Micro and one of my friends had a ZX Spectrum, really remember going to each others houses and playing games. It was amazing hearing the Ghostbusters theme on the spectrum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMIphX8Ipak ... the game itself was pretty confusing but fun to try and figure out

> OOP is good when used appropriately

What are its appropriate uses? The more I program the fewer I see.