[paulsherwin]

The problem with the ZX80 and ZX81 was that they were too cheap. There's a limit to how much you can cut costs and still get a usable product, and Sinclair went too far with these. I bought a ZX81 in late 1980, supposedly as a research tool, and never managed to use it for anything except playing a few extremely primitive games and writing 3 line BASIC programs. The keyboard was as awful as everyone always says, and the 16k memory pack did keep falling off the back crashing the system.

I've yet to meet anyone who ever used a ZX80 or ZX81 for real work. On the other hand, the Acorn Atom was just usable so I reckon Curry pitched the technology about right.

One Sinclair product that was alluded to in the programme but nobody has mentioned here is the System 2000 stereo amp. This was actually a good performer by the standards of the day if you couldn't afford proper hifi like Quad and Leak. I had one in the early 70s and was very satisfied with it.

Paul