This was me, crunching away on BASIC and Machine Language on my Apple II+, oh yea the old days of faster computers and smaller tape decks. From 1980! The Apple was awesome because it had seven expansion slots and everybody made add-on boards for it.
I was looking at the Christmas 1982 Dixons catalogue and was surprised to find four pages of computers. At the start of 1981 Tandy (Radio Shack) was probably the only high street name selling computers. Back in the early 1980s the U.K. Government was heavily pushing Computer Literacy. telling parents that if their Children didn't learn how to use computers they would be unemployable, in TV series like this
I remember seeing tons of TRS-80's at the thrifts years ago but I never knew anybody that actually owned one when they were new. There was that time when everything was going to be computerized and you'd need a keyboard and working knowledge of the system, it took much longer than we thought and the keyboard kind of disappeared.
The TRS80 and Commodore PET were really aimed at small businesses for accounting etc. The sweet shop lady in the TV programme was using a PET. At work one department had a top of the range TRS80 system with dual disc drives, printer etc for processing their quality information. They employed a guy full time as "The computer operator". I can't comment on Apple IIs. They were so expensive over here that I only ever knew one person who bought one.
