My Sinclair Z81 was acquired in kit form
in March of 1982 at the very reasonable price of $149.99. I bought it from
Gladstone Electronics in Toronto but it took 9 long weeks to arrive from
England - a feature they hadn't advertised. Of course when I found it
needed more RAM (16 K for $200), a new cassette player ($80), a new TV set
(it output to channel 31 and the one I had thought I would use ended at 13)
and a spark on foil printer ($149.99) it wasn't quite as cheap!

With its membrane keyboard I soon mashed the "New Line" (Enter) key so
often that it stuck in after 6 months. The local Radio Shack dealer sold me
the first of my 3 RS Color Computers in September of 1982. I found the 32
column display inadequate for Word Processing and so upgraded to my first
Tandy 1000 in 1984. It cost $1749 without monitor, hard drive, mouse or
second floppy drive but it was a real business tool.

Even my first Android Palm PDA had more power than that Tandy but it was
all a great adventure and I enjoyed every minute.