Amstrad

Bits & Bytes was a New Zealand computer magazine which ran from 1982 to 199something. In its early days it had a strong hobbyist flavour, with reviews of all the latest 8 bit home PCs and sections with programmes to type in. I subscribed to it until the early nineties, when I decided it was all IBM PC clones and spreadsheets and had nothing in it for me.

In December 1986 Bits & Bytes published a hardware guide, giving the specs and cost of PCs under $5000. Some of my favourites are included:

• Commodore 64C, $595
• Commodore 128, $995; 128D, $1795
• Amstrad CPC6128, $1495 mono, $1895 colour
• Amstrad PCW8256, $2395
• Polycorp Poly 2 (I used these at school), $2,950
• Commodore Amiga, $4,295

Wow. Cool. See the attached PDF for details!