"Microcomputers" (or "micros" in the magazines of the era) is a fine term for these machines. It distinguished these affordable home/school/small business machi

"Microcomputers" (or "micros" in the magazines of the era) is a fine term for these machines. It distinguished these affordable home/school/small business machines from professional workstations, minicomputers, and mainframes that were larger and orders of magnitude more expensive. I had an Amstrad CPC at home and used BBC Micros (hey, it's even in the name!) at school. My friends had ZX Spectrums, Acorn Electrons, and the occasional rare MSX or C64. The only not-really-an-exception exception in the article would be the 32-bit Acorn Archimedes; it was generations ahead of the other (8-bit) machines listed, and "microcomputer" is really associated more with the 8-bit machines in my mind, but I think that's because by the time I encountered 16/32-bit machines (Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, 386-based PCs, the Archimedes) in the early 90s, the term "microcomputer" was falling rapidly out of fashion. Those more powerful (and expensive) machines actually launched in the mid-80s and were absolutely still microcomputers in the parlance of the day.