I was just looking this up earlier for a different conversation, and the 125GBP original 1982 price of the Spectrum would have been 430 quid in today's prices.

I was just looking this up earlier for a different conversation, and the 125GBP original 1982 price of the Spectrum would have been 430 quid in today's prices. (You can get a cheap laptop for half that price today.) It brings home why Sinclair thought it so important to keep the costs as low as possible -- it might have been three times cheaper than the competition, but that was more because the competition was a seriously expensive piece of kit rather than because the Spectrum was truly "dirt cheap".