Amstrad CPC 464

Amstrad arrived in the computer market in 1984 with a shrewd, customer-friendly insight: sell people everything they need in one box. The CPC 464 came complete with a built-in cassette deck and its own monitor, so a buyer could carry it home, plug it in and start, with no squabbling over the family television.

Behind that practical packaging sat a genuinely capable machine, with crisp graphics, decent sound and, soon, a healthy library of games. It struck a chord across the UK and Europe, where the all-in-one approach and Amstrad's sharp pricing made it an easy machine to recommend.

The CPC became a real third force alongside Sinclair and Commodore, and the 464 was the model that started it. Amstrad founder Alan Sugar had spotted what ordinary buyers actually wanted, and delivered it without fuss. For a great many homes, the CPC 464 was simply the computer that worked straight out of the box.