Pretty incredible people were able to use this device for anything at all; the base version with 1kb of memory barely had enough memory to contain the screen

There is a chess game for this machine, with AI, and no RAM pack required! (David Horne's 1K Chess from 1982): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9151552

Well, the Atari 2600 had a whopping one hundred and twenty eight bytes of RAM. 128 bytes. Literally just 7 address lines worth of data. (The cartridge has 12 address lines)

True, but that kind of computer runs code from ROM. The ZX81 ran Basic programs from that 1k of RAM.

Ah! I forgot about that.

It's not much but you could at least play around coding maths routines. I know that's what I would do. That would have some value for a student.

I got the US version of this machine for Christmas 1982. The manual that came with it had all of the Z80 opcodes listed and briefly explained. I learned a lot from that little machine.

I was all set to buy the $50 self-assembled kit when my dad stopped me and said don't buy that, it's a toy. He didn't know anything about computers but was right anyway. Later I got an Atari 8-bit. I'm sure I would have done lots with the ZX81 and eventually moved up to one of the Atari, C64, Apple II. Good times. I got to use a Xerox CP/M machine a little while later that was decidedly more business-like.

What a naive view! By the same measure, all computers are toys, and since there's something apparently wrong with toys, all computers are bad.

Or - perhaps this is too enlightened - toys are useful for learning, and we should not limit ourselves to things which are solely chosen for being the least like a toy.

>By the same measure, all computers are toys,

Maybe..but with a keyboard (no! the ZX81 had no keyboard) and optional floppy's.

Actually I think that was it! The size and keyboard wasn't even as good as a calculator of the day. I ultimately got the Atari 400 with membrane keyboard and my dad insisted I upgrade it with a third-party mechanical one that looked all-Frankenkeys sticking up out of the slim case. I liked the membrane keys, later Atari 400 manufacturing keys didn't come out as well as the early models--I had friends and stores' models to compare with.

Well my first computer was a secondhand C64 with lots of accessory's, i mean really a lot...a full blown c64 two disk-drives fast-load cartridge 100's of games joysticks everything!! My dad then say'd he needs a real computer an got a macintosh Lc2, and because he was old-school (one computer and one tv per household) i had to trash the c64, one would say an Lc2 is cool...yeah it was, but nearly zero games, all my friends with amigas and dos machines had more fun, i had myst, crystal quest and shufflepuck...and hypercard, photoshop and filemaker...oh and quark express...cool :(

EDIT: I forgot that i had IndianaJones3 too..what a cool game, probably even harder then myst.

One computer! One TV? Too bad--having both a C64 and a Mac was unimaginable. A friend of mine had a Macintosh, we played Lode Runner on it for ages.