I can't believe you didn't consider (or at least mention) the Atari 800 series.  Plug and play memory to go from 8K to 48K ... high-speed tan cassette recorder for secondary storage.  BASIC language cartridge and Star Raiders and SCRAM (nuclear power plant simulator) all on one machine.  Work and fun all in one box!     Add an 830 modem with a blazing 300 bps (bits per second not bytes per second) and you've got connectivity (just don't make too much noise to interfere with the signal).

Nice article, it really takes me back.  Thanks for this.

Hi den777,