Re: Monochrome World
You might be surprised. Did Amstrad ever *really* push the boundaries? Perhaps not, but they built functional systems down to an acceptable price.
Their early PC offerings were seriously competitive, if a little lacking in build quality. The CPC compared well with equivalent 8 bit micros at the time.
Now, for CP/M, it's probably not hyperbole to say they were and are one of the premier providers of affordable systems, although not always intentionally.
The PCW was, and is, the most accessible of CP/M systems. Plenty of memory, high resolution screen, disk drives. Many addons. Lots of native software in addition to the CP/M library. Printer and keyboard quality leave something to be desired but you can't have everything. Go looking for a CP/M system on ebay these days and you're limited to kits (needs add on serial console, keyboard, monitor), older expensive systems, add ons for more conventional home computers[1], and the PCW at the most affordable integrated end.
The NC100 & NC200 filled a very specific niche at the time and were not exactly high powered. Nevertheless they're compact portable Z80 systems that have decent battery life and can be coerced to run CP/M (this does require a reasonable degree of fiddling). The few alternatives in that form factor are Epson's fairly obscure PX-4/8, or older bulky systems such as the Kaypro that require mains power.
[1] Such as the Amstrad CPC 6128, with 128KB RAM, 80 columns, and colour. Also the Amstrad Spectrum +3, but that only had a 51 column screen. Next up in mass market accessibility is likely to be an MSX2 system of some type, a Commodore 128 (slow), or a wide array of either less common systems or more common systems with additional addons to provide 80 columns and a disk drive (often rare and expensive)