You guys are LATECOMERS to the home computer world!
Here's what I cut my teeth on:
Winchester Hard Drive.
That hard drive gave you a mind blowing 10 or 20 megabytes of storage space!
Yeah, that's nothing, now, but when you considered that the computer's RAM
space was 4K or 16K in the base version and the expansion interface (under the
monitor) added up to 32K for a total of 48K, it WAS a lot!
How nice...a computer with a Microsoft operating system that never crashes, fails, or locks up. You hit the power or reset button and before you can take your finger off the button, the display says READY.
Incidentally, for those who have an excessive dose of digital nostalgia, there are emulators available that allow software for TRS-80s to run on your PC, and also, much of the original software has been preserved in a downloadable form.
CJ