Lord Sugar reboots the famous Amstrad brand for his grandson's business 17 years after selling it to Sky | Daily Mail OnlineFor those of us who grew up in this era, Amstrad for audio products was an absolute joke.
They were the Reliant Robin of hifi and audio- cheap, terrible sound and build quality and probably even worse than the infamous Tandy Radio Shack 'Realistic' products of the day.
Having any Amstrad products growing up would result in mirth and piss taking of endless proportions.
Now, whilst SurAlan is great value on TV, claiming the brand was anything other than cheap overpriced tat is a leap of faith.
Or am I wrong?
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
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Do you remember the expose when they opened one of his cassette radios that boasted a new surround sound live on a TV show and they discovered the surround sound consisted of a cardboard tube attached to the speaker?!
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
As I recall, they tried to move into the x86 PC business with a couple of IBM PS/2 clones, which utterly failed to get anywhere in the market (and for good reason).
And a piece of paper printed with grid squares for Cesil programming.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
They eventually became a company that made set top boxes which is why Sky bought them and so they would have built things like the Sky+ box which I always thought was a nice piece of hardware for the time.
(But only by accident. Hey, if you throw enough turds at the wall you are bound to get a Guernica or a Mona Lisa once in a while, or at least a Blue Poles.)
It'll be easier for his grandson to build a business under the recognised brand than it would be under a completely new brand. Saves a huge amount of brand-building investment and time in getting a new business up and running.
Also, the association with Sugar is invaluable. If you're under mid-50s, you'll probably not remember the dodgy Amstrad products, but you will associate Sugar with Amstrad and Sugar as being a succcessful business man (because you're aware of the Apprentice). Therefore Amstrad must have been a success ...
Yes Amstrad sold some shit products, but unless we had direct and personal experience of those shit products (I don't), we'll maybe remember the name more for its successes (putting PCs in homes that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford them.
That was the only Amstrad product I ever owned and forms my whole opinion of the company, which is that they made good products
The stereos were ... as he himself called them ... "a mug's eyeful". They even had a go at the portastudio market with one of them. Huge ugly cube it was.
Another top-class product was the ... er ... was it the PC3586? Can't remember the model number now, it was a very small form DOS/Windows PC, non-standard, non-upgradable, not very powerful, overpriced - basically typically Amstrad, except (for some crazy reason) the very high quality mechanical keyboard, very small by keyboard standards but every key in the right place and made so nicely that you never felt cramped. I traded two or three in for not much back around 1993 or so, threw the computers away and kept the keyboards for my own use. Sadly, I threw the last one in the bin just a few months ago: it still worked perfectly but I no longer had anything with a PS/2 socket to plug it into.
oh well.. i still had fun,
i know nothing else of any other Amstrad products
The later machines felt like little more than slightly hobbled x86 PCs. They're still going, so someone's buying their stuff.
Load of old tut!
I had one, it was great: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Amstrad_CPC_464-IMG_4849.JPG
It was only a green monitor if you wanted it really cheap, you could buy a colour monitor or hook it up to a TV if you preferred.