I think everyone tends to be rather passionate about their first home computer - when you started off as some kind of hobbyist...
I have a tendency to write rather bluntly and to the point - and I'd rather not hold my comments back, in case I may offend someone? This is because of my other passion - that of 'truth' and honesty, etc etc.
The reason why I ended up with a Atari 800 home computer - was because there was no other better choice at the time. I was always graphics orientated, and I simply had to wait until a computer came along, that would satisfy my interest in computer graphics. I was always influenced by the coin-op arcade games - Galaga and Zaxxon comes to mind... The only computer that could come close to arcade quality - were the Atari 400/800 home computers.
It would be only a year later, that a serious competitor would show up - and that was the C-64, but there was hardly anything that would showcase what it's potential was - when it was first released. Perhaps a couple of years later - the C-64 software showed up, that gave a true indication of how superior it was (having more sprites available being a definite advantage). The Synapse version of Zaxxon highlighting this.
I could never express any interest or awe at the BBC or Sinclair Spectrum. What happens of course, is that they will excel at the kind of graphics (typically bit-mapped graphics) they (their hardware) can handle. Since they lack hardware sprites, and hardware scrolling.
The same kind of argument arises with the variety of videogame consoles, for the home market. The Super NES, or SNES faced off with Sega's Megadrive/Genesis in delivering coin-op quality videogames for the home. This can be illustrated in the single most influential coin-op game of it's time - Streetfighter 2. Home Computer versions of this exceptionally popular videogame were particularly bad, ie. very poor - but versions appearing on the SNES and Megadrive were amazing to behold. The SNES extra colours over the Megadrive being an advantage.
Harvey