An American Microbee Video Review

[someone]

Someone just stumbled upon this.
Enjoy!

[ChickenMan]

Thanks 'someone' for that, had a listen to it a while back, a few inaccuracies but worth a listen

[mjelic]

Why was the Bee sold in SWEDEN of all places??

[cfbsoftware]

The Swedish connection is another reason for some schools to look again at the Microbee - the Swedish education department selecting the Australian supplier from amongst several big-name tenders.

This quote is from an article "The flight of the Microbee" by Steven Searle in the Oct 1985 issue of the NZ computer magazine Bits & Bytes:

https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/bit...ue-4-2.pdf

[ChickenMan]

Why was the Bee sold in SWEDEN of all places??

The story goes that a Swedish computer guy was in Singapore at the airport going home, he bought a Your Computer magazine and didnt realise it was the Australian rather than the English version.  There he read about the Microbee, got home and approached the Education Dept in Sweden and eventually got approved for the use in Schools together with the local ABC computer.

They also looked at Russia and because of trade barriers etc at the time, they ended up selling 6 (thats six) only there.  They also had some interest from Israel, but nothing eventuated there either. Not a lot went to NZ either because of their high import tariffs at the time protecting their local production.

[mjelic]

"There local product"... say that again?? New Zealand had a locally made computer? What was that?

[ChickenMan]

"There local product"... say that again?? New Zealand had a locally made computer? What was that?

Yep, they made a horrible looking computer called Poly 1, check our The Polycorp Poly 1. New Zealand's school computer (classic-computers.org.nz)

[mjelic]

Yep, they made a horrible looking computer called Poly 1, check our The Polycorp Poly 1. New Zealand's school computer (classic-computers.org.nz)

Gee you weren't wrong! What was with the handles??