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It seems anachronistic to refer to the Spectrum as a PC rather than as a microcomputer.

I miss the term microcomputer, but now that everything contains microprocessors (up to and including supercomputers), I suppose it makes more sense to call personal computers personal computers.

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Home computer would be the correct and more specific term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer

Kraftwerk agree.

I program my home computer.

Beam myself into the future.

Feels very weird to me too. The problem is that PC meant something much more specific at the time and nobody would have called the Spectrum or even an Amiga or Macintosh a PC.

They were called like that in other languages, at least in Spanish ("ordenador personal"). Probably it helped that we didn't see IBM compatible PCs at home until the late 80's - early 90's.

The Spectrum came out in 01982, only a few months after the IBM PC. That was long before IBM's monopoly power (well, and Ziff-Davis) had redefined "PC" to mean "IBM PC compatible". The Amiga and Macintosh didn't exist yet. Most "personal computers" ran CP/M at the time.

I thought that too but on reflection not so sure. The leading computer magazine in the U.K. was ‘Personal Computer World’ and although microcomputer was probably more commonly used I think PC was also used too.

Of course the use of PC to denote IBM PC compatibles really only became common in the mid 1980s although - perhaps surprisingly - the IBM PC launched before the Spectrum.

I don't think the speccy was ever commonly referred to as a "PC" - "home computer" was the pervasive term. PCW was much more business focused from what I recall.

Just Googled early ads for the Spectrum and the first one on Google calls it a personal computer.

https://imgur.com/gallery/58TeAKT

There might have been a degree of ‘upselling’ on Sinclair’s part though!

Also agreed that the ‘PC’ abbreviation would have been relatively uncommon.

PCW covered everything! They had all the Sinclairs on the cover as well as heavyweight business machines. Even had a regular assembly language column.

That's "personal computer", not "Personal Computer" as in PC. I'm sure many company executives before electricity had their own "personal computers", whether mechanical or meat.

Well given that mini computers don't exist anymore and mainframes barely it don't think microcomputer makes sense.

That's like saying that a calling a steamengine a steamengine doesn't make sense anymore, because they don't really exist anymore.

No, micro is relative to mini. Steam is how it does what it does.

I think the tricky thing here is that what used to be called a microcomputer (or apparently a home computer, though that's new to me) is kind of making a comeback (with things like the Pi 400 and some various efforts at building new all-but-the-screen-in-one portable-ish computers in the image of the c64 or spectrum or appleII) and they really ought to be distinguished from what we now call a PC (or laptop, for that matter).

But it would be confusing to repurpose minicomputer for it, given that microcomputer is a term still used to some extent, and is more present in most people's memory.

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