After you ask what it can do for you now, ask what it can do for you later: HP-86

More proof that it took at least a few years for the IBM PC format to bulldoze everything in its path, comes this advert for the Hewlett-Packard HP-86. 

Looking a bit like a very slimmed-down Commodore PET - and for sale the year after the advent of the IBM - it featured HP's own custom CPU, running at a modest 625KHz, which was nominally only three times faster than <a href="ads_003">a 1962 Elliott</a>. 

It made up for it with its advanced floating-point maths capability, which was not really surprising as HP was also a manufacturer of scientific calculators. 

Also, like the PET, it came with a built-in BASIC interpreter and only 16K RAM, however it could also run CP/M software via a plug-in Z80A module.