How would you categorize the MITS Altair 8800 (and other very early microcomputer kits): education, entertainment, utility, or something else?
Put another way, if someone bought one, did they mainly do so because the prospect of putting it together and programming it seemed like fun, they were hoping to learn a lot about computers, they wanted to program it to do something so useful that it made up for the price, or something else?
They were obviously the cheapest computer you could buy at the time, but still, at around $2,500 (CPI inflation-adjusted), most people would have had to have a pretty good reason to buy it.