The Sinclair was a species all by itself in that respect. I'm thinking along the lines of the bbc micro, the dragon / color computer and the TRS-80. Compared to those the Sinclair was incredibly cheap but that was definitely reflected by the build quality. I remember the microdrive, that was a funny little design, very creative but very flawed. Like an 8-track endless tape but for data.
I was (still am?) the proud owner of a microdrive. It was supposed to fill the niche between tape and floppies. Tape is interesting media but somehow it keeps losing (spoken by someone who still has tons of audio tapes lying around).
It would be cool to do a teardown of the microdrive.
