Small personal computer-history (Atari and others)

Small personal computer-history (Atari and others) from 1981 to 2005:

... 1984 - Atari 800 XL: After some years, i got the feeling, that 16 kB RAM is not that much. The name Atari was well known by my friends and me, we had the VCS 2600. So we bought the Atari 800 XL. Although the processor, a 6502c, only runs at 1.79 MHz, the 800 XL feels faster than the TI. Maybe because he didn't have this 16-to-8-bit-conversion, i don't really know. But 64 kB RAM sounded better. Other thing are similar: ROM-BASIC, audio cassette storage, module-port, TV-connection. The joysticks of the VCS 2600 fit, deffinitly an advantage. The BASIC is also better, the 800 XL knows the command Peek and Poke. I wrote some small and useless programs in BASIC and once tried machine language. After a long time and many tries, the program mirrored the screen vertical and horizontal and combined it with the XOR-command with the original screen...

Here is it:
http://www.keilis-atari.de/start_eng.htm