Announced in 1983, the IBM PCjr was a spectacular failure. Costing about $1,000 without a monitor, it cost just a little less than a PC clone but wasn't really compatible with PCs.

The main flaw of the PCjr was its keyboard, which was so small and difficult to use that it's often termed a Chiclet keyboard. What's worse, the PCjr was intended in part for the school market, a serious problem because the keyboard communicated with the computer via infrared beams. In the classroom, students took great joy in pointing their keyboards at each other's machines and screwing up each other's computing.