Many Spectrum users are still wary of the microdrive, and conflicting reports abound. There are those who find them invaluable and others who have nothing but trouble. If you are using your computer for a serious business purpose then investment in a disc system is probably the solution, but this is rather excessive for the average user who just wants reasonable loading and saving time for their programs and games.

An alternative is available in the Challenge Research Sprint tape recorder. This machine is a purpose-built unit and only works with the Spectrum. Priced at £69.95, it is cheaper than the microdrive and Interface I combination but of course does not offer the RS232 or network facilities. The recorder is a neat black unit which is rather squat. It is connected directly to the computer via a ribbon cable to the user port at the rear of the computer. At the back of the recorder is a full extension port for the addition of other peripherals. A few units which I couldn't get to work with it were the VTX5000 modem and the Technology Research Disk interface. However, a wide variety of joystick interfaces and other units, including the Interface I and Microdrives, functioned without any problem.

This is a clever unit which increases speed by running the tape at a higher rate than usual, roughly three times as fast. All normal program tapes will load in this way and any programs saved with this recorder will reload from an ordinary recorder. Programs which will not load are those saved with special high speed software systems, such as those used by Micromega and the latest Mikrogen software.

In use, this proved to work as claimed; it was reliable and really did improve the SAVE/LOAD time. My son, who helped to test it, actually took off his microdrive and used it in preference and was quite sad when we returned it! A unit which I would recommend to the general user, and sum up the advantages as improved speed, compatibility with other cassette players and fairly low cost. The disadvantages are that it is not totally compatible with all peripherals, and unsuitable for loading some (rather good) games.