The PCW, short for Personal Computer Word-processor, was targeted at the word processing and home office markets.

[1][2] However the last two models, introduced in the mid-1990s, were commercial failures, being squeezed out of the market by the falling prices, greater capabilities and wider range of software for IBM-compatible PCs.

[7] In all models, the monitor's casing included the CPU, RAM, floppy disk drives and power supply for all of the systems' components.

Although Amstrad supplied all but the last model as text based systems, graphical user interface peripherals and the supporting software also became available.

In 1984, Tandy Corporation executive Steve Leininger, designer of the TRS-80 Model I, admitted that "as an industry we haven't found any compelling reason to buy a computer for the home" other than for word processing.

[8] Amstrad's founder Alan Sugar realised that most computers in the United Kingdom were used for word processing at home,[9] and allegedly sketched an outline design for a low cost replacement for typewriters during a flight to the Far East.

[11] For the launch the product name "Zircon" was jointly suggested by MEJ Electronics and Locomotive Software, as both companies had been spun off from Data Recall, which had produced a word processing system called "Diamond" in the 1970s.

Sugar, preferring a more descriptive name, suggested "WPC" standing for "Word Processing Computer", but Perry pointed out that this invited jokes about Women Police Constables.

[12] In 1986, John Whitehead described the Amstrad PCW as "the bargain of the decade",[13] and technology writer Gordon Laing said in 2007, "It represented fantastic value at a time when an IBM compatible or a Mac would cost a comparative fortune.

[13] Software vendors quickly made a wide range of additional applications available, including accounting, spreadsheet and database programs, so that the system was able to support most of the requirements of a home or small business.

Although competitors' systems generally had more sophisticated features, including colour monitors, Whitehead thought the Amstrad PCW offered the best value for money.

The magazine Popular Science thought that the PCW could not compete as a general-purpose computer, because its use of non-standard 3-inch floppy disk drives and the rather old CP/M operating system would restrict the range of software available from expanding beyond the spreadsheet, typing tutor and cheque book balancing programs already on sale.

[9] The low price encouraged home users to trade up from simpler systems like the ZX Spectrum, whose sales had passed their peak.

[21][22] In addition to the usual product reviews and technical advice,[23] they featured other content such as articles by science fiction writer and software developer Dave Langford on his experiences of using the PCW.

[11] IBM, Compaq and other vendors of more expensive computers had reduced prices drastically in an attempt to increase demand during the recession of the early 1990s.

[28][29] However, after adjustment for inflation the retail price of a multimedia IBM-compatible PC in 1997 was about 11% more than that of a PCW 8256 in 1985, and many home PCs were cast-offs, sometimes costing as little as £50, from large organisations that had upgraded their systems.

[33] In the range's early days supplies of 3-inch floppies occasionally ran out,[13] but by 1988 the PCW's popularity encouraged suppliers to compete for this market.

[38] The dot matrix printer had a sheet feed for short documents and a tractor attachment for long reports on continuous stationery.

[13] Users who needed to support higher print volumes or to produce graphics could buy a daisy-wheel printer or graph plotter from Amstrad.

[43] The display unit, which also contained the processor, motherboard and RAM, was the standard 640×480 pixels in size and worked in VGA mode.

[15] Locoscript supported 150 characters and, if used with the dot matrix printer, could print European letters including Greek and Cyrillic, as well as mathematical and technical symbols.

[31] The program allowed the user to work on one document while printing another, so that the relative slowness of the basic printer seldom caused difficulties.

[4][31] Version 2, which was bundled with the PCW 9512, included a spellchecker and could provide mail merge by interfacing to other products from Locomotive Software, such as LocoMail and LocoFile.

[31] On the other hand, the standalone Locoscript word processor program was able to use 154 KB as normal memory, and the rest as a RAM disk.

This version of BASIC lacked built-in graphics facilities,[31] but included JetSAM, an implementation of ISAM that supported multiple indexes per file, so that programs could access records directly by specifying values of key fields.

[17] On the other hand, the standalone Locoscript word processor program was reported as using up to 154 KB as normal memory and the rest as a RAM disk.

Instead, at startup, the ASIC (customised circuit) at the heart of the PCW provided access to part of the 1k ROM within the Intel 8041 microcontroller used to drive the printer.

The printer case contained only electromechanical components and high-current driver electronics; its power was supplied via a coaxial power connector socket on the monitor casing, and rather than using a traditional parallel interface, pin and motor signals were connected directly by a 34-wire ribbon cable to an 8041 microcontroller on the PCW's mainboard.

At 1 bit per pixel, this occupied 23 KB of RAM which was far too large for the Z80 CPU to scroll in software without ripple and tearing of the display.

The video system also fetched data in a special order designed so that plotting a character eight scan lines high would touch eight contiguous addresses.