Filming of the series took place in October 1981, before Acorn had fully completed the development and productionization of the BBC Micro.

The machines used on the demonstration segments were in fact early pre-production models which barely worked, and Acorn engineer Steve Furber was working behind the set to keep the machines running (this was depicted on the 2009 BBC dramatization Micro Men which documented the Sinclair-Acorn rivalry).

Each programme would normally start with either Serle or McNaught-Davis introducing a real-life situation where computers are being (or could be) applied – examples included the office, a car factory and the British Library.

They were as follows (original airdates in brackets): The theme music to the programme was Kraftwerk's Computer World, taken from their 1981 album of the same name.

The opening titles was an animation of an owl – the mascot (and logo) of the BBC Microcomputer system – flying into a domestic living room.

[7] Reviewing the United States edition (The Beginner's Guide to Computers, Penguin/Addison Wesley, 1982),[8] The New York Times described the book's square shape as "clumsy", although this did not stop it from being a "quite decent introduction" which was "easy to read".