Access to BBS was super expensive unless you were lucky to afford a modem, and live on local call distance.

European magazine like Computer Shopper were of similar size and ads ratio.

There was also almost nothing to read, so when my monthly issue of Byte appeared (2-3 months later than most people would receive it), I devoured that thing. I would read it literally cover to cover, including all those ads, several times.

I wasn't (then) working in IT, so a lot of the content (like Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar) went way over my head but it didn't matter, I read it anyway, often by the light of my kerosene lantern. I learned a huge amount: object-oriented programming, this new thing called the Internet (capitalized back then, and before the WWW), and how Jerry Pournelle was a self-important jerk (but boy, did I envy the toys he got to play with!).

This was the age of big, fold-out Gateway 2000 ads, 20MB hard drives, and Turbo Pascal kicking other compilers' butts.

I would read the magazine, then write out programs (in BASIC, the only language I had learned at that point). On my monthly trips to the capital city I would go to a local NGO and in exchange for helping with their IT issues they would let me play (i.e type out my programs and try to get them working) on their computers.

Value Added Tax is a tax putatively on, as the name suggests the value you've added. For a consumer you don't care whether you paid £15 for this product because it was £10 plus 50% VAT, or it was £15 with zero VAT, that's the same to you, and so the law says the advertiser can't say that's a £10 product even if there is 50% VAT, 'cos consumers can't buy it for £10, so you're lying to them.

However, if you're selling products for businesses, they're going to claim back the VAT on inputs to their business, only the added value gets taxed and that's implemented by charging the tax on their sales and allowing them to claim back the tax they paid for inputs. As a result it is allowed in that context to display the explicitly without VAT prices, your buyers potentially won't pay that tax anyway. So for a business you can say it's a £10 product.

The question in these magazines was: Are the products for businesses, or, are you actually selling to the hobbyists who often buy the magazine. You obviously want to advertise the lower prices with just an asterisk leading to a disclaimer about VAT to be paid, but if in reality most customers are hobbyists they're all paying VAT so maybe you're breaking the law by advertising the lower price?

Actual adverts definitely varied in how plausible the two categories of buyer were. How many businesses need to buy this slightly nicer Joystick for the Commodore 64? On the other hand, what hobbyist needs to buy hundreds or thousands of 10MB hard disks or SIMMs (yes the DIMM's predecessor was named the SIMM) for a discounted volume price ?