Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

I remember seeing a Vector Graphics computer at a computer store around 1978, when I was shopping for my first computer. I was excited by the name Vector Graphics, only to be disappointed to learn that it was a meaningless name, and their computers had nothing to do with vectors or graphics. I vaguely remember that it was a generic business machine (maybe with a 16 bit version?) with nothing to recommend it to a hobbyist over the competition.

In that era Apple had an enormous lead in graphics, software, and peripheral cards.

Yeah, the small business system integrator business was really different back then. Especially before Visicalc (1979), which opened a lot of doors for Apple. A profile of that segment of the pre-IBM-PC industry would be fascinating and would put Vector in the right context.

To be fair, CP/M machines had much better software tooling available than the hobbyist 6502 computers for a long time - compare MBASIC or CBASIC to what shipped with your favorite home computer. And S-100 systems like the Vector had a tremendous ecosystem of cards but my recollection from reading BYTE as a kid was it was not a plug-and-play matter to get them working in your system.