I worked at a computer store in the mid 80s and we sold the heck out of Kaypros because they were a bargain next to DOS machines. They came bundled with software and often times a promotion with a bundled printer as well.
They tried transitioning to add DOS support with an addin card but it was too late to save them as PC and Apple became the defacto standards.
There was a little-known multiuser CP/M variant called MPM and we managed to sell a few of those, too. It was a cool if plain OS.
MP/M led to Concurrent CP/M-86, which in turn led to three separate families of OSes:
• Multiuser DOS (native 32-bit multiuser multitasking DOS-compatible).
• DR-DOS (DR's comeback, a better DOS than MS-DOS, available at retail, which spurred MS into creating MS-DOS 5, then 6, then Windows 95).
• DR FlexOS: realtime multitasking with a GUI, used widely in the embedded industry for ~40 years and still supported on some IBM point-of-sale terminals in the 4680 and 4690 range.
I ram MP/M 2 on an Altos and it was an excellent system. I think up to about half a dozen users sharing the system, surprisingly good performance for word processing tasks.
MP/M was fairly common in small office environments. I remember one particular accounting firm which had managed to delete all their files on the harddisk.. they had an MP/M system with, IIRC, eight terminals connected.
I managed to restore all their files (not very difficult on CP/M or MP/M, as long as the drive is left in peace after the incident, which is what they did).
They tried transitioning to add DOS support with an addin card but it was too late to save them as PC and Apple became the defacto standards.
There was a little-known multiuser CP/M variant called MPM and we managed to sell a few of those, too. It was a cool if plain OS.