I remember my parents buying me a TI-99 because it was the cheapest after rebates. That was about 24 years ago and I still have it! Unfortunately, the PEB was too espensive and I soon tired of using the tape drive. Never really got into the system. A few years after that, I got an Atari 600XL and never looked back.
Flash forward to recent times. A few years I found a TI with loaded PEB (minus RS232) for cheap. Now I need some programs to run on it.
BTW-all time favorite in the day was Parsec with voice synth.