This computer was designed the better part of a decade after Bill Gates's letter. The environment is really completely different - the personal computer revolution has already happened, these people are aware of it, etc. In fact, such computers were available but well outside the budget of many. So it's the story of making a PC from available parts, without hard currency and as cheap as possible - radically cheaper than the early US kits.
To me, the article would have been more informative and satisfying had it dwelled more on the unique elements you mention as opposed to the ways where it resembled the hobbyist PC era, like non-commercial distribution of programs in source form.
Yep, my initial impression of the article was that it didn't do a great job of contextualizing the story and was going to write a comment about that. Then promptly succumbed to someone's-wrong-on-the-internet reflex.
