The NES was considered weak when it was released by the people who knew hardware.  First, the processor was really old (same as Atari 2600).  Secondly, the standard during the video game crash was the Commodore 64, which was 8-bit.  It was the weakest and therefore cheapest and most popular computer.  It's successor was the Amiga, 16-bit, released in 1985, the same year as the NES. 

The Amiga was supposed to trash the NES.  The conventional wisdom at the time was that consoles were a fad, and they were replaced by PC's.  Obviously that didn't happen.  The weak NES trounced all over the 16-bit Amiga instead.

I remember those days.  Every single kid on my block and the next 2 blocks had an NES.  Every kid but one.  This one kid showed me his Amiga.  He had Marble Madness running on it with very pretty graphics.  But I felt sorry for the kid.  The NES had so many better games, and his parents bought him an expensive Amiga instead.

The NES released in 1983 not 1985 the latter is the western release date.

I am talking about North America.  However, it was also cheap considered to computers in Japan.  You can't really compare it to other consoles in Japan, because it was the first.  Any way you cut it, the NES was designed to be a cheap system with the weakest hardware available.  They got decent looking graphics with their graphics chip, but they cheaped in every other way possible.  Their whole business model, even for the Famicom, was to go cheap.

I am talking about North America.  However, it was also cheap considered to computers in Japan.  You can't really compare it to other consoles in Japan, because it was the first.  Any way you cut it, the NES was designed to be a cheap system with the weakest hardware available.  They got decent looking graphics with their graphics chip, but they cheaped in every other way possible.  Their whole business model, even for the Famicom, was to go cheap.

You can talk about US as much as you want it still doesn't detract from the original point you replied to NES on its release in 1983 was significantly powerful so it doesn't fall into the under powered argument you initially made.

Did you even read my post that you just quoted?  I was talking about how it was weak in Japan.

Even later in European countries, the NES wasn't really widely available until about the time of the SNES release. Even in the countries where it WAS available, you could only get it in certain cities. While I am sure most gamers and future gamers alive at the time were vaguely aware of Nintendo (mostly through old arcade machines) and the NES, I'd say most people didn't know exactly what it was until about the time Super Mario Bros 3 was announced; very shortly after that, EVERYONE knew the name of Mario and our sword-wielding Hyrule hero Zelda =D