I think the wind is going to shift again in terms of your household computing services. It's a very positive shift, but we need to prepare for it. The shift I am referring to is the upcoming availability of Wi-Fi (wireless) devices.
Wi-Fi is the technology that currently connects computers in your home or business via a wireless LAN (Local Area Network), as opposed to using traditional copper wires. Wi-Fi has become very popular lately, and as a result prices are falling. Using Wi-Fi, you can now put computers on the network that you couldn't get wiring to easily, and you can also enjoy carrying your notebook computer around the house and out to the back porch. I have installed a lot of these wireless networks, and they tend to work very well.
Performance has been an issue, because the current Wi-Fi standard is fast enough to share the Internet connection, printers, or data, but is not fast enough for video transmission (TV, movies). But the current generation (802.11g as opposed to the older 802.11b) will be fast enough for that, or almost any other household application.
The result is that you are soon going to see a number of devices that are Wi-Fi enabled. You can now get an adapter for your home stereo that will fetch audio files (MP3 files) from your computer to play. You can now get telephones that connect through your Internet connection; soon these telephones will be wireless via Wi-Fi. You may today have a portable MP3 player that you load via a USB cable; tomorrow's players will load via Wi-Fi or even fetch music directly (called streaming). You may soon be able to view TV signals or movies from your home server to a portable TV anywhere in the house.
In addition to entertainment, other devices around your home will soon be Wi-Fi enabled. Your refrigerator will report its temperature or if problems occur, and perhaps even have a built-in Internet viewer on the door. Your lights will be controlled from your PC. Your cell phone may automatically update its address book from your server when you add an entry there. Your PDA will automatically synchronize with your server for calendar updates.
All this is pretty heady stuff, and of course it will roll out over time. But the Wi-Fi connection, eliminating the need for wires, will be the key enabling technology.
One important outcome of the move to more complex home networks is the need for a stable home server. When I set up business networks, I urge my clients to keep their central server PC physically separate from the user PCs, and to limit access to it to only those people who support or run the network. I had one client who bought a server PC, then allowed anyone to use it and to even play computer games on it. You just can't have a stable server in that kind of environment.
If you want to use all of these new Wi-Fi features, you need a stable PC. If your wife is on the Wi-Fi telephone, you can't reboot your computer to install new software. If your kids are watching a video in their room, you don't want your computer to crash during that time.
The end result of this is that you are going to have a central server PC in your house. It will probably be physically placed somewhere out of sight, perhaps even in a closet or out of the way nook. From a cost standpoint, the impact of having a home server may not be too bad. PC prices these days are fairly inexpensive and although you want a fairly fast PC for your server, you would not need any fancy add-on equipment for it. Even the monitor could be a basic model, as it would only be used for maintenance. It may even be possible to use your old PC as the server when you buy a new one.
But the way you use PCs and other devices in your house is going to change - count on it!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).