In 1992 the Internet wasn’t available to the general public. There were no iPods or any other portable digital music players. Cellphones were big, bulky and analog, mainly used in cars in the U.S. The first consumer digital cameras had just arrived: crude models that cost $800, worked only in black and white, and held just 32 images.

Microsoft was offering the clumsy Windows 3.1, which seemed to crash if you sneezed, and many people were still using the geeky and limited DOS operating system on their “IBM-compatible” PCs. Apple’s technology was way ahead of Windows, but the company would soon enter a period of management mediocrity and product paralysis. And there were scores of PC makers in the U.S., most of them now defunct. The hottest one was Compaq, today a mere brand name for Hewlett-Packard. Dell was still an upstart.

Personal computers were typically sold without modems, networking ports or stereo sound. They had awful, limited color video, far short of what a cheap TV could produce. Too often their designers assumed PC buyers were techies or hobbyists, willing and able to perform complicated hardware and software upgrades and tweaks.

Then and now my main criteria for judging digital consumer products have been simplicity, ease of use and reliability — a sort of index for the burden on the user. And in 1992 most products failed miserably on that scale. They required far too much attention, knowledge and effort by users when theoretically they were supposed to do just the opposite — namely, to make their lives easier.

By around 2001, when the current major operating systems, Windows XP and Apple’s Mac OS X, made their debuts, personal technology had vastly improved. Many of the rough edges had been sanded off. The Mac had long been “plug and play,” and Windows was much closer to that goal. Both systems were fairly stable. The iPod arrived that year, and digital cameras and cell phones — by then well established and growing sleeker by the year — began a rapid evolution that added features and cut prices.

And by then the World Wide Web had changed everything. It had vastly enriched the experience of computing, adding information, entertainment, communication and commerce on a grand scale. Sure, too few people in America had real broadband or wireless networking by 2001, but the balance was getting better. The burden of use for personal computers and related gadgets was trending lower.

Enter the security crisis, which all but destroyed that welcome momentum. There had been viruses for many years, of course, including some big attacks in the 1990s. But over the past five years, the security problem has morphed into a major hassle for people who own and use Windows computers. Viruses and other malicious software programs are still with us, but now they’ve been joined by new categories of pernicious technologies, especially spyware, adware, and fake email and Web sites designed to steal your privacy, your money and even your identity. Spam has gone from a nuisance to a plague.

And the Internet, for all its numerous benefits, has become an engine for this digital onslaught. In the physical world, it isn’t hard to stay out of bad neighborhoods and avoid the company of crooks. But in cyberspace, it’s harder to read the signs — digital criminals, who range from vandals to organized thieves, mingle invisibly with the public in a world where everyone is easily connected.

Today, warding off the myriad threats online takes more and more time, money and effort than ever before. You have to run multiple security programs, interpret all their warnings and alerts, tell them what to do when they detect suspicious activity, and consistently update them. It’s a real hassle, one that seriously interferes with the productivity, and the pleasure, computers can and should provide.

In fact, the burden of using a Windows computer is higher now than it was in 2001. By contrast, Apple’s Macintosh is easier to use than ever, partly because it has so far remained free from viruses, spyware and adware — except for a few minor cases. After stagnating in the mid-’90s, Apple’s software and hardware are once again markedly superior to those of Windows PCs.

But even Mac users have to contend with spam and must learn to avoid fake Web sites designed to steal sensitive financial information. And users of both platforms must also contend with a welter of restrictions on the use of digital content such as music and videos.

So where are we heading?

I believe that in the future the Internet will become more like the electrical grid, a behind-the-scenes platform to which all manner of gadgets will be directly connected, each taking some power and intelligence from the network to perform its task. While personal computers won’t go away, they won’t be the main way to get online, or even needed as intermediaries by many devices. Whenever you watch TV or make a phone call, you’ll be on the Internet, though you won’t be browsing the Web in the manner you do on a PC. This will open up all sorts of new features and interactivity.

Even unlikely gadgets will be connected. Your microwave oven, for instance, will use the Internet to quietly download information that will allow it to recognize the bar codes or radio tags on packaged food products and cook them appropriately.

The star of this new world will be the cell phone — or, more accurately, the device formerly known as the cell phone. Already, some high-end phones, like Palm’s Treo, are essentially mini computers, complete with keyboards and expandable memory. They do many of the things for which people formerly required laptops.
These so-called smart phones can surf the Web, and send and receive e-mail and instant messages, at broadband speeds. They can take, display and edit photos and movies; download and play music, videos and TV shows; play ever more sophisticated games; and even view and edit Microsoft Office documents.

I expect these capabilities to be pushed down to phones that cost less. New competitors will enter the business of making phones and the software and services that run on them.

For these smart phones to flourish, however, they will have to get much simpler to use. The burden on the user will have to drop sharply. Complicated user interfaces will have to be replaced with better ones. Reliability must improve. And the stranglehold on innovation now imposed by all-powerful wireless carriers will have to be broken or loosened. Also, the security problems that plague the PC will have to be headed off somehow. Already, the digital criminals are trying to target cell phones.

But I remain optimistic. The digital revolution can’t be stopped, and the next 15 years should see as many exciting developments as the past 15 have.

And then this year everything changed. Apple Computer, the maker of the Mac, switched to the same Intel-made processors for which Windows was designed. The new Intel-powered Macs, which began shipping in January, still come with Apple’s own operating system, Mac OS X, which is more modern and more secure than Windows XP. But these Macs can now easily run Windows too, and they run it as fast as standard Windows-equipped PCs.

Why does this matter? It means that you can switch from Windows to the Mac and still use the one or two Windows programs you require that have no Mac equivalent.

Among the Mac models that can perform this feat are the iMac and Mac Mini desktop computers and the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. Apple’s most powerful model, the PowerMac tower, is likely to be converted to the Intel chips by the end of the year, after which it, too, will be Windows-capable.

There are two options for running Windows on the Mac. They take different approaches, but in my tests, both have proved to be fast, stable and widely compatible with Windows software. One, from Apple itself, is free. The second, from a small Virginia company called Parallels, costs $79. But each carries an additional cost: You have to supply and install your own copy of Windows, which can run $200 or $300, depending on which version you choose.

The Apple system, Boot Camp, uses a technique called Dual-Boot. It splits your Mac’s hard disk into two sections, or partitions — one for the Mac operating system and all its programs and files, and one for Windows XP and all its programs and files. You can start, or “boot up,” the Mac in either operating system, but you can’t run both simultaneously. To switch between a Mac program and a Windows program, you have to reboot the computer.

The Parallels system, called Parallels Desktop for Mac, uses a technique called Virtualization. It creates a virtual Windows computer inside a window within the Mac operating system. Parallels runs Windows a tad more slowly than Apple’s Boot Camp, but allows you to run both operating systems, and compatible software, simultaneously. You can switch rapidly between the two environments without rebooting. I’m writing this paragraph on a MacBook Pro laptop, but I’m not using any Mac software to do so. Instead, I’m using the Windows version of Microsoft Word, which runs inside Parallels Desktop.

For this paragraph, I’ve switched back to the Mac side of the computer and am using the Mac version of Word. And I copied the previous paragraph from the Windows side and pasted it into the Mac document. It was fast and flawless.

Each approach has its strengths as well as weaknesses.

Apple’s Boot Camp turns the Mac into a true, no-compromises Windows PC-just like a Dell or Hewlett-Packard computer. When you boot up the Mac in Windows, no trace of the Mac operating system is running; Windows has all the hardware and all the memory to itself. In my tests, Macs running Windows under Boot Camp were wicked fast and handled every single program I tried, including Microsoft Office for Windows, the Internet Explorer Web browser and various games. The downside is that pesky need to reboot when switching operating systems.

Parallels Desktop is much faster than the old software for running Windows on pre-Intel Macs, a Microsoft product called Virtual PC. That’s because Parallels makes use of special virtualization features built into the Intel chips. And it has the great advantage of running Windows applications at the same time you are running your Mac programs. But while quite fast, Parallels can’t match the speed of Windows running under Boot Camp, because it must share hardware and memory with the Mac operating system. Also, Parallels won’t work with certain high-end Windows games, and it can have trouble recognizing some USB drives and CDs. In my own tests, Parallels did handle everything I threw at it, but I introduced only simple games. Everything ran as fast as it would on an average Windows PC, though not as fast as the programs ran under Boot Camp.

Because Windows is much less secure than Mac OS X, when you run Windows on a Mac, you have to take the same precautions you would with a standard Windows PC. That means you need to install and run both antivirus and antispyware software that is generally not needed under the Mac OS.

Apple’s approach is more secure than Parallels’s in this regard — with Apple’s Boot Camp, Windows can’t see or access your Mac folders or files. That means any malicious software running in Windows can’t erase or damage your Mac files. Parallels, on the other hand, optionally allows you to share folders between the two operating systems; if you enable this feature, you could give a malicious Windows program an opening to damage or spy on the files on the Mac side.

Installing both programs is fairly easy, but it’s a multistep process. With Apple’s system, you first download and install Boot Camp. Then, using Boot Camp, you divide your hard disk into Mac and Windows partitions. Next you create a CD to be used later, under Windows, to install software “drivers” that Windows will need to control all aspects of the Mac’s hardware. Then you install Windows. Finally, you install the CD you created.

Note that Boot Camp requires a full retail version of Windows XP, called “SP2.” You can’t use any other version of Windows, and you can’t use an upgrade edition, which requires an earlier version of Windows to be present on the machine.

Parallels allows you to install any version of Windows, even a very old one. But if you use Windows XP, you will in most cases also need a full, retail version, not an upgrade package. You first must buy and install the Parallels program, which creates an empty “virtual machine.” Then you install your copy of Windows inside Parallels. Finally, to enable certain key features, you have to install a program called Parallels Tools, which is included.

This all sounds harder than it is. In each case, the whole process took me about an hour and required no technical skill.

And it’s worth the effort. Boot Camp and Parallels have turned the Intel-based Macintosh into the only computer that can run nearly every popular software program, whether it was written for Windows or the Mac. On the same computer you can edit photos in Apple’s iPhoto program and check your e-mail in Microsoft’s Outlook — simultaneously, if you choose Parallels. Now, that’s progress.

Over the past few years, however, those extremes have begun to merge. Because of the spread of broadband Internet connections and improvements in cameras, software and computer processors, consumer videoconferencing has begun to look much better. It’s still not as good as expensive corporate linkups, but it’s finally usable.

As this affordable video technology has spread, online services offering video chatting have proliferated. Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Apple all offer videoconferencing. So do a host of less-well-known services, such as Paltalk, IVE and Skype. All are free or have free entry-level plans, but they still cost money to use. For one thing, you’ll need a broadband connection — on both sides of the conversation — to get the most out of them. And, of course, you’ll need a decent camera, with either a built-in or separate microphone.

I expect built-in cameras to become common in all but budget PCs in the next few years, but for now, they’re relatively rare — Sony has been building them into a few models for years, Apple included built-in cameras in its new iMac desktop and MacBook Pro laptop models, and some Hewlett-Packard laptops feature them as well. But most users will have to buy a camera. The biggest brand in add-ons is Logitech, and the best Logitech model I’ve seen is the Quickam Fusion, which sells for around $85 and works only on Windows PCs. The best bet for Mac users is an even better but costlier camera, the $150 iSight from Apple.

Both cameras attach to the top edge of your screen and deliver up to 30 frames of video a second, which is full motion to the human eye. Both include decent built-in mikes. And both also function as still cameras for snapshots. The Logitech has a higher resolution, 1.3 megapixels, while the Apple takes still pictures of under 1 megapixel.

One advantage of the Apple iSight, not surprisingly, is that it’s better integrated into the computer. No software need be installed; you just mount it atop the screen with an included clip or magnetic base, plug it into a FireWire port, and voil?†. In fact, it automatically launches Apple’s built-in videoconferencing program, iChat AV.

Like most Windows peripherals, the Logitech camera is a little trickier to hook up, but not by much. It does require a software installation. The camera plugs into any open USB port, though it needs a newer USB 2.0 connection for full frame rate.

Both cameras have a lens-blocking privacy mode, which allows you to avoid being seen during a video call or conference. Only your voice will be heard. But Logitech goes further — it includes an amusing software feature called Video Effects that permits you to disguise your appearance. You can add animated glasses, mustache, nose, hat and other features to your face. Or you can replace your image entirely with animated avatars of cartoon people and animals, including a dinosaur, a space alien, a cat, a dog or a unicorn. And while these visual effects aren’t exactly Hollywood quality, they do move with you as you speak, mimicking some of your visual expressions, like winking or raised eyebrows, and no special software or video service is needed at the other end of the conversation for your friends to see the special effects.

Once you have your camera/mike combination in place, you’re ready to roll. All you need do is pick your service, find some friends with a camera and mike, and you can start videoconferencing.

But what about the other major function of a laptop-viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents? Well, it turns out you can do that, too, on these devices, at least to a point. Currently, you can read Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, as well as Adobe PDF files, on certain handhelds; you can even edit them and synchronize the changes back to a PC.

Here’s a look at how that’s possible, on the three most popular types of smart phones and PDAs in the U.S.: those powered by the Palm operating system, those powered by the Windows Mobile operating system (formerly known as Pocket PC), and the BlackBerry, which uses both hardware and software from RIM.

First, make sure your device has lots of storage capacity, either in internal memory or on a removable memory card, if your device can accept them. (The Treo, the iPAQ and most other devices running Windows Mobile software can; BlackBerry models cannot.) You will need that room to store your Office documents.

Second, I strongly advise those wanting to edit documents to buy a phone or PDA with a full keyboard, rather than one that relies solely on handwriting recognition or a phone keypad. The software for viewing and editing documents does work on devices without a keyboard, but unless you just want to read documents, the process is painful on these models.

You might think that the devices running Windows Mobile software would do the best job of handling Microsoft Office documents because both systems are made by Microsoft. Or you might imagine the BlackBerry was tops at this task because it is bought mostly by corporate computer departments, where Microsoft Office is the application software of choice. But in fact, the best devices for viewing and editing Office documents are those using the Palm operating system, such as the Palm Treo 650. That’s because of a helpful third-party program, Documents to Go, from DataViz, which is packaged with many Palm devices, including the Treo.

Next best are the Microsoft-powered phones and hand-helds, which come with built-in mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Bringing up the rear is the BlackBerry, which can display Word, Excel and PowerPoint files when sent as e-mail attachments, but doesn’t let you edit or synchronize them with a PC.

Palm OS devices. The best smart phone on the market is the Treo 650, produced by Palm and powered by the Palm operating system, which is made by a separate company called PalmSource. While the Palm software lacks the built-in capability to read or edit Office documents, the Treo comes bundled with Documents to Go, which can import and open Microsoft files in their native formats without downsizing them to some special “pocket” version. It also allows you to edit, or even create, these types of documents and synchronize your changes with versions on your PC.

You can get the documents into your Treo or other Palm device either by receiving them as e-mail attachments or via synchronization with your PC. Documents to Go includes a computer program that performs this document synchronization; I use it often on my Treo 650. It displays documents in their actual fonts, including colors and attributes like underlining, bold and italics. Indents and spacing are also preserved. The Treo 650 doesn’t support different font sizes, and it doesn’t include a spell checker. Documents can be opened from, or stored to, either the device’s internal memory or a memory card. You can also zoom the screen to show more or less of the document, especially important with spreadsheets, which often sprawl across the page and can be hard to read when resized to fit entirely on the small screen. PowerPoint files can be edited and synchronized only if you are using a Windows PC, though they can be viewed if you are using a Macintosh.

In my tests over the years, Documents to Go performed flawlessly, better than the built-in mobile Office programs on Windows-powered handhelds. In addition to being bundled with the Treo and some other Palm devices, Documents to Go is available for independent purchase, in several versions, for $30 to $90, depending on features. There are also versions for smart phones that use the Symbian operating system, including models from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. You can find information and purchase Documents to Go at www.dataviz.com [http://www.dataviz.com].

Windows Mobile devices. There are two kinds of devices powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software. Some are confusingly named “smart phones,” though they generally lack keyboards and some key software capabilities, including the ability to edit Office documents. Others are full-featured handhelds, including some with keyboards, such as several of HP’s iPAQ models, the new Samsung i730 phone and the very latest and greatest Windows Mobile device, the Treo 700w.

The new Treo is the first device built by Palm to eschew the Palm operating system for Windows software. While it’s mainly aimed at the corporate market and, in my view, isn’t as good as the Treo 650, the 700w is probably the best Windows Mobile device. On the new Treo and others, you can read, edit and create Word and Excel files, and synchronize them with your PC. You can view PowerPoint files, but not edit or create them.

As with the Treo 650, you can get these documents into your device either by receiving them as email attachments or by copying them from a PC.

While the mobile Office programs on the Windows devices work okay, they aren’t quite as good as Documents to Go, in my experience. For instance, in a recent test I opened a simple Word document on two Treosa 650 running the Palm OS and Documents to Go, and a 700w running Windows Mobile and its built-in Office Mobile programs. Documents to Go opened the program perfectly in its Times New Roman font and sized it so the words were distinct, and the formatting was preserved. The Word Mobile program in Windows Mobile displayed the document in a different font and in a size that screwed up the formatting. And while Documents to Go allows you to create and edit PowerPoint files, Windows Mobile doesn’t.

BlackBerry. The BlackBerry can view Office documents when received as e-mail attachments, but the function is pretty primitive. You can’t directly import documents or synchronize them with a computer. And you can’t create or edit them, even though you have a full keyboard at your disposal.

There is a third-party program for the BlackBerry that claims to allow editing, creating and synchronizing of Word and Excel documents, but not PowerPoint files. It’s called eOffice, made by a company called DynoPlex, and it’s available in versions ranging from $120 to $200 at www.dynoplex.com [http://www.dynoplex.com].

I wouldn’t want to write a long report on a Treo. But in a pinch, I could have written this column on one. And editing a document like this is a breeze. So you really can leave that laptop at home, at least some of the time.