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.

Now the Treo has a new high-end competitor from Motorola and Microsoft that’s much thinner and cheaper, yet promises to match it feature for feature. It’s called the Motorola Q, and it’s popping up in the hands of more and more power users, intrigued by its stylish looks.

I tested the Q, comparing it mainly with the newest Treo, the 700p. I loved the Q’s hardware design and its price. At $199 (with a two-year service plan), it’s half the cost. And while a little wider, the Q is just half as thick as the Treo 700p and more than one-third lighter. It’s a heck of an engineering achievement by Motorola.

However, the Q’s beautiful hardware is dragged down by poor software. The Treo 700p uses the tried-and-true Palm operating system, which was overhauled a few years back to turn it into a phone-oriented interface you could control with one hand. But the Q is burdened with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile system, which hasn’t been fully converted to quick, one-handed phone use. The result is that it’s much more annoying to use the Q than the Treo, especially if you are a heavy mobile e-mail user. For too many functions, the Q requires more steps, more clicks and more opening of menus than the Treo 700p. (The Treo 700w, which uses Windows software, has many of the same software flaws as the Q.)

Despite being eye-catching, the Q’s design has a few drawbacks as well. Its screen is smaller and has 25 percent fewer pixels than the Treo’s, so you see less of e-mails and other documents, and photos are more squashed. And unlike the Treo’s display, the Q’s isn’t a touch screen, so you can’t use a finger to tap icons for quick results. The Q also has less battery life than the Treo, and while its keyboard is roomier, I found typing on it to be a tad more difficult.

Like the Treo 700 models, the Q works on Verizon’s broadband — like EV-DO data network, so it does a good job with both Web surfing and downloading large e-mail attachments. In my tests, the Q typically reached speeds of between 200 and 500 kilobits per second, only slightly slower than most wired low-end DSL connections at home.

Voice calls on the Q were also clear and strong, better in some cases than on the Treo. But unlike the Treo 700p, the Q can’t be used as a modem for a laptop, at least not out of the box. Neither phone has Wi-Fi wireless capability. Both have cameras with resolutions of 1.3 megapixels.

Many tasks took more work on the Q than on the Treo, even such basic things as muting the phone and locking the keyboard. Deleting e-mail requires two steps on the Q, one on the Treo.

The Q does have one nice navigation control the Treo lacks — a scroll wheel and back button on the right side, like what a BlackBerry sports. But the Q is more limited than the Treo in the way it handles Microsoft Office documents and PDF files. On the Treo 700p, Word and Excel files can be edited, whereas on the Q, they can only be viewed.

Still, the Q should sell well because of its price, speed and svelte appearance. It makes the high-end smart phone much more accessible and much more pocketable, which is no small feat.

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.

Back in 2001, the iPod was the first widely sold product to use one of these little hard disks. With a diameter of just under 2 inches, it’s smaller than the hard drives used in most laptops, yet it can hold up to 60 gigabytes of data, or around 15,000 songs. The midsize iPod Mini uses an even smaller version, albeit with decreased capacity. It’s just an inch in diameter but holds up to 6 gigabytes of data, enough for around 1,500 songs. (The lowend iPod Shuffle doesn’t use a hard disk, and it holds relatively few songs in its memory chips.)

But now these little hard disks are migrating to other devices — including cellphones and personal digital assistants — made by other companies, giving these gadgets some of the iPod’s magical combination of diminutive size and expansive capacity. And since these devices can play music, along with the various other functions they perform, they could soon become a challenge to the iPod.

For example, two big cell phone makers, Samsung and Nokia, have designed music-playing phones with small internal hard disks that hold a few gigabytes of data. Samsung’s hard-disk model is sold so far only in Korea, but could make it to the U.S. by the end of this year. Nokia’s will be rolled out late this year, probably first in Europe.

By late 2006, I expect Americans to have numerous choices in hard-disk cell phones.

The first PDA with a hard disk to be offered in the U.S. came out in May. It’s the $499 PalmOne Life-Drive. PalmOne sells the LifeDrive — with its large color screen and 4GB hard disk — as a portable way to store and view or play back music, videos, photos and office documents. It also features the usual Palm calendar, contact and notes functions, and with its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networking, it can surf the Web and send and receive e-mail.

The LifeDrive is bulky — much larger and heavier than an iPod Mini with the same size hard disk. And it isn’t a great music player — it has touch-screen play, pause, fast forward and reverse rather than proper buttons, and it doesn’t come with headphones. But it could be the start of a trend for PDAs, since it should be possible to wedge a similar hard disk into a smaller device.

More likely, the bigger threat to the iPod will come from iPod-enabled cell phones. People have to carry their phones anyway, and some already offer music-control buttons and headphones. So if your phone can hold thousands of songs, why carry around a second, separate music player?

Of course, phonemakers still have to prove they can design music-playing phones that are as simple, elegant and cool as iPods. But that could happen.

Little hard disks could also revolutionize digital cameras, allowing photographers to store thousands of shots without lugging around a laptop, although I know of no camera to date that has a hard disk.

Another trend: Small hard disks will likely shrink even more. Already, there’s a company making one with a diameter smaller than an inch. But mini hard drives may also face a challenger of their own — high-capacity memory chips. The chips have tended to be costlier per unit of storage than the disks, but over time they could get competitive. Prices are dropping fast, and chipmakers are working on memory cards, like the one in your digital camera, that are capable of storing over 10 gigabytes.

For now, though, keep your eye on the little hard disk that powers the iPod. It may be powering lots of gadgets soon.