
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 6, 1995                   TAG: 9510060051
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ON-LINE FAMILIES

STILL STRUGGLING with the decision about whether to buy a home computer? Hoo boy, are you being left behind by the grumbling, angst-driven herd of American society.

The question these days, Mr. and Ms. Van Winkle, is whether to buy another computer. Not "another" as in a new one to replace the 6-month-old model that cannot begin to handle the mega-memory needed by latest game. Oh no. "Another" as in a second one for your household.

What with the work most everyone who is on-line is bringing home from the office, plus computer games and schoolwork and cruises on the Internet, families tell researchers that they are fighting over time in front of the new tube.

So now we have the two-computer family, which has a couple of advantages over the two-car family: Computers don't foul the air with exhaust fumes, and they don't take nearly as much room to park. It probably won't be necessary to build an attached wing to the house to store them - depending on just how many of "them" are deemed necessary to keep peace.

Baby-boomers who lived through those pioneering days when television was black-and-white and prosperous families had just one - sitting like an altar against a wall in the living room, the sofa and chairs in a semi-circle facing it - have some experience in how to manage control of the dial. Or, in this case, the mouse.

Time each user's turn at the keyboard.

That, apparently, is what most on-line families are doing. The Wall Street Journal reports that only about 12 percent of households with computers have a second, up-to-date model. (For you computer illiterates, that would be a model less than a week old.)

But you don't have to be a student of modern American manners to see where this is headed: a computer in every bedroom, and one in the family room for those awkward evenings when you have to socialize with guests.

It seems the long-anticipated revolution-that-will-change-the-

way-we-live is on the edge of dawning. The up side, of course, is that so many people will have fast, easy access to a world of information (along with, alas, misinformation).

And if the kids must spend hours staring into a screen, at least it won't be the "boob tube." Except that, the Journal reports, computer makers are starting to sell "multimedia machines ... that resemble home-entertainment systems."

Never mind.

by CNB