Your computer can even serve as a great housesitter, making your house look lived-in even when no one is home.

Sometimes pictures speak louder than words, so you may want to see for yourself the growing trends in U.S. households with PCs.

What else does our crystal ball show for home computing in 1997? Two emerging areas include DVD, or digital versatile disk, and the rise in faster-than-modem-speed technologies like ISDN and ADSL.