Family togetherness ain't what it used to be.
Forget evenings gathered around the dining room table doing homework or playing Monopoly. An increasing number of Americans, already dependent on computer networks at work and school, are getting digitally connected at home.
Nearly 30 percent, or 25 million American households, now own more than one computer, according to a recent report by market research firm Parks Associates.
Parents bring work home on their laptops or shop and plan travel on their home PCs. Children get the older version of the family PC or computers of their own to help out with homework and communicate with friends.
And the entrance of high-speed Internet access into our lives through DSL service and cable modems has made it increasingly attractive to network those computers together, as many businesses have been doing for decades.
'A huge upsell'
Parks Associates' study found that 20 percent of multicomputer households are connected through cable or wireless devices primarily for Internet use.
Don Gay, general manager for CompUSA in Knoxville, Tenn., said business at his computer supply store backs up the statistics.
When Comcast began offering cable modems in West Knoxville six months ago, CompUSA began selling lots of Internet-enabled networking equipment.
"There was a huge upsell when (cable modems) came," Day said. "All of a sudden we were starting to sell a lot of broadband routers, broadband switches."
Networking was primarily a business activity until the early 1990s, Day said.
"It's been over the last five years that you see an obvious increase in the home," he said.
CompUSA offers installation services for home networks, but many people choose to install their own. And the market has not yet targeted customers with consumer-friendly networking kits and mainstream advertising, said Kurt Scherf, vice president of research for Parks Associates.
"The ones who have set up networks at this point" tend to be "very early adopters who are extremely comfortable with technology," he said.
Presenting a challenge
While companies are working to develop more user-friendly networking solutions, setting up a home network can be challenging for the uninitiated.
For example, networking products can go by a number of different names, said John Avery, home networker and president of the East Tennessee Computer Society.
The cards computers need to link up with their counterparts at home or connect to the Internet can be called LAN cards, network cards or Ethernet, he said.
Computers themselves especially older varieties may not be network-friendly.
The process requires users to change various settings on the computer's operating system, and all computers have their own quirks, he said, even if they use the same operating system, because the manufacturers can make changes to the software before shipping it to the customer.
Although the newest computers come installed with network cards, Avery said, many folks will have to be brave and mount their own.
"The biggest fear, I'll guarantee you, is getting people to open up the side of their computer," he said.
But customers can fork over a little extra to have computer services to do it for them, a business niche that should grow in the coming years, Scherf said.
"I think you see a market in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year," he said.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.