Businessweek Archives  Wanted: A Pc For The Masses  Technology &
You   Reliability and ease of use-not power and features-are the
ticket at home  When last fall's sales are toted up, we're
likely to find that just over a third of U.S. households now
have computers. The computer industry fondly hopes that, someday
soon, the PC will become as common as the microwave oven or the
VCR. But to make that happen, the industry has got to roll up
its sleeves.  Two factors keep computers out of many homes: cost
and complexity. The first problem is rapidly taking care of
itself, but removing the complexity requires rethinking the home
computer.  What sort of machine would get PCs into the tens of
millions of homes that don't have one yet? What's needed is much
less a breakthrough in technology than a change in industry
attitudes. Computers are a bit like cars in the 1920s: You no
longer have to hire a mechanic to ride along with you, but
you're still expected to get out and get under the hood once in
a while. This has sp