That is borne out here in Silicon Valley, where the Internet is used just as much at home as it is at work. Residents are keeping contractors busy wiring their homes. Jeffrey Miller, a general contractor whose Campbell business bears his name, says he's averaging about one home per week.

Miller recently installed a multimedia box in Cindy Kao's home that gives her expanded satellite TV service as well as four phone lines. Kao, a Cupertino resident, describes the setup as "a work in progress" because she can pull more services out of the box whenever she wants. For now, Kao uses a wireless setup from Santa Clara­based NetGear to access the Internet from her two laptops.

The trend toward wireless got a boost with a recent announcement from Intel that it is now offering a chipset that combines the three most popular wireless standards into one: 802.11 a/b/g.

But industry analyst Rob Enderle warns homeowners to be careful when setting up a home wireless network. Enderle says, "If you do decide to go wireless, make sure you have someone you can count on to set up security. With hackers and viruses multiplying like rabbits, it is really better to be safe than sorry."

That's why Saratoga homeowner Will Samson hard-wired his home. He was worried about hackers simply driving down the street and tapping into a wireless network. So, when he built his home six years ago, Samson wired the whole house. Interconnectivity is key, he says, "because we're so busy all our computers are linked together. When my wife adds something to the calendar, it pops up on my calendar."

The home's library is another good example of how this works. It has a color photo printer, a combination fax/scanner/printer and other outlets for digital devices. If a family member prints a photo from the kitchen's computer, it will come out in the library. Likewise, the bar has two outlets where he and his son can access the Internet and work on projects side by side.

To accomplish all this, Samson's home network runs two servers. And he's ready for more. The family also has a home at Lake Tahoe, and Samson wants to install a computer security system there "so that I can access my servers from my house in Tahoe over the Internet. I can be sitting up in Tahoe and say, 'You know those recipes you have? Let me pull them up.' "

In Los Gatos, Kim Worsencroft has also installed servers to run her home network. Worsencroft's original renovation project took on new proportions when town planners said she'd have to install a sprinkler system if she wanted to add on to her 81-year-old home. "Since we had to tear everything out, we took advantage to get the wires everywhere," she says.

It took four years, but today Worsencroft's home boasts a multitude of amenities. There are five TiVo digital video recorders, a home theater that seats eight, and five phone lines. A digital photo center is in the planning stages. There's even an industrial-strength UPS power supply, backed up by a generator.

Worsencroft says she and her husband wanted to figure out how to wire the house for the next decade, which meant putting in both coaxial and fiber-optic cables. That forward thinking is why the bedrooms are wired, even though there are no computers there. Instead, her son and daughter access the Internet and do their homework in a separate room, while Worsencroft and her husband share an Internet-ready home office. The office PCs are also connected to a plasma TV, so the TV doubles as a huge monitor.

As a retired software developer, Worsencroft admits she loves technology. Still, she sometimes finds it all a bit much. She thinks it's important to keep perspective and has come to a conclusion: "Just because you have it doesn't mean you have to use it," Worsencroft says.