The biggest problem with using multiple computers is keeping them synchronized. One solution is to use a laptop with a docking station as your main machine. When you travel, just unplug the computer and take it with you. That's what I did for years, relying on an IBM ThinkPad as my main machine.

But fascinating work going on at Intel proposes a more powerful solution. It's called Internet Suspend/Resume, and it uses the Internet, along with some sophisticated software, to provide the same computer environment on any machine. If it becomes a reality, this technique may make taking any kind of computer on the road a thing of the past.

Imagine this: You find yourself catching a flight to Boston and discover you've left your laptop in the office. No problem. In Boston, you log on to a public computer at the airport, or in your hotel, and find the same document opened in the same program that you were working on last night. The cursor that you left on the top right of the screen is still there waiting to be moved.

In use are two intertwined concepts that are powerful in their own right. "Distributed computing" spreads PC power out between different machines, in some cases running one program from components on many computers. Distributed projects have been developed to look for such things as huge prime numbers and extraterrestrial radio signals. Using only small computers, they do work that would normally require a supercomputer to complete.

The other concept is "virtual computing," where a PC is modeled in software by another computer. Software available today allows you, for example, to connect with a remote PC and operate it as if you were sitting at its keyboard. Virtual computing has also been used to run different operating systems on the same computer, a useful tool for businesses whose servers must support numerous machines.

Internet Suspend/Resume carries the concept to a new level by making the function ubiquitous. No matter where you go, you'll be able to call up your own software and preferences. What you use to log on almost doesn't matter, since your work environment exists on the Net.

Being studied in pilot form at Carnegie Mellon University near Pittsburgh,Internet Suspend/Resume has all kinds of implications for how we go about computing. For one thing, we lose our critical dependence on the local hard disk. When a virus took down my main machine two years ago, I lost a couple of days of work just reinstalling my programs and making sure I restored all my data.

Internet Suspend/Resume would give me several other options. Until my own machine was fixed, I could simply go to another. And because the Intel researchers are developing a "rollback" feature, it will be possible to re-create the computer setup as it was at an earlier time. A viral attack would be readily handled by restoring the pre-virus state of the PC.

The key objection to a system like this is security: All your data is being stored on the Internet in servers all over the world. Whether this is more of a challenge than securing millions of home PCs from virus and Trojan attacks remains an open question. Security problems aren't confined to Web-based data.

The thinking here is that moving more and more computing power onto the network is inevitable. The price of digital technology continues to drop, and the day will come when computers will become so cheap that buying them is no more burdensome than buying cheap software. These increasingly widespread devices will be gateways into the online realm where much of our information is going to live.