Sixty-five percent of Americans polled said they spend more time with their home computer than their spouse or significant other, according to research by Kelton Research Inc. released Monday.

Those who have chosen computer over companion don't seem to be getting much satisfaction from their inanimate partner. Of those answering, 84 percent said they were more dependent on their home computer now than three years ago, but that on average, they had experienced computer trouble eight times in those three years, and estimated they wasted 12 hours per month due to home computer problems, the report said.

The device, called AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin), consists of 50 water wave generators encircling a cylindrical tank 1.6 meters in diameter and 30 cm deep (about the size of a backyard kiddie pool). The wave generators move up and down in controlled motions to simultaneously produce a number of cylindrical waves that act as pixels. The pixels, which measure 10 cm in diameter and 4 cm in height, are combined to form lines and shapes. AMOEBA is capable of spelling out the entire roman alphabet, as well as some simple kanji characters. Each letter or picture remains on the water surface only for a moment, but they can be produced in succession on the surface every 3 seconds.

Fewer replacements and slower economic growth will slow down computer sales in the coming months, but the lure of low-cost and portable machines will keep the growth rate at double digits in 2006, the market researcher said in its forecast on Tuesday.

The overall growth rate for 2006 might have been even lower but for a revised forecast of 15 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2005, IDC said. The earlier projection for the quarter was 12.6 percent, and 9.1 percent for 2006. The strength of the overall market, particularly in portable PC adoption, has boosted prospects in all markets except Japan.

"Following the shocks of 2001 and 2002 many people were impressed with the strength of the market in 2004 but cautious about the foundation and longevity of this growth," Loren Loverde, director of PC research at IDC, said in a statement. "The fact that solid double-digit growth has continued through 2005 shows that the market recovery did not peak in 2004 as many expected but is still ongoing."

The new projections make 2006 the fourth consecutive year likely to have double-digit shipment growth, and raise the compound annual growth rate for 2005 through 2009 to 9.4 percent, IDC said. The number of shipments is projected to touch 300 million units in 2009, while the value of shipments will be $250 billion.

"Any suggestion that information technology is yesterday's news, doesn't matter, or has lost its edge as an economic driver is just plain wrong," Miller said. "In fact, major trends indicate the opposite is true."

But Forrester officials said there are some signs of a slow-down ahead. Early reports have chief executive officers (CIOs) confidence measures down in the last quarter of this year, and large U.S. companies are projecting only small budget increases for 2006, Forrester said. The U.S. tech industry could see a "mild" downturn in 2007 after an up-and-down 2006, said George Colony, Forrester's chairman and chief executive officer.

The tech industry has "clearly recovered" from the recession of 2001-02, Colony said.

The two organizations didn't release in-depth details of the guts of the index during a press conference, but they noted that there's been steady improvement since 2003.

"It would seem that science fiction is slowly turning into science fact in an 'Internet of Things' based on ubiquitous network connectivity," said the report.

"Today, in the 2000s, we are heading into a new era of ubiquity, where the 'users' of the internet will be counted in billions and where humans may become the minority as generators and receivers of traffic."

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), sensors, robotics and nanotechnology will make processing power increasingly available in smaller and smaller packages so that networked computing dissolves into the fabric of things around us.

The result could mean remote controls embedded in clothing, cars that alert their driver when they have developed a fault, managers who check on workers through the RFID devices embedded in their phones, and bags that remind their owners that they have forgotten something.

Hi-tech, trendy colours, rock music, punchy slogans... remind anyone of anything? When technology watcher John Ousby realised the modern day parallels, he knew he had to do something. Ousby told the BBC that thousands of people looked at his Flickr post.

"I did a bit of digging around," he says, "and found a good website on vintage electronics. I then matched photos of the transistor with photos of the iPod Mini."

He then posted the above picture on the photo-sharing website Flickr. "Normally my photos there are viewed less than 100 times. But I was away for couple of days and came back to see there had been more than 15,000," he says.

The similarity between the two has "created quite a stir", he says, particularly in the Mac community. He is, however, at pains to point out that he believes the similarity between the 50s radio and the iPod mini is purely coincidental.