Millennial IT is off to a smashing start. In the past month, two keenly awaited products have been launched and clocked up more than a million sales apiece: Windows 2000 and PlayStation2. They bear comparison with each other, being similarly priced and commanding similar media attention. Yet the one with the biggest long-term impact on the way we do our jobs may not be the one you first thought of.

At first sight, the PlayStation2 is a games console. It doesn´t have a keyboard, hard drive, mouse or network. It does have mindblowing graphics and sound, a DVD player and enough processing power to run a Shuttle. But poke around the back of the box and you´ll find two USB ports and IEEE.1394. Just as important, poke around the back of Sony´s marketing plans and you´ll find broadband, broadband, broadband. It doesn´t take a hardware genius to sketch out a single small black box that clips in and provides high-bandwidth Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) alongside a few gigs of hard disk and a wireless mouse and keyboard. If Sony doesn´t have one of those boxes in prototype already you can roll me in rice and call me sushi.

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