At Tom's we have written quite a bit about using computers in the home. I wanted to describe the ultimate smart home that I've seen and draw some lessons for you, the enthusiast and early adopter.

The scene is a suburban house that was built from scratch by John Patrick, who retired from running IBM's Internet business several years ago. And the first lesson is that you have to design your home systems - not just computing but distribution of water, power, and other services - like IBM designed its mainframe computers, with centralized management but distributed control. We truly have come full circle with desktop computing.

Most of us don't really know what we want when it comes to home electronics. And if we do know, we don't know where to find the people to help us when we run past our own skill set and can't deal with the Home Depots and local audio shops. And our third problem is that usually the roadblocks aren't technology, but all about usability and how we implement the technology. I'll expand on each of these points and show you Patrick's solutions along the way.

What I have seen is that most of us don't really know what we want when it comes to high tech homes. As an example, people have only a vague notion of what a 'smart home' truly is. Some people want their computers located in strategic places, sharing an Internet connection. But then when that is implemented, they realize that they don't want to be running around their homes trying to find a document on a particular PC or being able to share printers too. So the home network becomes more than just sharing broad-bandwidth. Some people want a house that they can control via a Web browser. But then they want to be notified when something goes wrong, and have some insight into what is happening in their house when they are geographically distant. And many of us want more sophisticated entertainment delivery or ways to interact with our TVs to save favorite programs, which is why Tivo is so popular. But then you realize when you have Tivo that you need to be able to program the unit remotely, when you aren't home, for example.

Part of this is just human nature: You get better at defining your needs when you see what the high-tech toys really do. But some of it is because the high tech doesn't really work out of the box.

The issue in deploying this stuff is that the skill sets are enormous, especially as you demand increasingly smarter homes that bridge multiple needs.