Twenty-five years after its inception as a programming toy for hobbyist geeks, the desktop PC is viewed as one of the most successful peices of technology ever created. Today, half of U.S. households have at least one, and by 2005, three quarters of U.S. households are likely have one, industry analysts agree. Schools are riddled with them. And if you tried to run a business without one, more than a few people would call you crazy.

The desktop PC is viewed as one of the most successful peices of technology ever created.

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the personal computer, UPSIDE decided to find out just what we should expect from desktop PCs five years from now. We talked to a lot of people and, in general, were surprised with what we found.

Nearly everyone believes that processors will continue to get faster, systems smaller, and technology better at the same vision-blurring rate they do today.

What's not so clear is exactly how all of this faster-smaller-better will benefit the user. Call it the Philosophical corollary to Moore's Law. After years of watching tech advance by leaps and bounds, we're convinced there's no end in sight. The key question is no longer how much faster but rather how much better.

Yet even as the desktop PC reaches for as-yet-undreamed-of heights, it is also fighting to survive as many speculate that in coming years the PC will simply dissolve into a loose network of information appliances. Despite a wash of a new users enterning the market, the average PC is still desperately complicated and difficult to use.

The Internet is a river of opportunity, but from the PC's point of view, it's a disconcertingly democratic one. After all, when your personal digital assistant can surf the Web, your cell phone can retrieve your e-mail and your refrigerator can order your groceries over the Net, who needs a PC at all?

Whether the desktop PC as we know it survives, perishes or simply changes from (as it's done so many times before), tomorrow's trends will arise not from mind-boggling technological advances but from the application of technology. Here's what we - and the industry - think the PC will look like when we reach the other side.

Perhaps the most telling augur of the future isn't the development efforts around faster CPU's (though we'll get those), a fatter network pipe (that's coming, too) or a bigger display. If you want to understand where the PC is headed, turn on your own desktop machine and listen to its cooling fan. Believe it or not, reducing fan noise - or eliminating the fan altogether - is a priority for desktop system designers. The desktop machine of the future will have to fit into many rooms without being a distrubing presence, says Manny Vara, a spokesman for Intel's processor group. So? "We cant' have loud fans."