PROJECTIONS ON TECHNOLOGY BASED ON REALITY OF TODAY.

Byline: Elisa Williams The Orange County Register

With the dizzying swirl of products introduced each week, sometimes it's worthwhile to step back and look over the big picture.

Battelle, an Ohio consulting company, recently peered into its crystal ball for a long-range view. It singled out a couple of product trends that it predicts will be technology staples by 2006.

What is striking about its list is that the top picks aren't far-out ideas that you'd find only at some of the nation's top computer labs. Instead, they are grounded in products you can buy today.

Here's a sampling:

Personalized computers. Within a decade, Battelle says, computers will learn how you work and play. They will save you time by anticipating your needs and doing work before being asked.

``The personalized computer will be as mobile and versatile as its user, sending and receiving wireless data and accessing information from remote sites,'' Battelle's report says.

At least one version of this technology is already a reality.

Ex Machina Inc., a New York-based company with an engineering staff in Newport Beach, recently announced a computer accessory card called AirMedia Live! that can do just that.

It uses existing paging frequencies to serve as a wireless link between your computer and multiple sources of information either on commercial on-line services or the Internet.

Next generation TV. Someday our television sets will be as large and flat as paintings, Battelle says. These TVs won't be the large projection TVs you see today; they will be high definition models with clarity approaching that of a movie screen.

That's not all.

TVs of the next decade won't be just TVs. The screens will do double duty as computer monitors, and will be capable of interacting with an entire network of PCs.

They will be designed for video conferencing, the picture phones of tomorrow, and will make it possible to have a window on a variety of other PC networks from the Internet to the computers at your office.

Computer companies also have a head start on this trend as well.

Skinny TV exhibits were a big trend at November's Comdex trade show in Las Vegas. Sharp had a whole wall of skinny TVs that looked like the monitor half of a notebook computer. And these screens were smart - they could split in half to handle two different video streams.

Samsung Electronics, which owns a stake in Irvine-based AST Research, also was showing off the screens of tomorrow. It had a 22-inch liquid crystal display that it is now selling to companies.

And Mitsubishi, which has offices in Cypress, debuted its plasma screen technology, which can be built in large sizes because it's not as difficult or expensive to manufacture as the advanced color screens sold today.

Smart maps and tracking devices. Global positioning systems and ``smart'' maps will be merged into technologies that can show travelers, boaters and hikers their exact positions and then give directions to where they want to go.

Ultimately, Battelle predicts, these devices will be modified for use as anti-collision devices for cars and trucks.

Tracking devices already have hit the marketplace in a big way. One software company in Arizona is using Rockwell International's GPS system to help golfers locate their balls on a course.

And several car manufacturers are offering a GPS system in luxury automobiles to help drivers find their way.

On the map side, Thomas Bros. in Irvine is busy selling electronic versions of its street guides which can be searched with the click or two of the mouse.

If the technology gets cheap enough, who knows, the local Italian restaurant might start using GPS technology and electronic maps to deliver a hot pizza pie to your house not in 30 minutes, but 15.

Battelle lists several other technologies as well.

It predicts that weight control and anti-aging products will be big hits. And that companies will develop smart materials that can detect excessive stress. That way the materials could alert people when a bridge or office building becomes unsafe.

It also is keeping an eye on the potential for ``geneticeuticals,'' which would be used to cure or mitigate various diseases, and home health monitors to enable doctors to track a patient's health.

No question, all of these advances are attainable. It's just a matter of time.

What gives me pause, after this little venture to 2006, isn't what is possible, but what we still can't do today.

A personalized computer sounds great, but today I'd settle for one that could consistently handle the basics.

Give me a PC that won't force me to know anything about a ``.dll'' file or an interrupt request. And rather than large TV screen that looks like a painting, how about a decent-size active matrix on my notebook computer that doesn't cost as much as my car?

Now that would be progress.