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The Duke paper reports that the negative effect on test scores was not universal, but was largely confined to lower-income households, in which, the authors hypothesized, parental supervision might be spottier, giving students greater opportunity to use the computer for entertainment unrelated to homework and reducing the amount of time spent studying.

The North Carolina study suggests the disconcerting possibility that home computers and Internet access have such a negative effect only on some groups and end up widening achievement gaps between socioeconomic groups. The expansion of broadband service was associated with a pronounced drop in test scores for black students in both reading and math, but no effect on the math scores and little on the reading scores of other students.

In spite of their name, desktop PCs often have several users. Laptops, netbooks, and tablets are usually single-user machines—that is, they really are personal. Modern mobile operating systems are built with room enough for one—Apple's iOS and Google's Android are both tied in to a single user's e-mail, calendar, and app-purchasing accounts. Forrester's numbers also suggest that in the future we'll have many such machines around the house. Your "main" computer will be a laptop—and you'll probably have several smaller, tablet-type machines that you use regularly as well.

My laptop is my "main" computer, my only computer, at least until my current wireless carrier contract ends and I'm able to land a Google Android. Then I'll have two single-user machines, four and five if the PS3 and Xbox 360 qualify, six if I dare include my Moleskine journal.