This week's Computex is full of vendors hoping and praying they've found the answer to a mass market with portable PCs running Windows XP or a flave or two of Linux.

They must think that the whole world does nothing but check email constantly and smurf the Web for cheap anythings. Meanwhile, UK post offices close leaving geriatrics to try hitch a lift on the superinformation highway without post boxes, and download their Christmas presents using 3D plastic printers.

The big defect in the thinking of the likes of Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Via, Acer, Wistron, and so on and so forth is that actually no-one wants to be constantly 'on'. The aged amongst you will recall that Bill Gates' dream was you could go anywhere in the world and 'information would be at your fingertips'.

What a complete nightmare computers are. Some of us want to be constantly off and we don't want vast databases recording every single thing we buy, sell, or dream about.

And now Bill Gates' 'vision' has 'come to pass', we are all slaves to the dreams of a megageek who thought that Word version 2.0 for DOS was the perfect example of a word processor.

If we ever had an identity in the first place, it's now been thefted, and a quick Google will tell the world+dog where and what we are. I do not want to be a latter day Luddite, but I do not want to be constantly 'on' or 'off'.

Then there's the price of these little devices. The bill of materials (BOM) means they're all still pretty expensive and if you 'value add' in the cost of wireless, 3G and whatever else the multinationals devise, they're even more expensive.

Are they as functional as a full blown notebook PC? No, of course they're not. It's a value minus. They are not Sony Walkmen. The IT vendors have decided that because they can't stand to be without a Powerpoint presentation 24 hours a day, we shouldn't be able to be without Internet access all the time either.

Let's face it. The vendors are trying to sell us kit we don't need. The kit will diminish us as human beings and as we are not digital silicon life forms but squishy strings of hydrocarbons mixed with water, up with this we will not put. X