For Christmas, I bought my kids a PC–a Compaq 1.2 GHz machine from Sam's Club. They needed a PC to play their favorite games (Roller Coaster Tycoon isn't available for the Mac) and to do school work on–both are now doing school projects in PowerPoint. We set the shiny new system up in our finished basement, which acts primarily as the kids' playroom.

My oldest son (just turned 12) also wanted to be able to instant message classmates about homework (yeah, right). So I set him up with an AIM account. Soon, we discovered an interesting side benefit to this arrangement:AIM has become our own little intercom system. Now, I don't have to strain my vocal cords shouting through two floors to get him to take the trash out anymore.