Whisper "operating system" in the ear of a typical computer user, and he or she will respond "Windows 95" and then proceed to tell you what he or she thinks of Bill Gates and Microsoft. An IT professional might be more inclined to equate "operating system" with Unix, MVS, VMS, or various other vendor products, and the old-timers will launch into stories about the "good old days" with CP/M, DOS, RSTS, and other long-forgotten acronyms.

But there is a new world emerging today, for which many of these familiar OS names are likely to be irrelevant: the world of embedded systems and the "wireless information device" (WID). Whether it's a handheld PDA organizer, a sophisticated cell-phone, or a smart sewing machine that knows how to download new sewing patterns from the Internet, it's clear that we are now encountering products and devices that are fundamentally different from the behemoths that filled vast air-conditioned rooms in the 1960s and 1970s.