Acorn is due to launch a series of home control products (issue 90) in a few months time. MSX is intended to be built in to articles like video recorders, televisions, and other electronic goods. Sir Clive Sinclair's electronic car is powered by a washing machine motor.

All through last year the movement behind 'useful' home micros gathered strength. In the form of public statements from such people as Acorn head Chris Curry it hinted vaguely at home micros are likely to develop in 1985. But you'd better be ready for the chance, because now the people at the business end - the high street retailers - are looking forward to a revolution in microcomputing.

Their reasons are based on commercial judgments. Dave Gilbert, Dixons' marketing manager, said: "You can't grow the home computer market on the basis of games because you reach saturation." Others were less direct, but the overall impression is that the shops near you will be selling micros for useful purposes because that's the way they see the market going.

"People are now going to consider more serious applications," said Michael Litvin of Computers of Wigmore Street. "Serious software sales will increase."

Odd man out among the big chains is Woolworth, which is upholding the honour of the games machine. It told PCN categorically: "We will not be stocking the Acorn home control device." Instead, in 1985, it will be concentrating on software and add-ons.

But it might be forced to change this position. Its competitors - independents and retail chains alike - agree that the next stage for microcomputers will involve an element of useful ness. "Computers are not there just for playing games," said WHSmith, which also spread a wet blanket over the kind of home applications that are available not when it added: "and budgeting..."

None of them is prepared to be very specific about the form that 'usefulness' will take. Acorn's idea is to produce a board-level device that can be built into pieces of domestic electronic equipment so that you will be able to exert computer control over a number of household functions.

"The new style of computing will need a hell of a lot of hard work and will be dependent on the quality of the merchandise and how well the trade can explain the benefits to the consumer," said Dave Gilbert.

Others see it as a development; WHSmith, for example: "Anything that makes the computer useful in the home sounds like a good idea. Anything that develops the role of the computer we would see as useful," John Greengrass of Boots admitted: "Computers are useful, but no-one seems to know what to do with them. Home control devices may be the answer, who knows?"

According to Litvin, the stress will be different. Software that applies the logic of programming to the nature of tasks is his idea of usefulness, and he cited an ideas processor as an example. This is a radical distinction and, on the face of it, a more attractive proposition than a device that will close the curtains at nightfall, but it points in the same direction.

With the manufacturers and the retailers agreeing, it begins to look as though there's a conspiracy at work to make you throw away your games machines in favour of something less frivolous. But not all the manufacturers are committed - there's always the new Atari Corporation, headed by Jack Tramiel, to carry the banner of the games players. Tramiel has gone on the record as saying that the fun has gone out of computing, and that the manufacturers are taking themselves too seriously. In the same breath he's prone to say things like: "Business is war," but if that's the case you can be sure that Atari will have presented it in the form of a computer game before too long.

Meanwhile Sinclair continues to put its weight behind the QL, Acorn prepares to deliver the ABC business machines, and Commodore is about to launch a desktop IBM-compatible machine. Oric's Stratos isn't due to be launched in the UK but its business machine probably will, and Apple will be lost to the hobbyist for ever if the Mac succeeds. Perhaps it is a conspiracy.