Many companies see a market for so-called 'Internet appliances'.
An Internet appliance is a box which plugs in and provides you with Internet access, a firewall, file and print services, e-mail access and so on. It installs on a standard PC and turns it into an Internet appliance. I recently visited e-smith and saw a demo of the software, as well as a peek into the internals of the design. Here's how it went. Installation E-smith Server and Gateway is meant to be used on a dedicated computer.