We've finally succumbed and got an Xbox360, the next-generation game system from Microsoft.

With Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's oddly-named 'Wii' due later in the year, gamers have a lot of choice, but my son has been playing Xbox for years and knows what he likes.

The games are good, if you like that sort of thing, especially when you can play online against people all around the world.

And the graphics are a real improvement over older systems.

But it isn't the game-playing that I find most fascinating about our new family toy.

The console plugs into the television, and you can use it to make your TV display lots more than just soaps and documentaries.

If you have a home computer and a network then you can show all your family photos taken on your digital camera and stored on the computer.

The console can also play all the music you've got on your hard drive.

Of course, you do need a network to make it work, and this might frighten a lot of people off.

Building a home network certainly used to be a job for the experts, but more and more people who get broadband are doing it.

And the internet companies have realised that people want home networks, so they will even sell you all the bits you need.

The latest version of Windows and Apple's Mac OS have all the bits needed to make it work, too, so you don't need to do a complicated installation.

All you have to do is plug the right end into your phone line or cable connection and you're ready.

Your computer – or computers, (if you're the type with a work laptop and a home pc) might have cables to connect them to the network, or you can use wireless instead.

Either way, once it's in place you'll find that everyone can be on the internet at the same time.

You can even copy files from one computer to another without having to find that old floppy disk you've been using for years.

And your games console just plugs into the network the same as any other computer. After all, that's all it really is, even if it looks nicer!

Click here to find out about Wi-Fi (Wireless Broadband)

Like most people I'm used to getting badly-written e-mails inviting me to take part in bizarre financial schemes that will make me millions.

I've learned to send them straight to Deleted Items.

And I think I can spot a fake message telling me about some great opportunity that's waiting for me if I'll only click on a link to a website.

The site in question is almost certainly going to try to put a nasty program on my computer.

And I'm even suspicious of e-mails that seem to come from friends, since I know that some viruses will hijack a computer and send e-mails to everyone in the address book.

Fortunately the ones sent by viruses are pretty clearly just random sentences strung together and can easily be ignored.

But now some computer security experts have come up with a truly worrying idea: intelligent viruses.

They reckon it would be possible to write a computer program that would read your e-mails – the ones you've sent and the ones you receive – and make up something that looks really plausible.

So if you'd been e-mailing your mate Sally about a trip to town the virus might send one with the subject 'Cinema trip?' that talks about the latest movies.

And it would have a link to a website for you to find out more – but it would be another one of those dodgy sites that would infect your computer.

I don't know how likely this really is, but I find it very depressing.

E-mail used to be the greatest way to get in touch with people, but now I'm getting over a thousand spam messages a day, never mind these trick ones.

It's got to the point where it's going to be much simpler to use instant messaging for everything.

At least until there's a virus that impersonates you on Instant Messenger too!