As the Lab director for Windows 2000 Magazine, I spend a lot of time talking to product vendors. During a recent phone briefing, as I tried to separate product information from the marketing buzzwords the vendor was tossing at me, I had an epiphany. It came not as a vision of a heavenly chorus but rather as a flashback to an episode of the Muppet Show, in which Professor Bunsen Honeydew explains to the audience the mission of Muppet Labs: "Muppet Labs, Where the Future Is Tomorrow."

The truth...