At the Consumer Electronic Show in January, a few exhibitors offered their vision of what future refrigerators, microwave ovens, and washing machines might be like. And these appliances go beyond "self-defrost," or "popcorn," or "permanent press."

It chops, it slices, it dices

Microwave ovens seem to be the appliance of choice for exhibitors in this category. Maybe it's because of their soft-touch buttons and digital readouts. Or maybe it's because cooking with microwaves still conjures images of high-tech kitchen magic in the popular mind.

Haier, Samsung, and Panasonic presented prototypes that surf the Web for recipes, allowed offsite control via the Internet, placed orders for groceries with online stores, and sensed correct temperature settings for different kinds of food. In theory, you should be able to prep tomorrow night's dinner, stick it in the oven before you leave home, then program the oven's temperature and cooking time settings from anywhere where there's an Internet connection. Dinner should be ready when you come home.

Panasonic's futuristic nuker goes one step further -- it interacts with a network-enabled medical diagnostic tool. The latter -- called the TeleHome Care -- is a pulse rate monitor, EKG, sphygmomanometer, health scale, and urine and blood tester all rolled in one. It is able to send the user's health information to the physician and record the physician's diagnosis. Any diet-related recommendation can be transmitted by the TeleHome Care unit to the microwave oven. The oven's Virtual Chef can then be programmed to calculate nutritional content on certain foods, or surf the Web for appropriate dietary information and recipes.

Washer, heal thyself

Washing machines of the future may be the answer to that occasional crisis known as clean underwear shortage. Just make sure to dump your unmentionables in the washer tub. You can then turn on the machine and control temperature, load, and water level settings even when you're away from home. Should your machine malfunction, another promised feature is online service diagnosis, and prototype from Haier drew the attention of a sizeable crowd.

Crisper, fresher

Not to be outdone, network-enabled refrigerators tout the remote control capabilities of its high-tech microwave and washing machine cousins, and more. Your fridge need not be a gigantic Petri dish again -- these post-modern iceboxes promise better freshness control, including the capability to alert you on the expiration date of perishables. And like the network-enabled washers, these new fridges will also feature service diagnostic capability via the Net.