The 3Com Ergo Audrey, released in 2000, was historically significant as one of the most visible attempts to popularize the “internet appliance” idea: a simple, room-specific device meant for email, web access, calendars, and household communication rather than full PC computing. It ultimately became more important as a symbol of that short-lived pre-smartphone vision of the connected home, since 3Com discontinued it within a year, but collectors still remember it as a distinctive and unusually forward-looking dead end in consumer tech history.