In first place, boiling outdistanced toasting, which came in second, by a margin of almost two to one. Baking was third, and, surprisingly, eating components raw, sometimes called Cyber Sushi, was fourth.

Raoul Pretzoul, who conducted the survey, said eight respondents favored boiling, five, toasting, three, baking, two, raw, and one, other. Pretzoul, who describes himself as an information superhighwayman and author, said there were only 19 respondents because not that many people eat their computers--or at least not that many admit to it.

Pretzoul first started eating computer parts and peripherals, he said, when his wife Lolita put two floppies in the toaster, confusing it with the disk drive of his desktop 486 IBM clone. At first he was miffed, he said, because the floppies held the first three chapters of a novel he was writing, but when he sampled a toasted disk spread with Philadelphia Cream Cheese, he found it delicious. His wife prefers hers with jam, he said.

Toasting is still the Pretzouls' favorite way to cook computers. They recently purchased a 9-foot toaster oven to accommodate smaller mainframes. "But last winter," Pretzoul said, "we roasted an Apple over an open fire, and it was very tasty."

Jerry has been writing humor since he did a weekly column for his high school. Due to sparse manuscript sales, Jerry has done a number of things under the general rubric of "gainful employment". Most of them rubric'd him the wrong way, so he is still perfecting the writing.