Yes, every night. Because in this age of federal bailouts of brokerages, record mortgage defaults, and a stock market that doesn't know which way is up, it's time to indulge. At least that seems to be a piece of the logic behind this report, encouraging would-be videoconferencing customers to go HD.

Go ahead, shout me down on this one: Video remains the most gratuitous enterprise application out there, after nearly 20 years of trying to establish itself as strategic. So just because high-definition systems have dropped below $10,000 per end-point, it's time for some really clear conferences. Hell, OC-192s are dropping in price, too -- connect the whole company up because we really need to see each other!.

Call it the coming wave of anti-extravagance (Al Gore's inconvenient truths should have prepared you for this). As companies slash staff or go out of business entirely, as budgets shrink or spending gets frozen entirely, it's hard to imagine there are lots of companies wondering how they can see Chip in sales better on those Monday morning con calls. Maybe Chip ought to worry about getting his numbers up before he finds himself peddling used codecs door to door.

Give $30,000 or $40,000 to IT and they might be able to hire another part timer, buy some more storage, or automate some critical function in the data center.

Give it a rest, I hear you saying. These consultancies are paid to make these audacious, ill-timed statements encouraging us all to throw perfectly good money away. Oh, right. But is it really so unthinkable for one of them to tell an impatient client, "Sorry, not now. Especially not right now"?

Timing's everything. That's easy to see, even without HD.