THE CUTTING EDGE : World Peace, Cure for Cold and a Good 25 Cup of Coffee : Marketing: Those are about the only 3 claims for the Internet not made at Dell Computer conference.

To hear top computer executives tell it, the Internet is not just a convenient place to get information or make an occasional purchase, it is the future, the promised land and a new era in human history all rolled into one.

Somewhat akin to television evangelists seeking converts--and their money--some of the industry’s biggest names relentlessly beat the drum for the Internet last week at a conference for Dell Computer Corp. customers.

In speech after speech, the pronouncements could hardly have been more sweeping.

“We’re really talking about the death of time and distance,” said Cisco Systems Chief Executive John Chambers. “The Internet changes everything.”

Dell Computer founder Michael Dell said: “The Internet is provoking a profound revolution in business that is far greater than any revolution that has ever been seen. It’s bringing about the demise of brick-and-mortar retailers.”

When words were insufficient, the speakers brought out numbers.

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Craig Barrett said there were 150 million to 200 million “connected” computers in the world today, but that number should be 1 billion in five years.

Sales via the Internet--or “e-commerce” in the industry parlance--could rise to $1 trillion in the United States alone over the next two to three years, up from zero just a short time ago, Barrett said.

“We’re talking about a big, big change. . . . We all have to take advantage of it or get steamrollered by it,” he warned.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates pointed out that 50% of all U.S. homes now have a personal computer, to which Dell added that 90% of those machines were used to surf the Internet.

Of the Fortune 500 companies, Dell added, only 2% did not now have Internet sites.

The advantages of e-commerce were many, the executives said, including lower costs of service, direct connections to customers and the ability to customize products to suit each individual buying on the Internet.

E-commerce, of course, requires computers, lots of them, meaning the computer industry stands to make a bundle from the revolution it is busily touting.

Barrett, for example, said in his speech that the projected increase in connected users and e-commerce would create a demand for “tens of millions” of servers over the next five years. “We have roughly only 5% of the server backbone in place today that we’ll need five years from now,” he said.

And by the way, Barrett added, Intel would be coming out next year with a new 64-bit processor that should be just perfect for those servers.

Amid all the hype, there were a few moments at the Dell conference when the reality of the present brought the future back down to Earth, if only briefly.

Embarrassing software glitches interrupted a couple of demonstrations of Internet wizardry, showing that the road to the wired world still had a few potholes.

In another instance, an attendee left the voluble Chambers speechless when he asked how the Internet was going to affect his business--trucking.

“You’ve tested the limits of my knowledge,” Chambers admitted.

The moment was instructive because, despite all the highfalutin talk about a coming “sea change” in human existence, it raised the question of how much the Internet would actually affect the day-to-day life of the average Joe.

That question has yet to be answered.