To rent: apartment; sleeps 2.8 computers; unique address (on the Web); Linux in all rooms; only geeks need apply.

This isn't quite how Walden Internet Village advertises itself but it is how the complex sees itself: "run by geeks for geeks". The 12-building complex in Houston, Texas, boasts pleasant decor and beautiful landscaped gardens but for the tenants it is trying to attract the most important feature will be the way it is wired for the future, offering the kind of highspeed Internet access enjoyed only by big companies and universities.

"It's a community for hackers," says Mr Alan LeFort, marketing director and network administrator. "It's not easy to find a place where your neighbours are Perl programmers or Linux freaks."

Every apartment has a 10 Megabit per second pipe to the Internet - a connection about 175 times faster that the standard 56k modem. It also has assigned its own unique Web address, so residents can run their own websites from inside their apartments.

"We don't care what they run as long as its not a porn site," Mr LeFort said.

All apartments also have wiring built into the walls for their own little home network. "The average resident has 2.8 machines," Mr LeFort says. "They like to connect them together." The complex also offers several big computers on an internal network, one dedicated to the game Quake and another for storing the GNU/Linux software favoured by most tenants. The few running Windows NT will have to be "educated", Mr LeFort said.

At first sight, Texas with its cowboy image, might seem an unlikely place for a geek community. But Houston is home to Nasa's Johnson Space Centre, Compaq, and a major axis for the engineering, medical, and, of course, the oil and energy industries. Already geeks have snapped up about half the 200 apartments. The company hopes to fill the rest with geeks as non-hackers' leases expire. Rents range from $675 per month for a one-bedroom flat to $1,400 a month for a three-bedroom, twobathroom home. The complex boasts an active social life. Every fortnight is party night when up to 50 people turn up with their computers and hook them into a fast Local Area Network for playing games.

Walden is a pilot project. The company owns five other complexes in Houston and is considering re-wiring three of them for hackers.

Visit Walden Internet Villages at www.waldenweb.com and two of the complex's game sites at www.gamerscircle.com, www.quake2.com