Larry Smith knows he is putting marital harmony at risk. Mr. Smith, 37, is the editor of Smith, an online magazine he founded, and he loves to work in bed at all hours—midafternoon, 2a.m. if insomnia strikes, then again in the morning.

　　“Sitting there in bed half awake with a cup of coffee is extremely pleasant,”he said. Yet Mr. Smith is all too aware of his wife’s mounting disapproval of his routine and suspects that a laptop-in bed ban could be imminent. As electronic devices get smaller, people tote their technology around the house more than ever. And as the number of home wireless networks also grows, laptops—along with Treos, BlackBerries and other messaging devices—are migrating into the bedroom and onto the bed. The marital bed has survived his-and-her book lights and the sushi-laden bed tray. Can it also survive computers that tether their owners to the office or make the bed the workplace itself?

　　Relationship experts and those who study technology in people’s lives hold divergent views on the topic.

　　 “The most comfortable spot in the world is in the bed, and that’s where people start their day and end their day,” said Ken Anderson, an anthropologist and a senior researcher at Intel Research in Beaverton, Oregon.

　　Mr. Anderson has been studying people’s routines since 2002 in an attempt to understand the role technology plays in their daily lives. In a paper published with three colleagues, he found more technology ending up in the bedroom. One woman Mr. Anderson kept track of for months had trouble sleeping unless her husband was at her side. So he joined her in bed with his laptop as he continued his work.

　　Mr. Anderson viewed this in a positive light, as the husband’s effort to be considerate of his wife’s needs. “The whole idea of being co-present is very important these days,” he said.

　　But as some marital experts point out, in relationships under strain a computer in bed can be used to avoid intimacy, not to foster it.

　　Laptop computers aren’t the only pieces of electronics to work their way into bedrooms.

　　Candace Falk, who lives in Berkeley, California, has grown so accustomed to a constant third presence in her marriage—her husband’s handheld Treo—that its arrival in their bed seemed inevitable.

　　She said she did not like having Bitsie, the Treo’s nickname, in the bedroom. “I find her most annoying in her tininess and under the covers,” she said. “The buzz that goes off in the middle of the night to remind him of something he has to do is positively annoying.”

　　But because Ms. Falk and her husband, who is a hard-working public-interest lawyer, respect each other’s work, they make room for it. “It’s a kind of ménage a trios that I didn’t choose, but there it is, every day and night,” she said.

　　Mr. Smith, who lives in New York, might soon find his bedtime computer use relegated to business trips. And Piper Kerman, his wife, clearly wouldn’t mind.

　　“There is something about that tap-tap-tap that makes me a little crazy,” she said.