Face it. Almost everyone suffers from a bad case of passworditis.

Think, for a moment, of the slew of daily chores that require passwords. The company computer. The home computer. ATMs. Web sites. Voice mail. Car and home security systems.

It doesn't take long to accumulate a dozen or more passwords.

Scribbling them down on Post-its or using the same password for everything is how most people cope with the overload. Either way makes it easier for hackers to invade computer privacy.

Now researchers are moving toward what may be an answer to the password conundrum - pictures.

A number of companies, including software behemoth Microsoft, are looking into various ways that images can be used to replace standard passwords.

Take, for instance, the screens available through a New York company called Passlogix. One picture shows a wet bar. The password is created by concocting a drink from the various items pictured - glass, ice, vermouth, vodka and, voila, a martini. The order that the items are selected becomes the password.

Another screen might ask the user to choose elements from the Periodic Table in a certain order. Still another asks the user to select a number of food items from its "Make a Meal" screen.

Researchers at UC Berkeley who have studied the habits of computer users say laziness plays a major role in most people's choices of passwords. Most people have a tendency to use familiar names, especially those of family members and pets, said Adrian Perrig, a member of the Berkeley team.

A poll conducted by the British domain registration firm CentralNic found that 47 percent of all computer users choose family names in passwords.

"They pick the name of their cat or their dog and then add one digit at the end, if they think they're being clever," said Paul Barrett, whose RealUser Corp. uses pictures of randomly chosen faces as passwords.

Some hacking programs are so sophisticated they use thousands of first and last names, then add any number of character combinations at the beginning and end of the root word to sniff out passwords.

Forgetting passwords, however, is a more common problem of the computer era than hacking, particularly for major corporations that must maintain large help desks to service the company's computer users - often around the clock.

Perrig said 90 percent of people in a test group that researchers evaluated were able to remember the pictures chosen from his Deja Vu program even a week after the test. In contrast, only 70 percent could remember their standard passwords. The reason, he said, is that passwords must be precisely written every time, but pictures demand only recognition.

"People are very good at recognizing images they have seen," said Perrig. "People are not good at precise recall."

Those experimenting with picture passwords are working on several tracks. Perrig's Deja Vu uses computer-generated images that are colorful and abstract. Microsoft is using an intricate picture, such as the various parts of a human skeleton.

Barrett's PassFace makes the user recognize five randomly selected faces in the right order to gain access to the computer. A new user goes through a five-minute training session in which the designated faces appear on the screen until memorized.

There are downsides, of course. Rachna Dhamija, another of the Berkeley researchers, said what people choose is often predictable. She said if pictures are used, men tend to choose things like cars, bridges and coins, and women lean toward picturesque landscapes.

Another is the reluctance of businesses to move away from the old familiar passwords to the new pictures.

Michael Kennedy is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.