OK, here is your mission if you chose to accept it. You get a phone call from someone you know. They are tired of working at the office downtown and are planning to move their work home. But, they have no equipment for the home office. No gear or technology whatsoever.
He/She has come to you for advice on what to get. What is the must have technology and gear he/she has to get for his new home office? Leave your comments here and lets have fun with this one. I will post the results sometime in the next week as a post answering your friend’s question.
Good phone with a good headset. I’m using Aastra 480e phone with a Plantronics Starset headset. Love the big display of the phone and I have yet to find a Bluetooth headset as good as a wired one.
As I am in the process of preparing to bring an office home after 30 years the technology must condense, condense, condense. No more fax machine (too much space) no more rows of file cabinets (too much space) no more large copy machine (too much space) no more paper files (too much space) etc. All those legal treatises, form books, Am Jur, that line the halls of the office - will be gone. Just a thought.
A good computer, and the £399 model at your local computer shop is not a good computer. You need to add RAM get it up to 2GB, it is going to do everything from accounts to communications. It also needs the biggest hard drive that will fit in it. Also think long and hard about the need for a notebook. If you do not take a computer to clients (or maybe never leave the office) then a desktop is much nicer to work on and cheaper than the same spec notebook. If you must have a notebook then think about and external monitor, keyboard and mouse for when you are using it at your desk. If you have ever tried to work on a notebook all day you will understand this.
Regards
Kevin
I’ll second Kevin’s post. Whatever tool you use the most in your home office, do not go cheap on it. If you’re on the phone all the time, get a nice phone and headset. I just received the Calisto Pro for being a finalist in the Telewho contest. It’s pretty sweet.
If you’re on the computer all the time, do some research into whether a Mac or PC would work best for you, spend the money you need to, and don’t skimp on the accessories. Get a good monitor, get a nice bag or sleeve for your laptop if you’re mobile.
Really though, the important thing is not to skimp on the important stuff. I rarely print, so I bought a cheap printer. I do a lot of web design, photography and video, so I bought an iMac and a Drobo. Expensive, but very much worth it for my productivity and the quality of my output.
It’s your business. Don’t cheat yourself out of quality.