Computer - You will need a good computer system with reasonable
memory, disk, and processor speed to edit documents and to send and
receive email. Depending on your business, and an special software
requirements, you might need a more powerful system, but if all you
will be using your computer for is word processing, email, and surfing
the web, most basic systems priced at around $1,000 should be adequate
for your needs. While I presonally prefer Linux as an operating
system, unless you are very advanced computer users and already
familiar with maning a Linux system, my advice is that you get a
system running the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, which will
likely already be installed on the system you purchase. Most
commercial software runs on Windows XP, whereas running Linux more
understanding by users and there is lots of software that will not
run.
It is absolutely critical that you run antivirus software on your
system, and you should also enable your windows firewall (part of XP),
or an alternative firewall from Norton or McAffee to protect your
system from viruses and worms. Be sure to update the virus definition
files on a regular basis.
With any computer system it is important to have tools and a schedule
for backing up your data so that the data is not lost if you computer
is damaged or stolen. This is particularly important for your home office
system. In addition to backing up the data to local media
(e.g. writable DVD's), I suggest also storing one copy of your backup
off site (at work if you have another office, at a relatives house, in
a safe deposit box). Keep in mind, however, that any confidential
data stored on backups needs to be protected appropriately especially
when stored off-site.
Please see the computer page for
recomendations of other software you might want to install.
- Internet access - You will want high speed internet access from
your computer. See the internet access
page for more information about your choices for internet access. In
particular, for your home office, you will want to consider setting up
a local area network so that you can share your network connection
across more than one computer and allow shared access to printer's,
scanner's, and fax machines connected to your network. Your internet
connection can become your main connection to clients. Use a quality
service to provide internet, phone and teleconferencing.
- Printer - You will need at a minimum a black and white printer. I
recommend a laser printer as they are faster, provide higher quality
output than an ink-jet printer, and are less expensive in the long
run. You will pay more up front for the printer, but you will pay
less per page for supplies (e.g., you can probably get paper and toner
for around 3.5 cents per page or less). Though discouraged by the manufactueres, for
many printers you can reduce the cost even further by refulling the
toner cartriges yourself. If you need color printing, it might be
more cost effective to get a black and white laser printer, and a
separate laser or ink jet color printer, depening on your color
printing requirements.
I strongly suggest that you consider Laser multi-function printer,
which also serves as a scanner, fax, and copying machine. If you have
a need for any of these additional functions, the combined package
will use less table space than would multiple devices. The cost will
also be less than the combined cost of the invidiual devices. The
other option to consider is a network ready printer or multi-function
device. If you set up a local area network in your house, this will
allow the pinter to be used from any of your computers without having
to move it around or disconnect and reconnect wires.
After considerable research, I selected the Brother Laser
Multi-Function printer for my home office. There are three versions
of this printer, which I describe below. All versions provide a laser
printer supporting up to 2400x600 dpi at up to 21 pages per minute, a
color canner with a resolution of up to 600x2400 dpi, both a flatbed
and automatic document feeder, and a fax machine. If purchased at a
good discount, you can expect to pay from around $400 to $575
depending on the model. Because they offer significant discounts,
most sites will not display the price until you add the item to your
shopping cart. You may have to add the item to your card to see the
price, then remove the items from your card if you do not want to make
the purchase.
- Brother MFC-8440 Laser Multifunction Printer - Supports single
sided printing, and connects to your computer via USB (i.e. it does
not have a network interface). If you only occasionally require two
sided printing, you can do so manually by printing odd pages first,
then taking the ouput and putting it the paper tray pinted side up,
then prining even pages.
- Brother MFC-8840D Duplex Laser Multifunction Printer - Supports double sides (duplex) printing, and connects to your computer via USB (i.e. it does
not have a network interface).
- Brother MFC-8840DN Network Duplex Laser Multifunction Printer - Supports double sides (duplex) printing, and connects to your local area network, supporting printing, scanning, and faxing from multiple computers and email access for your faxes.
- If you buy the MFC-8440 and the MFC-8840D and later install a
local area network, you can upgrade these to network versions by
purchasing and installing a special network card.
- Be sure to consider the rest of the
all in one printers. Consider also the Brother color laser printer for home office use. To help you organize your home office you might also want a Brother label printer.
- Scanner - A scanner provides a way to read physical documents,
drawings, and photographs into a computer so that they can be stored,
integrated in documents, printed, or faxed. Most scanners come with
optical character recognition software that can read the words off a
scanned page and insert the words into a wordprocessor or other
application.
If you need both a scanner and a printer, I suggest
getting a multi-function printer as described above. The scanners on
such printers are usually capable of scanning in color even if the
printer is black and white. You will want to consider the resolution
and featurs of the scanner when choosing such a multi-function pinter.
- Fax - It is no longer necessary to get a second phone line to support a
home office fax machine. Many fax machines work fine on one's primary
phone line and are even compatible with answering machines, although
there are likely not compatible with the voice mail services offered
by your phone service provider. Fax machines are also not compatible
with cell phones, and will likely not work with internet based local
telephone services (the will work with cable based phone services like
those offered by comcast).
If you will be using a fax machine on your primary phone line, then
when choosing a fax machine, be sure to read the features to make sure
it will work for your setup.
If you do not need a physical fax machine, there are options for
sending and receiving faxes that do not require the use of your phone
line at all. For around $8 (in March 2009 on an annual contract for
up to 300 pages per month),
RingCentral Fax
will provide you with a dedicated fax number and will email faxes
received on that number to your internet mailbox. You can send faxes
from your computer by "printing" them and emailing them to the fax
server. Depending on the number of faxes you send, this could be
cheaper than gettng a second phone line for your fax machine, although
still more expensive than sharing your primary phone line with your
fax. To send a fax of a paper document using RingCentral Fax requires a scanner to scan the
document before it can be sent over the internet to the RingCentral Fax servers. Service like RingCentral Fax are very usful when you are away
from your home office since the faxes are emailed and can be viewed
anywhere you have a network connection. See the telephone page of this
this site for more information on phone lines for FAX machines, and
internet fax services.
Some multi-function printer fax devices, in particular, the networked
version of the Brother unit described above (MFC-8840DN) are capable
of emailing a fax when it is received, providing the ability to view
your faxes by email from a fax machine connected to your primary phone
line.
- Copy Machine - If you need a copy machine for your office my
recomendation is to invest in the multi-function printer described in
the printer section of this page. For those times when the purpose of
making a copy is to keep a copy of a document you are sending to
someone else, and where you would likely discard the copy after some
action is completed, you can use the scanner function of the
multi-function printer to scan the document to disk, saving paper and
print costs, and making it easier to find the documents you need it.
If you ultimately need the copy, print from the scanned copy. When it
is no longer needed, delete it from disk.
- Telephone - You will need a telephone within ready reach of your
desk. If you need frequent access to the phone and others in your
family often tie up the phone, you should consider a second line for
your office. If your phone is used infrequently, consider a second
phone number (which rings differently) for a single phone line. Your
phone service provider likely offers this service under the name
"distincive ring". While a cell phone can be used as a second phone,
or even as a primary phone, it is not recommended for used in a home
office because the connection quality will somtimes interfere with
your ability to communicate. If you require a fax line, a cell phone
will not work. See the telephone page
of this site for more information on your choices for telephone
service.