Home Office Preparation and Review - Get Tools

Hopefully, you've already gotten organized using the previous post, but what about the tools you use every day as an online business and/or home office?  Much will depend on what you do, but here are some ideas for you to ponder. I'm sure you'll be able to think of more and better ideas.

Get tools

Get a computer

The most important and useful tool of course is your computer and peripherals. You'll use it to get online, check and send e-mail messages, record basic data and design you websites and do your online marketing. Perhaps you give online courses or chat support to your clients and website visitors too.

If you do a lot of moving around you might want a "desktop replacement" portable computer. Some people still call them laptops. Otherwise you'll get a better and more upgradeable computer getting a midtower system. Most computer desks seem to be designed for tower systems, so they'll have a place to put that cabinet.

Get peripherals

You'll need a basic printer for printing receipts, online invoices (if your country allows that), and bank statements (for your accountant).  Paperless offices really don't exist, but we're getting closer.  It just won't happen until the tax man and the accountant can keep everything electronically.

Get Input devices

Obviously you'll need a keyboard and mouse. You may not have thought about the need for a graphic drawing tablets. A drawing tablet is great if you do any graphic design work or if you sell products like prints and t-shirts using your art and photography. Painters will need a scanner.

Get a digital camera

On that same thought you'll want to get a digital camera if you do your own webdesign or if you want original art for your webmaster to use. For web only images a good 3 or 4 megapixel camera is fine. Those are getting cheap too.  Digital artists who need images for print need at least 10 megapixels. I just barely get by with my 10 megapixel camera.  It isn't enough though for the largest of prints, but it is enough for everything else.  I can't do much image cropping without severely limiting the print size a visitor can buy.

Get essential software

For any kind of basic wordprocessing and spreadsheet work, just download a free copy of OpenOffice. I believe that is at openoffice.org. If not just do a search online.

For website design, it depends on your needs and level. Many power users love Dreamweaver. The only problem with Dreamweaver is that it doesn't multitask well. If I'm uploading files via FTP, I can't switch to work on another website or change to the online view of files. That can be very annoying.  Other that that it is great.

Digital image work means you'll want a copy of Photoshop.  No, Paint will NOT do what you want to do.  There are some cheaper programs out their that have some limited functionality to edit images, but it might take a couple to do everything you want.

Firefox or Safari will be fine for daily web-browsing. Both are free and run better than Internet Explorer. You'll still want to check your website in Internet Explorer as its method for displaying HTML is not standards compliant and it will often make webpages very ugly and sometimes unreadable.