What I want to talk about in this post may not be your typical GTD productivity tip or hint. However, I do think some of those working from a home office are truly missing a major part of being productive. You can have and use all of the best and greatest planners and graphs you can find. But if you are skimping on the actual tools in your home office you are not going to be productive.

The very first thing you have to have is good reliable technology in your office. Don’t skimp on your computer. Spend some money on this very important tool as it is without a doubt one of the most important ones you will use every single day. The excuses I hear are usually the same. “I can’t afford to get what I want.” “Oh, the one I have will get me by.” “This one works OK.” And on and on and on.

How productive can you really be if you are spending more time fighting a slow and sluggish computer? How productive can you really be if you are spending your time keeping that old computer working? I have had my MacBook now for right at 2 years. It still works and works well. It could “get me by.” And, it is paid for. But, I could be more productive with a new model MacBook Pro. Or better yet, a Mac Pro desktop. I am going to get the MacBook Pro because I like to take my office with me when I am out of the office.

And yes, the MacBook Pro is going to cost me some dough. Do I have the spare money just sitting around, most likely not. Do I have to have the tools that make me the most productive, yes and so do you.

I don’t know how many of you know anything about farming and the cost of machinery. I like to equate buying office technology to buying farm equipment. Productivity and being efficient is the key to modern day agriculture. If a farmer is not using the more advanced and most reliable equipment, he is not going to be producing at his/her fullest ability. The same applies to those of us who work from a home office.

Usually, those of us who work from a home office don’t have employees. (Thank God). And we have to rely on our tools to get done what needs to be done. We can not afford to just get by. Get the best technology you can for your home based business which will do the job you need to do.

Remember one thing, how is it going to look if you are competing with a business that has employees and you both are working on a new project and you run into a snag because your tools fail you. Equip yourself with the tools so you can compete and be successful.

We will discuss more about what you need to equip your home office in future posts. In the meantime, please, please leave your comments on what other tools you feel you have to have to compete and be productive. Also, I know this post is going to generate some negative thoughts on your part. Tell me what you are thinking. If you disagree, tell me in your comments. I do not hold any ill feelings to any of our readers who disagree. In fact, we grow and change when someone has a different view.

Related posts:

1. What is the must have technology for a new home office?
2. The Paperless Home Office - Part 3 — Hardware
3. Must have travel gadgets for the Home Office Warrior

I have been trying to decide over the last month or so what applications on my iPhone I could not live without and below is what I have come up with. Please add to it in the comments if you have some you feel I missed.

I could keep going and list even more applications I am using on my iPhone. However the list above are those I would not be without for now. In a future post, I will list some more and if you leave your suggestions in the comments, I will include a “Reader’s List of iPhone Applications” too.

Related posts:

1. Essential Tools for the Home Office Warrior Who Works Online
2. Third Party Applications on the iPhone
3. Reminder: Who do you want to Jott™?

Give it a try if you ever need to send a fax. Its user interface is easy to follow and it is one of those web apps that just works.

Related posts:

1. Web-based Network Drive Using Box.net and your Mac
2. Seven Tax Savings Tips for Home-Based Indies (Independents)
3. Must Have Applications for the Home Office Warrior

I will be giving a talk on Monday concerning technology and the end user. Mainly from the perspective of someone who works out of a home office in a rural area. How such technology makes that possible and how without it, we can not be competitive with those in the city. Then I will be doing some one on one visit with some providers and will be on a focus panel too. Should be interesting to say the least.

The one point I plan to hammer home is the fact we have to have such technology, mainly high speed Internet services in the rural area for there to be continued economic growth. It has to be reliable and priced right. And it has to work.

If any of you have anything you would like me to bring up or look for, please leave a comment to this post. This should be a fun and educational time for me and I do plan to tweet and blog about it too.

Related posts:

1. Home Office Snapshot — Mark Shead (Productivity501)
2. The Home Office of the Future
3. Vonage Pro℠

Since I will be out of the office so much and since I need to take the tools I need with me, I thought I would outline what I take for you here.

Just so it is no surprise to you, and I am sure it isn’t, the first and most important piece of equipment I always have with me is my trusty Apple MacBook . Using the MacBook, I just don’t worry about opening it up at a conference and it not working. It just does. What more do I need to say. If you want a reliable laptop, get the Apple MacBook .

I have been thinking about what bag I was going to get to carry all my “stuff” and I have decided to get a Timbuk2 Mainly because you can pack it so full of stuff, I know I will have everything with me I will need.

One of the first items, right after my MacBook, I will be making sure is in the bag is my spare video adapter. I one of those at my office to connect my MacBook with to my 19″ flat panel display. And I needed the same adapter to connect it to a digital projector. So, to make sure I did not go off and leave home without it, I purchased an extra one. One of the best investments I made to put in my bag.

Next is my Griffin Airclick USB remote so I can do my Keynote presentations without being tied to my MacBook. You are right, I could use the remote included with my MacBook. And I have, but I like the Airclick better. Gives me more control over the presentation.

I also take with me a Lacie external hard drive. I always do multiple backups of my important files and with this devise, I take it with me when I leave the office. This is just one backup I have. But, I want to make sure I have not only my presentation with me, but my files. You can never be too safe.

Because you never know when you might be able to catch something on video, I do carry my Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (Black) with me where ever I go. This is really an amazing little gadget that should be in everyone’s bag. And what is amazing is the quality of video it takes.

Not only do I carry the Flip, I carry my Canon PowerShot SD750 as you never know when you might have some time to go do some sight seeing. And it has such a small footprint, it takes up very little room in the bag.

I also carry a little gadget which I have found to be wonderful. It may sound silly, but I love the Fisher Bullet - Classic Matte Black w/ Stylus Ballpoint Pen - 400B-S. Not only can I carry a few in my bag, but it fits in my pants pocket too. I use this with my favorite pen to paper tool, the Moleskine Ruled Notebook Large. The two of them were made for each other.

Something else I plan to carry with me this go around is my Apple Airport Express. While most hotels say they have wireless Internet, many of them only have it in select rooms and in the lobby. And I don’t want to be tied to the network cable while I am in my room. So, by taking the Airport Express, I can plug the network cable into it and work wirelessly in my room. Not a big issue. But why not be comfortable.

Finally, I carry my iPhone everywhere I go. I can actually do so many things with my iPhone that I will do an entire post about it and what apps I am using soon. My main point here is that it is a must have gadget I would not leave home without.

Leave a comment to this post and let all of us know what your must have travel gadgets are. Lets keep the conversation going.

Related posts:

1. Home Office Warrior — Road Warrior, What’s in your Bag?
2. Must Have Applications for the Home Office Warrior
3. My Work Anywhere Office

And today is no exception. Tina Hilton who is a regular on Home Office Virtual Assistant has provided today’s guest post about Onebox.

by Tina Hilton:

When I started my small business, I knew I was going to have to choose how to spend my tiny budget in the most effective way possible. I believe that my choice of Onebox Virtual PBX Phone System to host my business phone/fax service was an ideal example of doing just that.

I needed a system that would route my business calls to either my home phone or my cell, depending on just where I might be working. It needed to also deliver my faxes to my e-mail in a format that made it easy to share with my clients, and also allow me to fax files on my computer to clients when I was away from my home office fax machine. Onebox provided me with that and more.

The computerized auto-assistant answers all phone calls to my business number with a very professional sounding message. It announces itself as my personal assistant and asks the party to wait while ’she’ connects them. You also have a choice of recording your own message and uploading it for free or having Onebox professionally record one for you for a fee. I’m a one woman operation, so I didn’t need the additional extensions, but you can add up to four for no additional cost. Each extension acts independently, and has separate forwarding options, etc. I can set up a schedule, for example, perhaps I’m in my home office in the morning, but heading out to the coffee shop to work remotely during the afternoon. I can go into the call forwarding settings and specify which hours I want calls forwarded to my home phone and which hours I want it forwarded to my cell.

If for some reason I’m not available, the system prompts the caller to leave a voicemail. It then forwards the voicemail in mp3 format attachment to my e-mail, along with the originating phone number.

The system automatically recognizes faxes and forwards them to your e-mail in .pdf format with the originating fax number. It will even send you an e-mail if the fax is incomplete. In order to send a fax through Onebox, you have to log into your account online and send it through the web interface. Since the majority of items that I find myself faxing are saved as files on my computer, it works fine for me. For people who prefer to fax directly from word processing applications, etc., it could be considered a bit cumbersome to save the file and then log into their account, open the interface and send the fax that way.

You are also given an e-mail address @onebox.com, which some might find useful, and conference calling capabilities for up to 32 people. There is also a Calendar, Bookmarks, To Do List, Contact storage and Onebox Wireless for your WAP enabled phone. These are features that I haven’t had the opportunity to try out as of yet, although now that I have my new Blackberry I’m looking to test out the Onebox Wireless soon enough.

And what do all of these nifty features cost? Plans start as low as $16.95 a month for 100 free minutes. I started out on the 400 free minute plan for $19.95 but upgraded to the 2000 free minutes for $29.95 plan in order to compensate for the large amount of faxes I receive in relation to one of my clients. For most, the 400 free minutes plan would be more than sufficient for a small business.

This Virtual PBX worked so well for me, my biggest client decided to forgo having an expensive in office phone system installed and uses it for his business. One of his four lines is forwarded directly to me, allowing me to answer calls in relation to the task I complete for him. I can easily differentiate his calls from my own, because his Onebox business number shows up on my caller ID. This allows me to answer in a professional manner with the name of his business, just like I would in a traditional office. No one that calls is even aware that I’m not actually in his offices.

As I said, I feel that Onebox not only gives me a lot of bang for my buck, it also presents a very professional image and provides a huge amount of flexibility for my business. I give it two thumbs up!!

Related posts:

1. Road Warrior — Virtual Assistant Style
2. Cell Phone vs. Landline
3. Land Line or Cell Phone?

Related posts:

1. Dear Santa…, A Virtual Assistant’s Wish List
2. Can I Write-off my Cellphone as an Expense
3. A Review of the Kindle

Recently on Geek-Speak we were provided with another slick way to take advantage of box.net by using it as a network drive on our Mac.

Here is what you do according to Geek-Speak:

Voila - that’s your Box.net filespace… enjoy

This looks like another great way to use box.net.

Related posts:

1. FaxIt Nice — Another Web Based Application
2. Does your home based business belong in the Blogosphere?
3. Recession equals the opportunity to market your home based business

To make your search results appear in a new tab, follow these steps:

1. Launch Firefox.

2. In the address bar, type about:config and hit Enter on your keyboard.

3. Scroll down to browser.search.openintab and double-click it to change the value to True.

Now when you use Firefox’s search bar, your results will always appear in a new tab.

Related posts:

1. Using Gmail to be more Productive — Part 1
2. Home Office Snapshots — The Closet Entrepreneur

And it would appear most Americans feel the same way. Recently in Wired

According to Pew, the cell phone is the technological tool its users would have most difficulty giving up, followed by the Internet and television. Landline phones ranked fourth in the latest survey, just above e-mail.

I would put email ahead of a landline and ahead of television.

Not only do I use my iPhone for phone usage. I just recently setup a Skypein number. It works great. And, it is a heck of a lot cheaper than the $100.00 plus per month I am spending on a dedicated business landline for the home office. I also get my Internet through DSL. So that will be the only “landline” coming into the home office.

Lets keep the conversation going. What are you all using for your phone service in your home offices?

Related posts:

1. Cell Phone vs. Landline
2. Review of Onebox Virtual PBX Phone System
3. Treo user switches to the iPhone

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.

Related posts:

1. Productivity Starts with Equipping Your Home Office with Reliable Technology
2. The Top 100 Ways a Home Office Warrior can Utilize a Virtual Assistant…
3. Cheap ways to Improve Your Home Office

From Wendy’s post:

I’m kind of freaking out right now because I believe that my laptop has died. As in, I can’t even turn it on. I’m using my daughter’s computer for now, which is a short-term solution for the bigger problem of losing the one thing that is critical to my doing business. All the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s are echoing through my brain right now, with the most ironic one of all being that a company offered me a computer backup system for review purposes just last week and I hadn’t gotten back to them yet.

While I can relate to Wendy’s problems and I can certainly appreciate it too. I have to say, I have not had such problems since I moved to the Mac OS almost 4 years ago.

However, knowing that even the BEST operating system and hardware can crap out on you, I use a lot of safe guards to protect my data. Here is how I have equipped my office to deal with all the possibilities.

First of all, and I will keep mentioning this until such time as everyone of you use the Apple computer. It is really what I consider my first stage of defense against problems experienced by my windoze using friends.

But, as I mentioned, I know there can be problems. So, I use both hardware and software to protect, maintain and backup my “stuff”. Wendy mentioned that she did not have all of her emails archived on another device. I use a great program to archive my emails called. Mailsteward. It is wonderful. I set it to do a complete archive of my email on a daily basis. I also set it to do this at 10:00 p.m. each and every night and it does it without any further effort on my part. It places the emails in archive folders I have placed on my “desktop” and I than do a backup of those to my external HD. I always have a daily backup of all of my emails. I and others like me live and die by email. We do most of our communications with clients/customers, vendors, and others via email. I have to have archives of all my emails and this was the best solution I found. And with Mailsteward ,I can search through the entire archive for any email I might need.

Next is one of the new features in OS 10.5.0 and that is Time Machine. Leopard’s built in backup feature. Also a wonderful piece of software. It simple does a backup of my computer during the day. And if I need something from my computer that might be gone for whatever reason, I go to Time Machine and it is there. Effortless security for all my “stuff”.

I also use a program that manages all of my passwords I might need. 1Password is the program I am using. And best of all, it syncs all those passwords to my iPhone. And, I backup all those passwords to my external hard drive. The main thing 1Password does is give me a one stop shop way of managing all my passwords. It also will generate passwords for you. I use this feature and have it generate at a minimum 15 letters and/or number passwords. Just a little added security.

For all my documents, I not only backup to my external HD, burn to DVD’s and use an old 2nd generation iPod, I also use an online service called, Box.net. And for an added benefit of Box.net, I can access all my client files, including all their documents from my iPhone. And with that, I can email documents to clients or others from Box.net and my iPhone if I need to and don’t have my Macbook with me.

Finally, I use an old Mac Mini as a file backup tool. I backup all my client files and documents to my older Mac Mini. I can also access this from anywhere with either my Macbook or my iPhone. I use a service called, SoonR.

What is great about all of the programs I use is they allow me to access most of the stuff I need from anywhere. And if something, god forbid does happen, I have all my “stuff”. It also works right into my paperless office setup.

Drop me your comments here and let us know what you use to make sure your data is safe.

Related posts:

1. The Paperless Home Office - Part 1
2. Using Gmail to be more Productive — Part 1
3. Do you have an out of control email inbox?

Jeff makes some points that actually go along with my concern about making ourselves available 24/7.

“Hello, I’m Jeff, and I’m addicted to my e-mail inbox. I check it at 5 a.m. when I awaken, and at 11 p.m. before I go to sleep. I carry my Blackberry to my son’s evening hockey practices, and weekday lunches with friends. I take my Blackberry and laptop on business trips and vacations, and boot up the computer to see if I’m in the midst of a hotspot connection, or to sniff around for a open network I can connect through (I’m not saying that I actually would connect to an open network; that’s stealing bandwidth, and I would NEVER do that). But I am Jeff, and I’m an unabashed techno-addict…”

Very true. And as he points out, “entrepreneurs are dependent on every prospect, lead, assignment or query that comes our way.” However, at the same time, we can still handle all of this and not keep ourselves so connected. We have to come to some form of balance in our office lives and our home lives.

So whether it’s holidays with the family, a business trip away from the home office, or at the rink with the team, our connections are pervasive. How we balance that connectivity can determine whether we’re addicted to technology, or savvy in our technical prowess.

I have been exploring ways to try to get a handle on all of this. From exploring limiting my email exposure throughout the day. To starting to use my virtual assistant to actually take my phone calls. I will be posting more on this very soon as we explore all of this.

Related posts:

1. Web-based Network Drive Using Box.net and your Mac
2. 5 Tips for a Successful Home Office Business

I know for me, some of the most useful applications I use are web based applications which enable me to collaborate with virtual staff and clients.

First, and most important to my list of applications is the Mac OSX itself. Yes, as if you did not already know this, I use the Mac computer in my home office. In fact, I don’t have a windoze machine in my office. Why, because the Mac OS is in my humble opinion the most reliable OS out there. It just works. I don’t worry about the “blue screen of death” and I don’t worry about viruses. In fact, missing from my list of applications is a virus program. If one considers for a moment the steps in building an office one can not overlook the foundation. The foundation should be as stable, strong and reliable as possible. Mac OSX gives you that. But it also gives you more. Not only is it a wonderful OS, it provides four of the applications I use everyday in my home office. I use iCal, Mail, Address Book and iChat each and everyday in my home office. Best of all, all four will integrate with other programs I also use each day.

Second is my word processor of choice, Pages part of the iWork productivity suite from the Mac.

Pages ’08
Writing comes naturally when you’re using Pages ’08. Start with one of over 140 templates to write beautiful letters, resumes, reports, business plans, and more. And create media-rich newsletters, brochures, and flyers with point-and-click ease.
Highlights

• Streamlined word processing
• Powerful page layout
• Change tracking
• Advanced image tools
• More than 140 Apple-designed templates, including 80 new templates
• Import from and export to Microsoft Word and other formats

Third is my presentation software of choice, also part of the Apple iWork suite, Keynote. Keynote is not a replacement for PowerPoint. It is so much more. I have used Keynote to produce some great slide shows I have used on my Blog for Profit site. I will provide some examples in the future.

Cinema-quality presentations for everyone — with ease. Keynote puts you in the director’s chair and gives you complete control over how you build and deliver your presentation.

Next, and one that may surprise you is Circus Ponies Notebook. It’s a combination outliner and free-form database that lets you clip, annotate, and share unstructured information. Organize your information using a familiar notebook interface complete with pages and tabs. Best of all you can organize a case in a way that makes sense to you. Not the way the software company believes it should be done. You can import photos, images, film clips, and sounds directly into Notebook from ay source. Display embedded media in your Notebook in Media Frames that give you control over the media item. Import any kind of content from the web or from other Mac apps using NoteBook’s built-in Clipping Services. Copy text and other content directly into your Notebooks without leaving whatever app you are working in. You can even pre-edit clippings before sending them to your Notebook.

Notebook also works with iCal where you can set and manage alarms and to do’s for your projects.

Forth, is Skype. I use it to make almost all of my outgoing phone calls. I also use it for conferences, both audio and video. Skype or some other VoIP is a must in a home office.

Fifth, and another one of those applications I would not live without is pagesender. I use pagesender as my out going faxing program. It sits in my printer list and works just like one of my printers. I simple print to pagesender and use its interface to fax out. Pagesender works with my next must have application which is the first web based application I am going to mention and that is MaxEmail.

MaxEmail’s Internet fax service allows my fax messages to be delivered to my email address, so my fax messages follow me anywhere I go. Whether you are at the office, at home or traveling, you can send and receive faxes without a fax machine or dedicated fax line. It is also my outgoing fax line. I have my own personalized fax number for all incoming faxes. Faxes are sent to my email inbox and come in as PDF’s. Both pagesender and MaxEmail are ideal tools to use as you move to a paperless office. They both eliminate the need for paper. And they both eliminate the need for a fax machine.

Next is PDFpenPro. With it, I can fill out PDF forms and edit PDFs easily. Split, combine, reorder, sign and augment PDFs with text, image overlays & watermarks. Signing is as easy as inserting my signature which is saved to my desktop onto any document I want. In my humble opinion, I just don’t see how you could have a paperless office without this application.

For postage I no longer go to the post office to get my stamps. I use Endicia for Mac. You can print mailing labels, envelopes and InstaPostage labels with ease. Print real postage from your Mac. No more standing in long lines at the post office. It works with Apple’s Address Book and the next program I discuss below.

Next up is Daylite. Daylite works at the center of my business, helping me stay on track and deliver on time. It handles all my contacts, calendar, projects and it is another one of those programs that integrates with Apple’s Mail. As they say on the Web site:

Daylite’s real productivity power is in its flexibility. Thanks to an intuitive process called linking, Daylite keeps everything one click away—contacts, projects, opportunities, appointments, tasks, and more. You can work from a daily task list with all your todo’s, or open a project to see all its linked tasks and appointments. If you prefer to stay on the calendar, just open a meeting to see who’s attending. And Daylite’s smart lists help you customize your view, so you can focus on the data that’s important to you now.

Right along with Daylite is Billings2 from the same ones who brought us Daylite, Marketcircle. Billings2 is a great billing program that works and integrates seamlessly with Daylite.

The last application I want to mention in this post is activeCollab. We use activeCollab in our business, G2 Web Media to manage our projects and to collaborate with each other on what needs to be done. It works the same as Basecamp but sits on your own server. We may switch back to Basecamp in the near future since 37signals seems to keep adding new ways to use Basecamp and its other applications.

Next week we will do a post about the other web based applications we are using with both Home Office Warrior and G2 Web Media. In the meantime, leave a comment with the applications you find you can’t live without in your own home office.

Related posts:

1. Top iPhone Applications for the Home Office Warrior
2. Business Applications for the Mac
3. Home Office Warrior — Road Warrior, What’s in your Bag?

Even the mention of the word causes some people to imagine lost data, disaster and panic. People also put the word paperless office in the same sentence “that it won’t happen in my lifetime.” First of all, there is no reason for such images. And second, get use to the idea of the paper less office. It is here for some and coming for others.

Quite frankly, I can not envision a home office without the term paperless office in the same sentence. I actually started moving towards the paperless office before I moved my office to the home January 2005. There were a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact of saving space. Physical space to be exact. Most if not all home offices have a set amount of space to work with. And the last thing we need is a pile of paper, a pile of files and a wall full of 4-drawer file cabinets taking up valuable real estate.

But, there are other reasons to move your office to the paperless office. Take for example the fact that almost everyone I talk to who works from a home office uses a laptop computer as one of their main computers. And when we leave the home office for business reasons, or for any reason for that matter, we take our laptops with us. When this occurs, wouldn’t it be great to take our office with us? When I leave the home office and because I utilize a paperless office, I take my entire office with me. All my client/customer files are with me. All my tools are with me. No matter where I go, because I use a paperless office, my office is with me.

One thing to remember about making the transition to the paperless office is there is plenty of technology which will enable you to do this. There is a wide range of scanners and some are very reasonably priced. (I will discuss technology in a very near future post). And best of all, most of the scanners today come bundled with some great software to handle your virtual filing.

Most are reluctant to make the move to the paperless office. And some are just not comfortable giving up paper completely. Let me assure you, you don’t have to give up paper completely. I still use paper to make handwritten notes of conversations and ideas I am working on. However, I am moving closer to using my mindmap program more and more for the projects we are working on. I still find myself grabbing the notepad and jotting down ideas. And I still keep original documents that I feel I might need sometime. But, my paper files don’t consist of much. Before I moved to the paperless office I had lined along one wall in my home office four 4-drawer file cabinets. Now I use a file drawer to keep the few paper files I still keep.

When you make the move, make the move. When you get your mail, scan it. When you get a fax, get it through your computer and file it on your computer. Don’t print it. And please don’t print any of the emails you get. File them on your computer. You should set yourself up what I like to call a virtual file cabinet. And you can have multi virtual file cabinets on your harddrive just like you would have on your office wall. Have one for your projects with sub-folders for each project. Have one for clients and each client should have their own file folder in that main client folder on your desktop. And, for each client I have subfolders for each type of document I might be handling with that client. (I will show you how I do this in a future post).

In addition to what I have already discussed, you should have virtual file folders for all your bills and tax information. Keep in mind, you want to have everything filed in your virtual office so you don’t have those piles of papers in those in and out baskets on your desk. What you will find is your office is cleaner and you will be more organized. Trust me it works.

Finally, and the last item I will mention in this post. Backup, backup, backup. I do multi-backups of all my virtual files. And you should keep one of them offsite at least weekly. External hard drives are pretty cheap now and most computers come with CD/DVD-RW’s. There is no reason to not backup.

If you are working on moving to a paperless office or already using this method, please post your comments here. If you have questions about moving to the paperless office, post your questions here. This post is the first in what I hope will be an on-going series of post on the paperless office. I am a firm believer in the paperless and what it can do for the Home Office Warrior.

Related posts:

1. The Paperless Home Office - Part 3 — Hardware
2. The Paperless Home Office — Part 2 — Software
3. Painless to Paperless Office

Recently the Kiplinger online version had a story about the “The Office of the Future.” And thanks to Build a Solo Practice, LLC for the heads up on this one.

Here is what they saw as the office of the future:

Electronic wallpaper covers the walls. When you’re not using it to show charts, graphs and other business presentations, it will be easy to switch to between pictures of the kids or some other pleasing images. Office chairs will have built-in sensors to detect your stress level. Depending on the result, the chair can then gently suggest a brief nap or exercises to help decompress.

The “office computer” is just a wide, high-definition laptop monitor with a wireless connection to a central server. If a keyboard is needed, the monitor can project one on the desk or a soft pad for virtual typing. But, more often than not, you’ll typically bark out voice commands to the machine. Say “Display the Perkins account,” and the computer will oblige with a slew of information about the client: Financial numbers, past orders, a video of a recent meeting, information the client has posted on the Internet recently and more.

So, what will the home office of the future look like? If we consider for a moment, those of us who work out of an office at home, are for the most part at the leading edge of technology. The Home Office Warrior has to take advantage of such technology to compete with those businesses that operate from a more traditional location. Usually we don’t have onsite employee to provide support. And we certainly don’t have an onsite IT department to provide support.

We have to use technology. We use it to collaborative with our virtual assistants and with other home office warriors on projects and businesses. Computers are changing so fast right in front of us, we can hardly keep up. Large touch screen computers are here. Maybe not priced so we can all afford them. But at one time a small TI calculator cost 100 times more than it cost now. We will see large touchscreen computers in the very near future. I also firmly believe video chat and conferences will become more and more common in the workplace. And what a great tool for the home office warrior to use. We could be using such technology now. But, in my own experience, few do.

Voice recognition virtual typing will become common place as companies improve on that technology too. No longer will we have to type anything. We will just say it and it will appear on the screen. I know there is voice recognition software now. However, it is has been my experience that it is lousy.

The home office of the future will do nothing but increase the number of people who will be able to work at home. The distance between the more traditional office and the home office will narrow because technology will enable the distance to be zero. Technology and the Internet will be key in this process.

So, what will the home office of the future look like. Post your comments and ideas here. I would love to have some specifics on what you all are thinking.

Related posts:

1. The Paperless Home Office - Part 1
2. Top iPhone Applications for the Home Office Warrior
3. What is the must have technology for a new home office?

But, in my humble opinion, one of the advantages and even disadvantages we have as home office workers is that we are available to our clients/customers almost 24/7. While I don’t think we should be or have to be, it is one advantage we can give are clients. The problem does not lie in the technology. The problem is that due to the technology, clients are expecting their service providers to be available 24/7. We have to educate our clients up front. Inform them just because we utilize todays best technology, cell phones, PDA’s, smart phones, email, laptops and wifi, we may not be available. “Leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as I can.”

I have been considering doing away with my landline completely. I still have some time to decide if this is best. My contract with SBC still has some time on it.

Since I left open the opportunity for “crossfire” in the title to this post. Please post comments as to your position to the 21st century question, cell phone vs. landline.

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1. Land Line or Cell Phone?
2. Review of Onebox Virtual PBX Phone System
3. Should we be available 24/7?

“And the Mac OS is the hands-down operating system winner, from the perspective of cost effectiveness.”

Recently CIO.com provided the eight reasons and here they are.

1. Macs bring a better overall value proposition.
2. Mac licensing fees are cheaper.
3. The Mac desktop spawns fewer calls to the help desk.
4. Mac users are more productive workers.
5. Macs last longer
6. Mac OS is more secure.
7. Mac is just as cost-effective as Windows to manage and administer
8. Add Macs while hanging on to your investments in other OSes. (They play well with others).

In my humble opinion, I can see no reason that the Mac computer is not the perfect computer for the home office warrior. When you consider the fact that the Mac OS is truly the most stable OS on the market and the 8 financial reasons above, if you work at home, get a Mac.

Now if this don’t generate some comments from the windoze users, I don’t know what will.

Related posts:

1. Five Reasons to Start a Blog
2. 4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Become a Virtual Assistant
3. Telecommuting, Teleworking and going Green

And they wonder why nearly one-half of all business are now home based businesses. And that is according to the U.S. Census Bureau News. Why on earth would you want to trade in the opportunity to take an afternoon walk with your spouse when you could be taking a walk on a Walstation? And to top it off, they cost $6,500.00 each.

I don’t think so.

Related posts:

1. Is Your Family Really Benefiting When You Work at Home?
2. Your Commute Can Kill You…Work From Home
3. Work Life Balance — Outsourcing and the Home Office Warrior

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