Now that it’s become all too clear that many of you will be joining in working from home for the long haul, here are my thoughts on equipment to consider to make the most of your home office. We’ll do this by taking a tour of my home office, the gear I’m using, and the equipment I wish I was using. Yes, just like you, I can’t buy the latest and greatest every year. In fact, I’m still running PCs as servers that are well over 10 years old. But I also focus on what you can buy now. I’ve worked in crowded press rooms cheek to jowl with my fellow journalists, and I’ve worked on one corner of a friend’s kitchen table. You do what you must, but if you can you have a dedicated space for your office, that’s ideal. In my case, my home office has about 300 square feet. That’s overkill for most of you, but if you can set aside a room to call your own for work, do so.
Final thoughts
After 30 years of working from home, I have a clue or two about what needed to get the job done – whether you’re just down the street or a thousand miles from the office. Hopefully, I’ve given you some ideas on how to equip your home office. Good luck and make the most of it. I fear, whether you want to work from home or not, we’re all going to work from home for months – if not years – to come. You don’t have to get my CyberPower 1500 UPSs, but you must get a UPS. You can still get a bigger UPS, but I don’t like to put more than four PCs and their associated gear on a single UPS. You should also get the fastest possible internet connection. Now that we’ve moved our business meeting from the conference room down the hall to Zoom, you’re going to need all the speed you can get. To bring that speed into your house, I use several different methods. First, for security, privacy, and maximum bandwidth, you can’t beat Gigabit Ethernet. For small offices/home offices (SOHO), I rely on network switches from D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear. For smaller networks, I use a NETGEAR 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Unmanaged Switch (GS108). To do that, I rely on Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices. My first choice is the: Western Digital My Cloud. And, by the way, when I said, you must back up your work, I meant it. If you have work stored at home, I guarantee that, if you don’t back up, you will lose it just when you need it the most. I also use older computers as servers for this. That Windows PC in the closet, which could never run Windows 10, may be just what you need for free NAS. Just add an easy to use Linux distro, such as Linux Mint, and run Nextcloud on it for easy access from all your devices, and you’re ready to go. I also found that I was using its built-in scanner constantly as well. I expect you’re in the same boat. We may never get to a paperless office. That being the case, I use ana HP OfficeJet Pro 8610. Unfortunately, it’s no longer available. So, if I had to replace it today I’d get an HP M9L66A Officejet Pro 8710 All-In-One printer. In 2020, I currently have 20 working machines. Why so many? Because I’m constantly evaluating different operating systems, programs, and PC peripherals. You don’t need anything like that many. If you do have numerous PCs, though, I highly recommend you get a KVM switch. These enable you to use one keyboard and monitor with two or more computers. I use these all the time. While there are many high-end KVMs, I find for most purposes IOGear’s reasonably priced KVM switches such as the 2-Port USB DVI Cable KVM Switch are great. To go along with that, you need a comfortable keyboard. For me, that means one with mechanical keys with a solid-click feeling. I found my perfect keyboard in 1994: Creative Vision Technologies’ Avant Stellar. Sixteen years and over a million words later, I’m still using it. While you can still find them if you look hard enough on eBay, I also recommend the newer Logitech G513 RGB Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard. My main Linux desktop is a Dell Precision Tower 3431. This model’s no longer available. If you’re on a budget, I’d get a Dell Precision 3440. I’d get it with an Intel i7 processor, NVIDIA Quadro P620 video, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. I’ll need to install Linux on it, but I can do that in my sleep. This configuration’s list price is $1,259. Soon, after all, besides running ChromeOS, Android, and Linux, they’ll also be running Windows. My Pixelbook Go comes with a low voltage 1.3GHz Core i5-8200Y processor., 16GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a 13.3-inch 1920x1080p touch display. To power the display, it uses Intel UHD 615 graphics.
