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T W E N T Y
f o u r
F
or professionals “with a drive” and “fire in the
belly”, deserting a cushy and secure job for relatively insecure but exciting entrepreneurship
can be a challenge. Due to obvious reasons, home gets chosen as the right place for such
start-up entrepreneurial activities, by consensus. The general tendency, however, is to
overlook the necessary infrastructure required to start an office at home. In this article, we
look at some of the essential information technology components that can help to keep
home offices up and running!
Setting up an office at home once involved buying furniture, plugging in a telephone,
buying a calculator and typewriter, and making sure you had plenty of filing cabinets. You
will still need the furniture, telephone and filing cabinets, but the rest of your equipment
needs are a bit more complex.
First there’s your home computer.These days it’s nearly impossible to run an office without
one. And you will certainly need a printer to go with it. Then, you’ll need a modem for
sending and receiving e-mail and visiting Internet sites. You’ll want to send and receive
faxes, which you can do with your computer and modem, but for many people, it is more
productive to additionally invest in a fax machine.
For those of you who want to get the graphic and text on to the computer, a scanner is a
must. Add in a good office copier, a decent chair so you don’t strain your back and neck,
and you are all set to go. But you don’t necessarily have to mortgage the house to pay for
a home office. There are some good economical options that can make even the smallest
home office a productive place to work.
SOHOMARKET
Considering that millions of Americans work in small offices/home offices (SOHOs), this
market is one of the computer industry’s hottest sectors. Manufacturers have brought out
a wide e-range of products specifically created for the SOHO market.
You have several issues to address while purchasing a home office computer. You need to
choose between a PC and a Mac and then between a notebook or a desktop machine.
The Indian Express April 3, 1998
The SOHO Fervor
