Hi! welcome to the Frugal Technology Show, I am your host Bruce Nailer, where every week we talk about technology for small businesses that are going to help you make money and save money with technology. I thought an interesting topic today would be, home office technology.
Hey, are you dreaming to be the next Donald Trump or opening the next, building the next McDonald's or got a dream out there that you are wanting to start your own business? A lot of us are. You will probably start the first office of your new empire right in your own home, your apartment. Just where we can find the space.
So, we thought we could talk about home office technology a little bit today and I got to admit, I am probably one of the kings of home office tech. I can say, it's a great way to start a business. You save a lot of money. You don't have the office rent or the utilities. You are working right out at your home. You are making money. You certainly reduced your expenses as much as possible, but there are some important and hard decisions you need to make when you look at going that avenue.
And so, I thought I would break the technology down into different components. The first thing you have to look at, of course, is what kind of computer you are going to use. The kind of device you might use for doing routine office techs like scanning, printing, copying, faxing. How you are going to communicate? What type of phone line you need? Are you going to use a one from the Telco or are you going to use a Vonage account, Skype something like that? We are going to talk about a few other things as well as far as communications.
And then also, what about mobility and portability as well, the things like Smartphones and so forth. So let's get started. So the first thing I wanted to talk about was the argument of should I go with a laptop or should I go for the desktop. Look, there is pros and cons to each. Laptops tend to be much more energy efficient than a desktop. It's almost a ratio of 10:1. Now whether that's an accurate number or not, I don't really know. But I googled it, on my old pal Google and that's the figure that I had found.
They also tend to be a lot more powerful today than what they used to be. So a laptop can make an excellent replacement for a desktop. Those monitors out there, or displays, I should say, up to 17 inches wide, and that's a very good size pace. Laptops, they are portable, right. I can unhook and go to a meeting. You can travel with them and so your data and your applications and everything is right there on your laptop and that's a very, very attractive thing right there to have that level of mobility.
They also -- desktops, you have your monitor and keyboard and mouse and all that. Well, you can get the same thing for your laptop what was called a docking station. Docking station basically allows you to slide that laptop in and you can connect peripherals to it, such as a large LCD monitor, webcams, connect to the network, the printer. All that sort of thing. So, it's kind of a hybrid type solutions between a laptop and a desktop and that's a very, very cool feature. So, if you are looking at a laptop, make sure to take a docking station in the consideration for your business.
And then finally, they save space. They are just a lot smaller than a desktop. You don't have a tower to contend with and everything is kind of all-in-one with the laptop versus a desktop. Now the pros of a desktop tend to be,
1. They are less expensive for the same amount of performance. I mean, there is a cost in that miniaturization of a laptop. The smaller logic board that drives the miniaturization, tends to cost a lot more money. So, if it's performance that you are after for the dollar, than a desktop is still going to provide you with the maximum amount of performance for your computing dollar. And because you are more powerful, they also tend to be more powerful and have more features for the same amount of money, things maybe more like multimedia card readers, maybe DVD burners, maybe bigger hard drives, faster process or as more RAM, yet for the same price of a laptop PC.
So you are certainly getting more of computing value for your or more value for your computing dollar. They are also easier and less expensive to upgrade. In a lot of laptops it's a pretty dug on pricing propositions to get your laptop upgraded. If you can upgrade certain components and all things like graphics cards that sort of thing, and which can be much more easier done in a desktop PC. Quite frankly you are less likely to drop, break or get your desktop stolen than a laptop PC.
I have a client of mine at one time that accidentally closed in his laptop with an ink pen up on the function key row and that's something a lot of people do. I am guilty, as I charged on my desktop keyboard is to throw ink pen up there and whatever and then closed it and that cracked the screen and it took about $600 to repair that laptop screen, because of that accident. So, that is something to solidly keep in mind.
But I have to say, if all things be equal, that a laptop is going to give you a more versatility than a desktop PC, and I think in this case, if I were starting a home office from scratch, I would probably choose a portable, a really light weight portable desktop with good battery life and a sufficient screen size to get started versus a desktop, just because I think that the portability factor is so important.
Now, maybe in your business it's not going to be as much as a issue and you know there are times that another mobile might make more sense than a laptop for example. If you are just using a laptop to carry files around and so forth. You may consider a USB thumb drive, you may consider the device like a PDA, what we call Personal Digital Assistant or pocket PC or Smartphone, something like that as opposed to a laptop.
So, you could a desktop and then have your USB thumb drive. So it depends on what you are going to be using it for. So in that technology checklist, ask yourself, Do I need that portability? If the answer is, Yes or if you are the type of person, you want to go out and sit on the patio and use your computer out at the pool or something like that. Laptop is going to make a lot more sense, especially on a budget.
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