My Home Office Setup

Seeing as how I'm sharing information on creating your own ideal home office I thought it might be an idea to share how my own home office is setup. I don't have any pictures of it just yet (I need to tidy my desk first!) but here's how I organize myself and what equipment I use.

First off where my office is located. I opted for the corner of the main bedroom in the house. Why? I'm a lazy workaholic is the best explanation I can offer. My business is not people facing so the location of my office is down to my own personal preference. I'm currently looking at dedicating another room in the house to the home office I've always wanted. Watch this space :-)

My old desk has recently been replaced with a fitted model built by a local carpenter for about $150. This included the exact desk I wanted plus some basic shelving. The desk itself has two huge drawers - one for computer supplies and the other one holds files and spare copy paper. $150 was an absolute bargain as far as I'm concerned.

The chair I use is one I bought from a call centre I used to work in (long story I might share at another time). They were throwing out a stack of chairs worth hundreds of dollars each so I bought 3 of them for $75. This chair is ideal because it's comfortable enough to sit in for hours on end and has great lower and upper back support. Call centres have to provide ergonomically sound chairs for their staff so these chairs would normally cost over $300 each.

My computer is a Dell Pentium 4 model, 2GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 256MB PCI Express graphics card with a 19" Dell LCD monitor. It has the usual DVD RW drive and memory card reader fitted. I got the surround speaker option with it and the cordless mouse and keyboard. I also have a 160GB Western Digital external USB hard drive, a few memory sticks, a PDA and a basic laptop that I use.

I use a Dell 924 combi printer/scanner device. They bundled it with my Dell when I bought it and to be honest it's a great little printer. The old HP 970cxi I used for years is still kept on standby - just in case. I do plan on getting a heavy duty inkjet printer or color laser printer in the near future. All to do with some publishing ideas I have in mind.

My Internet connection is a 3MB DSL line which I have networked around the house with a wireless router. This is just handy for when I want to get lazy and take the laptop out in the garden or down near the TV :-)

Does all that seem like overkill? I don't think so. My business is web based and my PC needs to be able to run 4 - 8 large applications without falling over and rebooting itself. The external hard drive is for file backups (I couldn't live without it to be honest). The PDA and laptop are for some training consultancy work I undertake from time to time. I'd replace my 3MB DSL with a 5MB if it was available - when you're working online speed is of the essence.

So that's basically it. Now you know my home office setup. I'll put up a picture or two in the near future... when I actually get some of the clutter off my desk!