Setting Up Your Virtual Home Office

Welcome to the 21st century where the virtual home office is becoming more and more popular. But in order to have an effective home office you’ll need to take care of a few things.

First of all have a look at your space. Do you have a separate room you are going to use as an office or are you going to incorporate your office into a living room or family room? Decide what will be the best layout for working. Remember you’ll need a desk, filing cabinet, office chair, and few other things to fit neatly into the space you have.

Lighting is one of the things that is most often neglected and yet it an have a serious effect on the quality of your work and the amount of work you produce. Improper lighting can also cause eye strain and affect your mood. So pay attention to your lighting!

Your light should be near your computer so that your work area is well lit. Never place the light where it will be directly in front of your eyes because this causes glare and eye strain.

There are many excellent lamps available that use halogen bulbs which throw a nice clean bright light and take up very little room. Fluorescent lighting is not your best choice as it has an unnoticable flicker that can cause eye strain.

You’ll need to make sure your internet connection is accessable from where you place your desk. If it isn’t you’ll need to either run a phone or cable extension depending on the type of hook up you have.

If you really want to save yourself a lot of grief include in your office a fax machine and scanner. For a very reasonable amount of money you can buy a fax, scanner, and printer combination which reduces the amount of space you’ll need. These combinations also work as a copier eliminating the need for yet another piece of office equipment.

You’ll want to have a CD RW installed into your computer so that you can quickly and easily back up large amounts of data. You could opt for a DVD writer as well if you have the room in your computer. Although nice not nearly as essential as a CD RW.

You’ll need to determine what software you will need to operate your business. Microsoft Office is very standard in the business world. It includes MSWord, Excel, Access, and you can also get it with PowerPoint.

You’ll most likely need a photo package such as Photoshop or Adobe Photo. You’ll likely need a zip package such as Winzip. Winzip can be downloaded for free with the choice to pay and upgrade but the free version does pretty much everything you’ll probably need.

Don’t forget to download Adobe Reader, and if you are going to have to ftp files then you should download one of the shareware ftp packages. If you are going to be designing web sites you’ll need either and HTML program such as Ace HTML or you can purchase a web development software package.

Make sure your computer has at least 512K of RAM. Anything less will be a pain especially if you are going to be doing some serious multi-tasking. The type of printer depends on how much printing you are going to do. You can purchase an inkjet for under a $100 but be prepared to shell out for the cartridges.

If you have a laptop you’ll want a docking station which allows you to plug into a standard keyboard, full size monitor, and printer when you are working in the house.

Make sure your desk has adequate space to work. You’ll likely have papers you’ll need to access and too little work space will be frustrating. You should also have some trays or filing stands so that you can keep current projects organized and at your finger tips.

Make sure you’ve got a calendar handy, your daytimer, and anything else you’ll need. You’ll waste a lot less time running after stuff!

There were many people who were quick to jump into the opportunity of a virtual home office early. But this niche business style still remains largely untouched. It is certain to continue to grow steadily over the next decades.

A virtual office that is set up correctly will be functional and allow you to easily complete your tasks and projects.

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.