Bargains for the home - equipment for home offices

Black Enterprise, Nov, 1993 by Julie Moline

Of all the things that daunt aspiring entrepreneurs, setting up the home office often evokes as much anxiety as writing a business plan or applying for a loan. Still, designing your home office requires special care since you'll be spending long days and probably longer nights there, and your productivity may be affected.

Just think of the variables: How much equipment do you really need and at what price? How many phone lines should you have? Can you get by with an answering machine or should you invest in voice mail? And perhaps most important, how powerful a computer do you need?

Whether you are about to embark on outfitting your office or want to revamp what you already have, here are a few suggestions that are also great values.

FAX MACHINES

The linchpin in any successful home office operation is a facsimile machine. But a fax can be expensive, and a second dedicated phone line means an additional monthly charge. To save money, some people have gotten away with a single line for a phone, modem and fax. Of course, they have to switch from one to the other whenever they leave the room.

Now, such systems as the Samsung FX2500 (thermal) fax machine put an end to this drudgery. The combo fax-and-answering machine from Samsung Electronics America also functions as a copier. What's nice about the Samsung is that it can distinguish between incoming fax and telephone calls.

Perhaps someone calls and wants to send a fax while you are on another line. You can put the other call on hold while the fax accepts the document.

Better yet, there's no chance of recording the distinctly irritating squeal and trill of the fax mating call. The Samsung is not sophisticated onough, though, to tell you how many messages there are.

Other features include: polling (an electronic signal that lets another fax know when it should transmit), normal and fine modes, a 16-level gray scale, paper cutter, 10-page feed, and a 60-number memory.

As a copier, the Samsung is more than adequate; although the thermal paper curls, you can buy non-curl paper at an additional expense. For those who don't do an enormous amount of faxing, this is a good buy at a list price of $749. But you can find it for roughly $400 at discounters.

VOICE MAIL

These days, some people would rather dispense with an answering machine and rely on voice mail for handling calls.

Of course, there is no way a business owner who is pinching pennies can afford a $3,000 stand-alone computerized voice mail system. But anyone with a computer can install a fax/modem with voice mail functions, or else buy a voice mail board.

A real gem for only $199 is the Connection 96 from Digicom Systems. Besides providing fax and voice messaging, this internal modem can be upgraded to 14,400 bps. Thanks to its SoftModem technology, you just add new software whenever you want to power up your modem.

Just keep in mind: Voice applications require a fast computer system and a lot of memory - not to mention a certain technical know-how to install, program and maintain. If your line is busy, forget about your PC picking up the call. Nor will you be able to call up your messages when you are away on a business lunch, as you could with a standard answering machine.

Yet another alternative: a voice mail service bureau. For as little as $5 a month (usually averaging about $20), you can access voice messages from a touch-tone phone anywhere nationwide.

THE NOTEBOOK ALTERNATIVE

Okay, a high-powered notebook costs as much or even more than a desktop computer, but prices have steadily gone down. As color screens are enhanced, keyboards improved and memory capacity grows, more and more people will start to see notebooks as a feasible and flexible primary computer system.

Thanks to the invention of the docking system - which may sound like something straight out of Star Trek - you can connect a notebook to peripherals as easily as sliding a paper tray into a printer. In other words, you don't have to shell out a lot of money for two entire systems, one for the office and one for the road.

Several manufacturers offer "companion docks" with a number of expansion slots, drive bays and interface ports that allow you to upgrade to a CD-ROM drive and sound board. Docking bays cost between $300 and $900.

One notebook than can be used as a desktop machine, at under $3,000, is the Z-Note 425Ln Model 200 from Zenith Data Systems. The Model 200 comes with a 25 MHz Intel 486SL microprocessor, 200 MB hard drive, Ethernet LAN (local area network) port and a ready-desk docking station. It also comes preinstalled with Windows for Workgroups, DOS and Windows. Features include a 3.5-inch floppy drive and a portable pointing device.

For $4,199 you can get a little more power. Texas Instrument's TravelMate 4000E WinDX2/40 is a color notebook with a 40 MHz 486 DX2 processor, 8 MB of RAM, 200 MB hard drive and a Microsoft BallPoint clip-on track ball.

LASER PRINTERS

Laser printers have come down so dramatically in price that some published prices look like typos. Sharp Electronics has two new models, JX-9600 and JX-9600PS (PostScript model) offering high resolution (600-dpi) at relatively low prices, $1,395 and $1,745, respectively.