Whether You Need It or Not - Buyers Guide

Home Office Computing, April, 2000 by Eric Grevstad, Cristina Gair

Gadget or good buy? We rate 10 high-tech temptations to show ...

WHEN CHOOSING WHICH PC PRODUCTS TO BUY FOR YOUR home office, you probably think in terms of "affordable versus expensive," "fast versus slow," or some other yardstick. But before you ever get to that point, every shopping spree starts with "want versus need"--the eternal struggle to predict whether a purchase will pay for itself in increased productivity, or whether you're merely trying to justify a tempting high-tech toy.

Obviously, your needs aren't exactly like any other home-based worker's--either in terms of the tools required for your job, or in your ratio of self-discipline to spendthrift (see the sidebars "Your Mileage May Vary" and "True Buying Confessions," respectively). But it's possible to place products at suitable points on the spectrum, from pure practicality to sheer indulgence.

Let's take 10 steps along the scale. For the record, we're not picking winners and losers or implying the following products range from good to bad--just from mild to wild. But what do you think? Which of these wish-list items do you have ... or crave?

An Uninterruptible Power Supply

A backup power supply is about as sexy as a seatbelt, as glamorous as an insurance policy, as exotic as a box of batteries. If your home's power supply is 100 percent perfectly smooth and steady, it would be a needless expense. But if you've ever experienced even one surge, spike, dip, brownout, or blackout--and if you value your data files and documents at anything above zero--it's simply a must-have accessory.

IBM's Office Professional 500 UPS ($169; 773-869-1234, www. ibmups.com) is a good example. All six of its power outlets and two RJ-11 jacks for modem/fax equipment are protected against power surges, and three of the outlets are backed by 500VA/280-watt battery backup that keeps your PC running for up to 30 minutes during a power failure. If you're away from your desk when disaster strikes, the included PowerAlert unattended-shutdown software saves your files and turns your PC off automatically.

A Backup Device

There's a word for people who don't make backup copies of their essential data files: losers--literally. It doesn't really matter whether you choose tape or disk, or an internal or external drive; but it could be a matter of life and death for your business if you fail to back up at all.

That said, we're high on the idea of an external USB backup drive because you can share it among more than one PC--or even between a PC and a Mac. And if it's Imation's SuperDisk USB Drive ($150; 800-854-0033, www.imation.com), backup's not the only benefit: The drive reads and writes both familiar 1.44MB floppies and 120MB LS-120 disks, so it's great for moving files between your desktop and laptop, even if the latter's one of the sleek new slimline notebooks without a built-in floppy drive.

A Flatbed Scanner

Even if you're not a graphics professional, a scanner is a valuable home office tool. It scans images for use on your company's Web site or for desktop publishing or marketing projects--to say nothing of converting faxes and magazine articles to optical character recognition (OCR) text.

Hewlett-Packard's ScanJet 5300Cse ($299; 800-722-6538, www.hp.com) is a midpriced, high-performance, 36-bit color scanner with 1,200dpi optical resolution. Setting up the USB scanner to use with either a PC or a Mac is a plug-and-go affair. If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, the ScanJet makes updating Web pages or sending images via e-mail easy, thanks to four quick-start buttons for scanning, copying, e-mailing, and faxing. And it comes not only with OCR software, but Adobe's PhotoDeluxe Business Edition image editor and Internet Design Shop Gold for would-be Webmasters.

A Smart Wireless Phone

Going on a business trip? A mobile phone is an important business tool for any home office proprietor. And if you really want to stay connected while looking cool, calm, and collected, you'll want a wireless smart phone with e-mail and Web access.

Today's state of the art, the NeoPoint 1000, costs nearly $78 an ounce ($499; Sprint PCS, 800-480-4727, www.sprintpcs. com; or NeoPoint, 858-458-2800, www.neopoint.com). But weighing in at only 6.4 ounces, it's smaller and lighter than some PDA/phone combos that lack its instant access to the Internet and e-mail, to say nothing of its 11-line LCD that minimizes scrolling. It has everything from a 1,000-name contact manager, appointment calendar, and to-do list to voice-activated dialing and quick keypad text entry--and it even doubles as a wireless modem for your notebook PC.

A Portable PC/Projector Pair For Presentations

There's nothing like an LCD projector for turning awkward, cluster-around-the-laptop PowerPoint slide shows into compelling, wall-filling presentations. However, if you don't make pitches to clients frequently, it can be hard to justify a $4,000-plus projector (even with the added bonus of being able to project DVD movies from your PC onto a wall at home). It's also bad manners to make your audience wait while you're fussing with unpacking separate notebook and projector bags and connecting cables.