Top style, bottom dollar

Home Office Computing, Nov, 1998 by Catherine Greenman

Equipping a dream home office on a budget? We compare a sky's-the-limit setup with its affordable alter ego

No matter what your budget, outfitting your home office requires careful planning. Deciding how much power you need in a computer, for example, will have you considering a mind-boggling array of choices. The same goes for your printer, fax, and office furniture. To help you figure out your priorities, we put together two offices--one with a no holds-barred budget, and one that cuts a few corners but still keeps you working at full speed. Between these setups, you should find your perfect match.

Top Style ...

If you're looking for computing power that'll help you stay highly productive today, tomorrow, and yes, even a few years from now, the Direction SP B450 from NEC is a good place to turn. In addition to its brawny 450MHz Pentium II processor, 14.4GB hard disk, and 128MB of SDRAM, the Direction desktop comes with an Iomega Zip drive and a 32x CD-ROM drive. Like you, this system is in it for the long haul.

Prices have plunged on formerly cost-no-object flat-panel displays, to the point where you can buy a 15-inch LCD monitor for about half the price of last year's 14-inch model. Eizo Nanao Technologies's new 15-inch L360 active-matrix display has a flicker-free image, thanks to its 75Hz refresh rate at 1,024 by 768 resolution, and comes with a USB port for painless hookup to your PC and peripherals. You can mount stereo speakers onto the panel for an extra $100.

Panasonic's KX-FM250 fax machine sends faxes reliably and cheaply via IQ-Fax, an Internet fax service offered by FaxSav, that will ensure that every fax you send reaches its destination. Because FaxSav charges low pay-as-you-go rates for the service, this is a great machine to use if the bulk of your faxes are long distance.

If it's top-quality laser printing you want--and lots of it--Minolta's PageWorks 12 is the solution. You can load up to 750 sheets in the tray and the PageWorks 12 will take it from there, cranking out your work at a sharp 600 by 600dpi at a pace of 12 pages per minute. This monochrome workhorse can also print photo images at 1,200dpi-class enhanced resolution. And if you're not alone in your home office, the PageWorks 12 offers an array of networking options to connect your colleagues.

To make your paper input as efficient as your output, there's Hewlett-Packard's ScanJet 6250C, a flatbed scanner with an automatic document feeder that lets you scan a stack of pages into your PC without lifting the lid. This compact unit can scan documents and photos at a variety of resolutions, and it even comes with a 35mm slide adapter.

Need to make a clean getaway from the office? Philips's Velo 500, a Windows CE-based handheld PC, lets you send e-mail and faxes while keeping your road load light at the same time. In addition to the CE firmware package, the Velo 500 boasts a built-in 28.8Kbps modem, a 75MHz processor, and 16MB of RAM (expandable to 24MB). And if you don't want to tote an AC adapter, the Velo will keep on ticking for 15 hours--far longer than any full-sized notebook.

Knoll Studio's Propeller Bullet Desk with return offers ample space for the most active paper accumulators, as well as space in the table legs to hide your equipment wiring. Adding a lateral file drawer will give you storage space to spare.

Bottom Dollar ...

There may be faster processors on the planet, but a 333MHz Pentium II desktop like Acer's Aspire 6063 will still get you where you want to go in a flash. The Aspire minitower comes packed with a 10GB hard disk and 64MB of RAM, and still tallies in at under $1,200.

If you're not ready to jump onto the 19-inch monitor bandwagon, all the better for your budget. 17-inch monitors like ADI's handsome MicroScan 5P can now be had for less than $350, including detachable multimedia speakers.

The crisp output and low cost per page offered by digital printers and copiers has been on the corporate world's wish list for the last couple of years, but the craze hasn't quite reached the home office--until now. Sharp's AL-1041 digital laser copier lets you copy at a rate of 10 pages per minute, and also plugs into your PC to print 600dpi text documents. The AL-1041 also scans and prints up to 99 black and white pages. And it does this at about 3 cents per copy, which is considerably cheaper than the cost per page of most ink-jets.

Now that you've created those printouts, you need a fax machine that will put them in front of other eyes while still maintaining their quality. Look no further than Brother's Intellifax 770, a low-cost fax that cranks out crisp-looking text and graphic documents. It comes with a 10-page document feeder and 100-sheet paper cassette, and it's also caller ID ready.

A thrifty new PDA, Royal's DaVinci Pro gives you an affordable way to send e-mail and faxes when you travel. Its 1MB of memory will hold hundreds of contacts and notes, which you enter using either a stylus or onscreen keyboard (a plug-in, folding keyboard is a $30 option). When you stick a PC Card modem (not included) into the DaVinci Pro's docking cradle, you've got a compact, lightweight way to stay connected on the road.