Home office gambles

Home Office Computing, Nov, 1998 by Heather Newman

Racetrack regulars consult the Daily Racing Form, blackjack players count cards like there's no tomorrow, and the desperate folks at the roulette wheel rely on the cosmic strength of their lucky numbers. But what about you, the home-based worker? Who's going to help you handicap the technology decisions that will impact your home office in the coming months and years? We volunteer.

There's no such thing as a sure thing in computers, which makes it difficult to decide when to stick with an established technology and when to roll the dice with a new device. Your 56Kbps modem works, after all, so why should you invest all that money in a digital line? And what about those Brand X PCs you see advertised online--do these systems make sense or is it better to seek out a familiar name like IBM or Dell? Because there aren't any steadfast rules for technology purchases, we think you need an ace or two to slide up your sleeve. To that end, we analyzed 10 high-tech categories to help you determine when it's smart to stick with the safe bet and when you might want to risk a chance with something new. Follow our recommendations, and you might just find yourself ahead of the game.

1 To Mac or not to Mac? Apple computers (www. apple.com) are easy to learn and dependable to use. And anecdotal studies suggest they're simpler to support than Windows-based PCs, giving your business the advantage of more up time. So why are employers like Jaffe Associates, a marketing firm in Washington, D.C., telling their telecommuters to dump their Macs and buy PCs? In a word: compatibility.

"It breaks my heart," says Deborah Schwartz, a publicist for the firm and soon to be ex-Mac user. "My hands are tied. They're telling me this is what I have to do to communicate with the rest of the firm. The forms they're using, I can no longer read."

The big problem with Apples, and the reason we don't recommend them for home-based workers, is twofold: First, the rest of the business world--the folks you have to communicate with every day--is running on PCs. Macs command a measly 4 percent market share among desktop computers, and the company is hamstrung by being the only one in the market to run the Macintosh operating system. Self-extracting compressed files and several other file formats don't do well when moving between Windows and the Mac OS, and you can't afford to waste time importing and re-importing a file when there's work to be done.

Second, Mac owners face a scrippling handicap: software selection. Unless you're in graphics or desktop publishing, you can bet yor business software was written for the PC. Even if you pitch all the system maintenance titles that are so popular for PCs, Apple comes up short in several key categories for home office owners. If you're looking for a calendar and contact manager, you can buy Microsoft Outlook or Symantec's Act!, but forget about GoldMine or Sidekick. Intuit's excellent bookkeeping package, QuickBooks, isn't available for the Mac OS, nor are many other accounting or business-related programs.

Standard-setting speech recognition programs such as Dragon Systems's NaturallySpeaking and IBM's ViaVoice 98 are not on the menu for Mac users. Teleworkers will find that none of the major remote-access applications--Symantec's pcAnywhere and pcTelecommute, Artisoft's CoSession Remote 32, Compaq's Carbon Copy, or Traveling Software's LapLink--offer a Mac version. And database options are severely limited: Aside from one excellent choice (FileMaker's FileMakerPro), Apple fans are stuck with two clunky options with steep learning curves (Microsoft FoxPro or 4th Dimension). PC users, on the other hand, have not only FileMakerPro hut powerful, easy-to-use alternatives like Lotus Approach, Corel Paradox, and Microsoft Access. True, you can run Windows programs under emulation on a Mac, but even the best emulation is slower and less stable than software running in its native habitat.

Spence Zaorski, director of technology for Vantage One Communications Group in Cleveland, says he loves the Mac and uses one for about half of every workday, but believes the software problem is a deal-killer for home offices. "Apple was hurt badly when they lost face in the industry," he says. "Many software developers didn't go back. For people that need applications beyond spreadsheets and word processing, the Mac is not a strong platform."

Bottom Line: Mac is a bad bet.

2 Should you ante up for ADSL or stand pat with analog service? If you've ever been forced to wait and wait for a vital tidbit of data to download from the Web, you know analog connections just don't hack it anymore. Information about your market, your competitors, and your customers is readily available to you online, but the longer it takes you to get to the facts you need, the less time you have to act on this information.

Ramping up from a regular telephone line can change your information gathering from a mind-numbing, afternoon-long pursuit to nearly instantaneous selection and collection. You'll never believe you got along at analog speeds when you experience the ability to jump on the Web, grab what you need, and jump off again in seconds. Not to mention never, ever facing a busy signal again. Sure, you say, but all that convenience is going to gut my profit margin, right?