3 smart setups

Home Office Computing, August, 1998 by Catherine Greenman

3 The Entrepreneur

ALONG WITH THE PRESSURES OF MARKETING AND MAINTAINING your business come tough decisions about what technology you need. A good rule of thumb: Don't be afraid to spend money on a piece of hardware or software that will grow with you. What may seem like too much processing power, memory, hard-disk space, or print speed today will feel like the right amount tomorrow.

Desktop PC PC lifecycles seem to get shorter and shorter, but the Dell Dimension XPS R400 has staying power. With a 400MHz Pentium II CPU, a whopping 14.4GB hard disk, 128MB of RAM, and lightning-fast video performance for multimedia presentations or videoconferencing, this top-of-the-line minitower will stick with you through years of business cycles.

Alternative: Gateway G6-400

19-inch monitor Go ahead, take the plunge, and do your eyes a big favor. Nineteen-inch CRT prices are plummeting to the point where you can now afford one. ADI's MicroScan 6P offers rich colors, crisp focus, easy-to-use controls, and a spacious 1,600 by 1,200-pixel screen. All this at a price that many 17-inch monitors shared only about a year ago.

Alternative: Iiyama VisionMaster 450

Phone system OK, you may not need a switchboard when you work at home, but you still want a reliable business phone (with at least two lines) that will hold the fort when you're on your afternoon break. Casio's PhoneMate TA-180 two-line digital answering machine has dual speaker phone capabilities for both lines, as well as easy hold and mute functions. Most important, it will store a reliable 28 minutes of messages in the event your afternoon break turns into an afternoon off.

Alternative: Centrepoint Technologies Concero

ISDN modem Making the upgrade to a 128Kbps ISDN connection will be well worth your while if your work has you spending a good part of your day online. And to put your digital line to maximum use, 3Com's Courier I-Modem is a fast, easy-to-install choice that will connect to almost any analog phone or fax machine. What's more, it will automatically configure itself to accept analog calls from ISDN mode, instead of making you redial in analog mode or use a separate analog modem.

Alternative: Netopia ISDN modem

Cordless/cellular phone You're heading out the door, already late for a meeting, when a big client calls. Instead of telling him or her you'll call back as soon as you can, Panasonic's Telenium, a combination 900MHz cordless and cellular phone, will let you keep talking in cordless mode within 1,000 feet of your home base. After you're finished with the call, the 6.9-ounce phone automatically switches into cellular mode, when you make your next outgoing call. When you use the Telenium along with the Casio PhoneMate, you'll be able to consolidate all of your phone messages in one place.

Multifunction peripheral When it comes to faxing, printing, and copying, a home-based worker can easily spend big bucks to keep up with the big boys. But with HP's OfficeJet Pro 1175C color printer/copier/scanner, you'll be able to send, receive, and crank out the paperwork (at 7ppm for text, 2ppm for color images) with the best of them. In addition to 1,200 by 1,200dpi print quality and a 30-page automatic document feeder for easy copying, the 1175C comes with WinFax Pro software that'll let you send and receive faxes from your PC, even when the OfficeJet is turned off.