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How To Set Up Your Small Office Home Office And Save $1000s
When starting out in business there are great temptations to buy
"the best of everything" and spend too much money in the
process. This is one of the potentially devastating mistakes
that new companies make and it can be a killer from the start.
It is the intention of this article to help you avoid spending
thousands of unnecessary dollars when setting up your Small
Office Home Office (SOHO). It addresses your PC and the software
that you buy for it.
First off, think of your PC as a business tool only. Don't fall
for the temptation to buy a PC that is also a game machine or a
video player to watch movies with. This way, you will reduce the
amount of money you spend.
Equipment You Should Have
PC - You can buy a great PC from several places including Dell,
Gateway, Best Buy, and CompUSA for about $500.00. Your PC should
have a minimum of a 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of memory, and a
40GB hard drive. It should include:
* A sound card or integrated sound chip. The sound card/chip
will have ports for a microphone, "in-line" (which you may never
need but allows for other equipment sound input) and speakers.
* A video card or integrated chip which your monitor plugs into
and also drives your video display.
* USB 2.X ports. USB ports are the interfaces where USB cables
plug into your computer. USB cables allow you to attach
equipment like your mouse, printer, and Scanner.
* PCI slots. These are interfaces on Mother Board that allow you
to add cards with customized functionality to the PC. They are
also the places where video cards and sound cards are attached.
Mouse - I recommend that you get a Wireless Optical Mouse. The
price of Wireless Optical Mouses (or is it Mice?) has come down
so far that there is no reason to have the old kind. The
convenience of being untethered from the PC cannot be adequately
described.
Monitor - I still have the old fashioned CRT (TV type) of
monitor but when this one goes I will get a Flat Panel Display.
The prices have dropped enough to afford one.
Printer - You will need a laser or inkjet printer for everyday
tasks like seeing how your web pages come out on paper. You can
print ebooks or reports. Many people find it difficult to read
from the
monitor and like to print much of what they read.
You can buy a good inkjet printer for about $50.00. If you do a
lot of printing it will last at least one or two years.
The advantage of buying inexpensive printers is each year the
manufacturers come out with new printers that are better than
the previous year so you always get better quality for a lower
price.
Operating System - the Operating System is the machine code
software that makes your PC run. It is the brains of the PC.
It is worth the cost of Windows XP to have a PC that has
thousands of compatible programs available to it.
Applications
Word Processor - You are going to need a word processor to do
business. You will need to communicate with suppliers, your
bank, and with customers. Your word processor should be able to
output documents and read documents with the .doc extension. The
extension is three or four characters with a "period" in front
that tells the computer what kind of program to use to process
your file or document.
WYSIWYG Editor - If you plan to have a website, you will either
need to pay someone $2,000.00 or more to do it for you or you
will have to do it yourself. If you are starting on a low
budget, then you will probably want to do it yourself.
You should really have a WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get)
editor like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. What
a WYSIWYG editor does is take the information that you visually
create on a web page and translate it into the HTML (Hyper Text
Markup Language) computer code that make the web page show up in
the Browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape.
Two free applications you should download are Adobe Acrobat
Reader at www.adobe.com and
Macromedia Flash Player at www.macromedia.
If you follow these recommendations, you will have everything
you need to get your Small Office Home Office set up and ready
to go.
About the author:
Start your Internet Business/Home Business the right way and
save $3000, $4000 or more. Get your FREE 6 part mini-course
here: http://daily-results.com/start-a-home-business.html VISIT
our site: http://www.daily-results.com
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