Entrepreneurship & Small Business

"Must have" home office supplies

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  • Sep 9th, 2008 8:04 pm
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Deal Fanatic
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Apr 6, 2003
8451 posts
16 upvotes

"Must have" home office supplies

Let's discuss!

For those of us who work at home what are your "must have" type supplies?

I'll start.

Excellent chair
Desk with good storage
All in One Printer/Fax/Scanner
Separate Phoneline
Good phone with speaker and headphone.

What else do people have on their list?
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12 replies
Member
Aug 1, 2008
284 posts
50 upvotes
Toronto
[QUOTE]For those of us who work at home what are your "must have" type supplies?
What else do people have on their list?[/QUOTE]

A fax-to-e-mail account, so you don't have to pay for a separate fax line, or worry about staying off your business line when you're expecting a fax.

It's definitely worth it, for less than $5 per month.
Deal Guru
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Nov 19, 2002
12253 posts
858 upvotes
I use a 416 cell phone as my biz phone, and my home phone as my fax line...my AIO just intercepts fax calls. Hopefully no one catches on :)

I also recommend having a good offsite backup - so many home based business rely so much on their PCs - imagine what a fire or robbery would do to you! A friend of mine and I keep each other's backups at separate locations. Everything is pushed to each other's NAS at night.
Deal Expert
Oct 20, 2001
18709 posts
1326 upvotes
Sauga
Wireless router + Laptop
Backup Internet connection
Dual monitor setup
Cross-cut shredder
Sr. Member
Apr 6, 2002
624 posts
153 upvotes
YVR
I am not sure if this applies to all home businesses, but I have a Time Capsule (used to have a WD Ext. HD before switching to Mac) for back up all files on my office computers. And seriously, Time Machine is just AMAZING!!!

Do frequent backups if your business do a lot of work/record on the PC. This was lesson learned from a $6000 loss experience.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish...
Deal Addict
May 18, 2006
2873 posts
70 upvotes
Windsor
deep makes a great point about the backup, so many people would lose everything if their PC died. I backup to a NAS and have an offsite FTP server to backup to. I use Handy backup software (paid), Ace backup is free and it's not too bad.

My Must haves:
Dual moitor
good working printer
envelopes, paper and stamps
USB drives with company logo
big desk with lots of space (think 2 monitors, 1 desktop, 2 laptops, printer and NAS)
Deal Addict
May 18, 2006
2873 posts
70 upvotes
Windsor
I also have been trying out this service www.mozy.com free version gives you 2GB there are also paid options. The software is super easy to setup and it is all automated to their server and restoring a file is easy as well.
Banned
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Feb 4, 2002
4070 posts
102 upvotes
Barrie, Ontario
cdnNick wrote: I also have been trying out this service www.mozy.com free version gives you 2GB there are also paid options. The software is super easy to setup and it is all automated to their server and restoring a file is easy as well.
Agreed, backup is so important. I have acronis trueimage backup to NAS and microsoft foldershare to keep everything synced on my desktop and laptop. (automatically syncs selected folders in the background). My irreplaceable files are zipped and uploaded to my webspace once a week using cobian.
Sr. Member
Sep 14, 2003
977 posts
2 upvotes
TIP: for those buying new shredders, cross cut is MUCH better than strip cut.

Strip cuts are much easier to piece together and kind of defeat the whole privacy purpose.

And a safe that will protect your important documents / media from water/fire is important. But then again, you won't realize that until after the fact.

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