Gigglebytes - Small Office, Poor Office

Tools that every home office should be without
Originally printed in Computer Currents September 2, 1997

Thanks to the personal computer, more people then ever before are quitting their jobs and going freelance. Perhaps even you have considered saying good-bye to the drudgery and servitude of the workplace and hello to the excitement of paying outrageous health insurance premiums plus a 15% self-employment tax.

But you can’t do it entirely alone. Here are a few select tools you’ll want to invest in if you’re chucking the old 9-to-5 for the new never-sleep world of SOHO.

Tele•Phony
You don’t need a telephone. You need a telephone, a fax machine, a modem, an answering service, and a recording that tells listeners to press numbers on their touch-tone phone. But what you’ll probably settle for is Tele•Phony, a simple device from BellStarr that can differentiate between a fax and a voice call by emitting a high-pitched shriek and listening for a reaction.

Joy•2U Inspirational Screen Saver
Need a way to get motivated now that you don’t have the boss breathing down your neck? This useful utility from Ebenezer Software prevents monitor burn-in while it inspires you to work smarter and harder by displaying the dates your bills are due and the number of years you have left to save for your kids’ college education.

Housa Cards
What do you do when someone gives you a business card? Toss it in an overstuffed drawer? Laboriously type the information into your contact manager by hand? Thank the person and give them your card? If you’re smart, you run it through Sukka Technologies’ Housa Cards business card scanner, note that it came out solid black, make some adjustments, run it through through five or six more times until it comes out right, then use the Housa Cards’ optical character-reader-and-assassin software to turn the bitmapped image into a database entry you can easily search for errors. Works with any contact manager from Sukka Technologies.

Hay Zee Comm ISDNA Modem
Whatever your Internet access, it’s not fast enough. That is, unless you’re using the new ISDNA standard, which supplements standard phone lines with coaxial cables, fiber optics, and living tissue. Hay Zee Comm sells the cheapest ISDNA modems available, starting as low as $560 for an internal model (edge connectors extra). Once you’ve purchased this great deal, it’s a simple matter of contacting your phone company, seeing if they support ISDNA, getting someone to come out to your house to set up the connection, installing the hardware and software, finding an ISP who supports ISDNA, getting someone else to come out to your house to fix the original connection, and paying monthly online and phone bills that will almost certainly be less than your mortgage.

UltraPromo Letterhead
The first thing you need to impress clients is good-looking letterhead, and UltraPromo will print it up for the remarkably low price of $5 per 100 sheets. What's more, it's on high-quality, 32-pound white rag paper and looks lovely with a strong blue line down the side and the green and red, 65-point UltraPromo name and logo at the top. For an extra $200, UltraPromo will put your logo beneath its own.

Personal Digital Watch
The problem with personal information managers is that they requires a computer--something you probably have in the home office but not in the bathroom. Clocker’s Personal Digital Watch puts your scheduling information at your wrist-tips when you can’ t get to a keyboard. To download your schedule at your computer, just hold your wrist up to the monitor and press Control-D (preferably with the other hand). Then you can take your watch anywhere, and with the press of a button see the time and the date.

The Ph Swiss Battalion
Pewlett-Hackard has really outdone itself with the Swiss Battalion. This single, compact, 17-by-15-by-28-inch package works as a laser printer, an ink-jet printer, a copier, a fax machine, a back-up drive, multimedia speakers, a water bottle, and a larger-than-normal hand scanner. A modestly-priced attachment lets you use the Swiss Battalion as a Pez dispenser.

Insurance Assurance
How much are you spending every month on health insurance? How much are you spending on doctors? This essential addition to your financial software collection tracks all of your medical expenses and reassures you that your insurance premiums really are paying for themselves. By ImagineThat Software, a leading publisher of fantasy role-playing games.

Virtual Executive
If you’re videoconferencing, this simple little program could save you some major accounts--or at least cut down on your dry-cleaning bills. As that tiny video camera on top of your monitor takes in the real you, Virtual Executive processes the image, digitally replacing your pajamas with a respectable business suit. Just make sure, when you install the program, that you specify Male or Female. From CounterFit Software.