Setting Up a Home Office

Reader Charlotte writes: I'm thinking of working at home/telecommuting, starting sometime this year. My question is what type of computer setup should I purchase? I would like a printer and fax to go with it... and what can you tell me about getting a scanner?

Let me start by explaining my home office setup. The core of the setup is two PCs that do the bulk of my work: A desktop which stores files and works as a fax server, and a laptop that I actually do most of my work on (whether I'm in my office or on the couch upstairs). Each night I replicate the data on my laptop with the PC, so I always have a backup at hand. And I run Mozy on the desktop so I always have a backup offsite in case of disaster.

The desktop also works as a print server. I have two printers attached to it: A Samsung laser printer, which does the workhorse print jobs in black and white, and an HP all-in-one device, which has a color printer, scanner, and fax machine. I use this printer for printing photos, doing scans, and sending faxes. The PC mainly does all the receiving of faxes, but the HP works as a backup if the PC is shut off for some reason.

All of this is networked with an 802.11n Wi-Fi network and cable modem internet service. Naturally, since I do loads of product testing, I bring additional PCs into the mix all the time. While I use Windows XP on my two production machines, various additional computers run Vista, Windows 2000, Ubuntu, and other OSes as they're needed for testing. For the foreseeable future I'm sticking with XP as my primary OS.

How would I change this for an average user? You may not need the two-PC setup: You can probably get by with a desktop or laptop as long as you have a solid backup strategy, either to an external hard drive or an online service (or both). If you don't need a color printer, you can get a black-and-white multifunction device, too, which will save on space. Unfortunately my MFD is rather old and really needs an upgrade. I'll try to do some coverage in the coming months to see what's best and what I can recommend. Meanwhile, you might check out PC World's rankings of the category.