That’s why, I no longer use our inkjet. The only inkjet printer we have is a multi-function we purchased a few years ago and I don’t even use it for printing – only as a fax machine and scanner. For everyday printing, we have one color laser and one black and white printer.

Don’t laser printers cost a bomb?

That’s the myth. If you go for black and white – which is more than sufficient for everyday use at a home office, do you really need a document in color to read it?, you can get a decent laser printer for under $200 even a wireless one. Sometimes, you can catch sales for under $100. Color laser printers though definitely do cost a lot more but it is not as much as it used to.

But what about toner? They are high!

What is expensive is relative. Yes, I did order a cartridge for my color laser printer this week, and yes, it did cost me $34 for one color – black. BUT, guess when was the last time I ordered toner? August 2007! It is true. I had no idea until I looked at my Amazon account and past orders. WOW. Trust me, that color laser gets a lot of prints for a home office because my husband is kinda print happy. At the end of the day, the cost per page is really low compared to inkjets. Plus, love the fact I don’t have to be running out of ink and having to run to the store regularly.

If you feel your printer is literally sucking you dry – go laser.

Image by James Nash

Here’s what I mean. I love school days because I get all the extra hours in the morning, but I also don’t love the paper they send home. I have two in the same school and get duplicate copies of every piece of school wide communication. I don’t even want to think about the amount of paper I’ll get when my third child starts school.

When the children go anywhere, they love brochures – what is it with kids and brochures and flyers? Where do you think those end up on? Uhuh. Mom’s desk. Then there are receipts and business cards! Oh and, there’s the art work. How can you ever turn down or throw away all those drawings and I love you notes that were written *just* for mommy (or daddy)?

In the end, I’ve given up on *going paperless* at least in the home office. But what I can do is reduce the paper that I do have control over like:

1. Signing up for e-bills and making payments online
2. Using Evernote instead of post-it notes
3. Printing all receipts into PDF format
4. Reading digital resources and digital products that are PDF format on my PDA
5. If I have to use paper which I still love by the way, I’ll use my Pulse Smartpen so the paper can be discarded and I still have a digital copy of all my notes.
6. Scanning all business cards – the Cardscan is fantastic
7. Investing in Neat Receipts

What about you?

Image by adam coster

1. BBCodeXtra – this helps me format lists, URLs and text on forums. Love it. Great for quoting and pasting links.
2. ColorZilla – if you work with websites as much as I do you’ll always find a need to match colors or find out the color code.
3. DownThemAll! – If you are in one of those 20 PLR pack membership sites or even membership sites that give you a bunch of different downloads, this is super helpful. Right click, check all the ZIPs, EXEs, PDFs you want to download and voila – it’ll go grab them. No more downloading one by one.
4. Firebug – Won’t be able to troubleshoot design issues without this.
5. FireFTP – For quick and easy uploads – it’s kinda slow in my experience if you’re uploading a whole script package. But for the odd handful of files, works great.
6. IE Tab – For viewing sites and flipping between IE and Firefox quickly.
7. ShowIP – Good for troubleshooting or when switching web hosts. It will show you which IP your site is loading from.
8. Split Browser – I call it the poor (wo)man’s dual monitor
9. User Agent Switcher – Great to check what your site looks like on a mobile device.
10. Web Developer – There’s a bunch of tools in here and I don’t use it as much now that I have Firebug but the Ruler and form tool is really useful.

Moi of course! I’m going for some shameless self promo. I love helping people with their business technology issues. So much that I actually set up a place anyone can submit questions to me and have them answered either here or on my blog – 100% free. If you’d like to have your tech questions answered, all you need to do is submit them. You can submit as many as you want.

Small Business Computing – one of my favorite sites. They do pack in a lot of general and somewhat techy information.

Web Master World – if you don’t mind raising your hand and asking questions publicly. Great resource. I’ve found answers to many of my own questions just by searching.

When asked what aspect of working at home they enjoy most, many will say the freedom. The freedom to start work at any time. The freedom to work at one’s own individual pace. The freedom to take a walk to the coffee shop and not feel bad about talking to the barista for 10 minutes. The freedom of not having a boss looking over your shoulder all day. Yes, freedom plays a big part in a telecommuter’s life. Yet, are we as free as we can be?

No, there’s no boss leering, no constant time constraints. However, we’re still confined to our offices. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing — it might keep people productive — we need not be sedentary workers all the time. Thanks to new advancements in cellular technology, we can roam freely, toting our laptops to parks, beaches, and other little nooks which don’t offer Wi-Fi access. Mobile broadband services can provide that kind of freedom.

Quick lesson in mobile broadband

Mobile broadband is Internet access typically offered through cellular carriers on their third-generation (3G) networks. Users can sign up for mobile broadband access just as they would normal cellular service. It requires a modem, which usually hooks up through your laptop’s USB port. Once you’ve signed up for the service and have set up the modem, you’re ready to access the Internet anywhere you get 3G cellular reception.

Theoretically, mobile broadband speeds can reach a level near DSL. However, in practice this hasn’t proven true. Practically peaking, mobile broadband at its best can range between 1000 and 1500 Kbps, though speeds will vary by provider and location. While these speeds are sufficient for everyday Web browsing, they are not suitable for the usage levels of an average telecommuter.

How can mobile broadband help the at-home worker?

Mobile broadband can take the freedom of a telecommuter to the next level. It can take a normally stationary work station on the road. It can allow you to enjoy of the things you love while still getting your work done. It affords you the ability to work wherever you want, whenever you want.

Imagine this scenario. Your child has a soccer game in the evening, but you have so much work to finish up that you just can’t go. It’s a shame, but these are the realities of the work at home life. If, however, you had a broadband modem, you could go to the game and continue doing your work. Sure, no one wants to have their nose in their laptops while their child runs up and down the soccer field. After all, you might miss something big. The operative word there is “might.” Had you stayed home to finish work, you would have certainly missed it.

Or take this anecdote. I live in New York. My girlfriend lives in New Jersey. Our relationship consists of constant train rides. While I’m on the train I usually read, and then finish up my work for the day when I get out there. Once I got mobile broadband, though, I could work while riding the train, so I could spend all that time with my girlfriend, rather than making her wait for me to finish working.

There are plenty of other scenarios. Visiting a relative who doesn’t have Internet access? Like to get out of the house and set up shop at a coffee house? Riding shotgun for a long car ride? There are plenty of scenarios where mobile broadband can be a boon to telecommuters.

Mobile broadband is not for everyone

This article isn’t a total shill for mobile broadband. In fact, there are many people who simply will not benefit by it. If your work habits are just fine and you get all of your work done right at your office, well, there’s no reason to fix a system that isn’t broken. You might also be the type who can put down work to go to your child’s soccer game, with the commitment to come back and burn the midnight oil to finish up.

There are two main factors that turn people away from mobile broadband plans: pricing and usage. The biggest one in most consumers’ minds, of course, is pricing. The typical mobile broadband plan costs $60 per month, and that’s on top of your at-home Internet cost. That’s a hefty addition to a monthly cellular bill. If you already have a mobile device like a BlackBerry, it might only be a nominal fee to upgrade to broadband access. Even so, that’s yet another cost, at a time when most people are looking to cut them.

Usage is an often missed factor that plays heavily into whether you should get mobile broadband or not. The four major carriers — AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile — have 5GB monthly caps. Go over and you’ll pay a hefty overage rate, or worse, have the company terminate your contract. For many, 5GB just doesn’t cut it. With downloading images and videos, uploading, and other routine Web worker activities, there’s always the risk of running over. And that can be costly.

It’s also a reason why mobile broadband can never replace your at-home connection. Perhaps when, and if, WiMax blankets markets throughout the country, there will be a viable alternative. But until then, mobile broadband is no substitute for broadband to the home.

Freedom and mobility

At this point we can conclude that mobile broadband is a luxury of the highest order. It affords telecommuters incredible freedom and mobility. However, for those looking to keep costs in check, it’s not the best solution. That’s a lot of money to lay out for a service you already essentially have in your home broadband connection.

Still, for those looking for that extra little bit, that factor that allows them a greater level of productivity, mobile broadband can definitely supply it. If you can determine how much your time is worth to you, you can figure out if the $60 monthly fee is worth it.

Pretty soon we’ll all be mobile. But for now, it can be a distinct advantage. Expensive, sure, but advantageous even more so.

Joe Pawlikowski is the editor of Wireless Internet Reviews, a site which provides new and reviews of the all forms of wireless Internet.

That’s the kind of setup I have had for a long time. Whenever we get a new computer, we don’t buy the monitor it saves us money to just get the tower alone. Then the older one is set next to the new one and I will use that computer for stuff like initiating backups, running processes on auto pilot and also store files. It also serves as a fantastic backup unit if something ever happens to the main computer.

Both of these are hooked up to a KVM switch. It’s a little box or a bunch of cables if you get the smaller ones and lets you hookup two or more computers to the same monitor, keyboard and mouse. To view the other computer, you either flip a switch, press a button of hit a certain keyboard command, depending on the switch. You can get KVM switches for 2 computers and up. I have seen some for 16, but those come at a hefty price. Some also have audio cables that let you share your headset or speakers.

If you only need to hook up two computers, thankfully there are some more affordable ones like the Iogear MiniView which starts at $24.95. These are less bulky and are more like cables than switch boxes. They are a life saver. Something my home office will never be complete without.

• Unplug that cell phone charger when you’re done charging. Actually, it may not be such a bad idea to use a solar powered cell phone or electronics charger and take that off your ‘grid’ altogether.
• Use a power strip with switches where you can turn off selected outlets like the Belkin Conserve Energy-Saving Surge Protector. Or go to any hardware store and get one of those little adapters with a switch on them.
• Adjust your computer power options settings. Even if you’re on a desk top or plugged in, one of the key things is to turn off the monitor after a period of inactivity because the monitor is the most power hungry element of your computer.
• Switch to LCD. They are less energy hungry than CRTs but I’d still adjust the power settings to turn off the monitor after a short time.

Photo by Kevin Finneran

You may not operate in a high risk area like I do, but, in the recent past we’ve had a lot of natural disaster all over the world. Some were totally unexpected and some were made worse as a result of apathy. They should be a sobering reminder to all of us that disaster does not always pick and choose who or where.

I am certainly not an insurance agent so you will do well to check with your agent before making any adjustments or addition to your policy. Here are some of the things that you should look into to prepare your business for disaster.

• Backup, then backup that backup and backup again.
• Keep a backup in your office/home and keep at least one backup off site too. This is one reason why I use services like Mozy because the backup is not located where I am. If I experience a total loss of my home (touch wood), I can always get my data from them.
• Discuss with your insurance agent what is a good protection plan for your business.
• Develop an emergency/evacuation plan for your family and decide ahead of time what you will bring and include some key items from your business.
• When you make an inventory of your home, include an inventory of the software that you run too. Very often the software installed on your computer(s) is worth many times more than your computer(s) itself.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but definitely a good place to start.

Why only may? Because, a lot of the tools and methods to retrieve the content from a PDF depends on the security settings of the PDF. If you have locked down your PDF to disallow copying, many tools cannot get past that and if they did you’d still have to remember the password.

Assuming you have not locked your PDF, one of the easiest ways is to simply open the file in a PDF reader and click on Save As from the menu. This will extract a text only version of your work. If your document has a lot of fancy designs and images, you won’t be able to retrieve them using this method but if it’s mostly textual content this is probably better anyway to allow you to work from a fresh copy.

If you’d like something that resembles the final result more, you could try:

• PDFtoWord
• Koolwire
• Advanced PDF to Word Converter Free
• Zamzar

Keep in mind, you may not get an exact reproduction. In other words, don’t expect your original document. Some converters choke on the alignments and  images, overlapping them but hey, the idea is to salvage as much as you can so you can’t be too picky.

This week we’re Sparking an Idea that about Email

It all starts when you have one web site and one product. Then, when you build another site or another product (or blog) with it’s own domain you think well, maybe we need to create a new address on this new domain for customer support, for you, for the mailing list for… whatever. Then you add a new domain to your empire and you create another email address or *gasp* several addresses. Uh huh. That was me 2 years ago.

You’re probably thinking, it can’t be that bad. You can after all redirect all those different addresses into one. Yes, you are correct but the issue I had was not because I had to log in to different accounts to check the emails. It was the difficulty in keeping them straight when replying to people and most of all, when people ask for an email address, I didn’t know which I should give! Should I give them the real private one? Or the one for this site or maybe that site is more appropriate for this interview. That’s not all, whenever a new email list was created, I struggled to figure out which address would be the most appropriate “From” address for the list.

I decided I had enough. So I spent a whole month consolidating, trimming and re-structuring my email addresses. While I was at it, I also set up a central contact and help center for all products/services. You can call it a help desk I suppose, although I don’t run any help desk software.

The first thing I did was decide which addresses I wanted to keep. Once they were decided, the addresses were assigned a specific purpose. For example, one is strictly private, for personal stuff, staff and clients only. No exceptions. Then another was for mailing lists. Then I have one ‘public’ address and there’s another for support for all products, services, websites.

Just doing this cut down my email confusion considerably but that wasn’t the only thing I did. I hired someone to check, manage and respond to all the other addresses but one. Now, whenever someone asks me for an email address, during an interview or setting up an email list, I use the public one. The contact for all web sites, products and services go directly to the help desk at TechBasedSupport.com. There is no confusion. No setting up new email addresses no matter how many new products or websites I create. It’s all centralized.

If you happen to be a MomMasterminds member, I have a resource in the learning center there that shows step-by-step exactly how I set it all up and give you suggestions to centralize your emails too.

I’m so, so, much happier now and can’t imagine why I hadn’t done it before. At any point in time I know exactly where customers are sent to. This makes it a lot easier when you’re updating pages and giving instructions to people how to get support. It’s all the same and you don’t confuse yourself. Doing this also freed me up to focus on important stuff rather than checking emails.

If the tech stuff is not your cup of tea, when you get access to the Hot Seminar series, you also get to listen in or grab the recording of 7 other interviews with successful business owners. Here are the other Internet based businesses that will be discuss at length:

• eBay Seller
• Affiliate Manager
• Pro Blogger / Freelance Writer
• Virtual Assistant
• Information Marketer
• Coach
• Content Marketer/Blogger/Podcaster

See you there!

When things like these happen, one of the first places to look is the device manager. It didn’t give me any warnings but after a few reboots it started to give me a yellow warning that the mouse isn’t working properly – well dOh! Now what?

Uninstall the mouse – you heard me right. Uninstall the mouse, reboot the computer. Windows will always try to re-install it on reboot. Sure enough it did and I have my mouse back

Next time your keyboard or mouse quits, try that as a first step.

A Good Office Chair – he spends a lot of time over that desk / computer so might as well be comfortable.

Stock up his office supplies – men hate shopping even for business. Come to think of it, so do I. It would be a great gesture to surprise him with a cabinet full or paper, pens, ink, toner and while you’re at it maybe tidy up that table of his

Laptop bags – depending on how much he carries his laptop around. I bet those who carry their laptops regularly, the bag could be in need of replacement.

A cordless presenter/laser pointer – if Dad does a lot of presentations, this is a must have to help him stay within the time limit, advance slides in a presentation and highlight key notes. This Logitech one looks interesting.

The Livescribe Smartpen – you read my post last week about this pen. It’s great. The 1GB version starts at $149.99 and is plenty to begin with.

NeatDesk Desktop Scanner – no more pack rat Dad!

Software or Online Services – Evernote makes a great gift too to give Dad a virtual space to save all those tidbits of information he finds. You also almost always won’t go wrong with software that he’s been wanting to have. They can get expensive though. One software I highly recommend for any desktop is DirectAccess to help Dad type less, easily launch software and automate a ton of small tasks he might do every day.

Business learning courses or training programs – this too can get expensive but at the same time, there are many affordable learning products out there too. For example, if he’s been wanting to learn how to setup his own blog, give him the Blogging Starter Pack.

Tablet or fancy schmancy mouse – the Bamboo tablet starts at $99 or go for a fancy, comfortable top of the line mouse for his computer.

Help – Purchase a few hours from a Virtual Assistant as a gift.

Bonus idea, computer wallpaper or screen saver – Well this you can do in addition to what you’re already giving him. Make a collage with your family photos with some handwritten notes specifically for dad then secretly change out his computer wall paper. $0 makes it a fabulous idea.

But are they practical for us home entrepreneurs who dream of getting away from our desks and be that person in those glossy photos – you know, happy, relaxed people working from the beach?

There are three laptops in our household. A full sized one with a glorious 17″ monitor, a small 12″ Powerbook and a Asus EEE mini. I think it’s a 7″ unit.

What I do like about the mini is yes it is tiny, easy to carry and the built in camera is surprisingly clear. I don’t mind small screen sizes since I’ve been using PDA’s for the past 10 years. What does bother me is the cramped keyboard which is to be expected. I have trouble with the 12″ Powerbook keyboard as is but it’s manageable because the keys are pretty large. On the mini, that’s a whole other story.

My opinion – it depends on your work and what you do regularly.

Still overall I’d say it’s a nice ‘take along’ laptop good for blogging, some light writing on the road or at the park, emails and non-intensive tasks like assigning taks to your team, communicating with your prospects on Twitter or Facebook. Definitely a plus for writers.

If you do a lot of coding work like me, the screen size is not ideal. Otherwise, I imagine you’d be able to accomplish a fair deal with the mini.

By default, you can set your computer to turn off the monitor, go into standby or hibernate by default, it only works if the computer is inactive. For example, you can only set it to hibernate after 3 hours of inactivity. You do this in the Power Settings under the PC’s Control panel. In my case, it’s hard to find a time when the computer is inactive for 3 hours. To force myself to shut down for the day, I wanted something that allows me to set a specific time.

I found these three free utilities that looks like they would work.

• Handy Tweakers
• Intelligent Shutdown
• Auto Shutdown

Viewing A Report on My Phone

Yet, sometimes, I very much wish more business learning resources and tools are created for us who like to consume our content ‘on the go’. Granted, I hardly go anywhere on any given week BUT the flexibility to unplug from the computer, kick up my feet and listen, watch or read my learning materials in bed or at the beach while the kids play is very attractive to me. Unfortunately, not many Internet marketers make their content mobile friendly. So what do I do?

I convert the videos using my favorite tool Super and yes, it can convert from flash too which makes it ideal since flash is the choice for many marketers.

For PDFs, that has been tricky until now. I use Mobipocket. The unfortunate part is you have to use the desktop version to add your PDF’s. In the past, I never liked that. There are apps that allow you to read PDF’s directly but I’ve found those apps very memory intensive and they are difficult to read, no automatic continous scrolling. For now, Mobipocket works great for me.

Check out the screen shot of a report from Jimmy D Brown’s List and Traffic as seen on my cell phone. Looks pretty good and the auto scrolling is awesome.

Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called ‘Spark an Idea Thursday’. Each week we’ll be sharing some great ideas for a topic of interest to our readers. We invite you to grab our image and carry the tradition through to your own blog! If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

This week’s Spark an Idea deals with making a new business ally.

Most who read this (and other blogs in the Sparkplugging network) know full well how important it is to have a tech person whom you can call on for help and guidance. Technology powers much of our world and business – if not all of it. Being one of those tech persons, I generally feel good about what I do and being in the background, in the support role doesn’t bother me much. I was just thinking the other day how much I like being the one who makes things work behind the scenes.

But what if you thought of your tech people or friend not as a support staff but a real partner. I’ve been working with clients and talented programmers alike for many years now. One thing I do know is if you have an idea but not the technical skills to achieve it, take the idea to a true blue tech person and lay it out for them. 9 out of 10 times they’d get really excited over it. Especially if the idea is a good one because it allows them to stretch, learn new skills and practice the ones they are good at.

Plus, if you give them the opportunity to be a partner in the project, it helps them break out of the trading hours for dollars role and flex their muscles as an entrepreneur.

I am very blessed to have clients who looked at me that way. As a real part of their team and someone to do joint ventures with, not just tech support who gets called on to bail you out only when trouble comes knocking. For me and those clients – now business partners, it has been a very profitable venture in more ways than one.

For example, Firefox stores it’s user data – that’s your preferences and favorites – in the folder

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

So make sure you get the Application Data folder too. In Mozy, you can do this by selecting the File System tab and select the C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data folder.

Here’s another thing I like to do to make sure you get all your files in one place. Many applications allow you to select where it should store the data. For example, Evernote defaults to C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Evernote. What I do is create an Evernote in the My Documents folder and tell Evernote to store the data in there instead. That way, when Mozy does the My Documents backup, it’ll get Evernote too.

It is a super easy process, only takes a few minutes each time. This video will illustrate how I do my backups and should equip you or your assistant with the knowledge how to do yours.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsJBIBs-V1c&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]