December 17, 2007

Don't Use Home Technology for Your Home Based Business

Computer vendors often have three categories of technology they sell. One for the home, another for small businesses and another for the larger businesses (enterprises).

When shopping for technology for your home, don't try to save money by buying the lower cost and often cheaper made "home versions". While home PC's are probably just fine for the home, they're not fine for your business, which you might be running out of your home.

Why?

The home or consumer line is often built with cheaper parts, less warranties and the parts change from PC to PC.

Antara Jaitly, Senior Analyst at technology research firm AMI, says, "The approximately 15 million PC-owning U.S. HBBs are expected to drive $32.7 billion in IT spending during 2007 with a projected increase to around $35 billion in 2008 and $19 billion in telecom-related spending in 2007 which is forecasted to increase to $19.5 during 2008."

If you're one of those estimated 15 million home based businesses - congratulations!

When you buy technology for your home make sure you get:

Good support and a lengthy warranty for WHEN you need it. It's like insurance.

Just because you're running a home based business does not mean that you should not be serious about technology. In face, since you're in the home, with possibly less a support structure than a business in a commercial location you probably need to be more careful about your technology purchases.

When buying your technology there's several categories of providers you can turn to.

PC Vendors such as Dell, HP and Lenovo can provide your basic PC hardware needs. Dell can also provide accessories.

Best Buy, Staples, CDW , Amazon.com and other vendors can supply just about every PC and tech accessory you might need.

For your software needs, a copy of Microsoft Office, Windows XP or Vista, software to power your business (such as accounting), a suite of hosted applications, and some cool, time saving applications, are pretty much all you need.

tags: computers , home business | 0 comments