Home Office

Home Office, Telework Expert Talks Tech for Residence Inn

'Bookmark' Promotion Features Tips From Jeff Zbar (a.k.a. Chief Home Officer.com) in 2 million Copies of TIME, Fortune and Money Magazines, and Time Inc. Websites

October 26, 2009 – Home office, telework and road warrior technology tips from leading home-business and work-at-home expert Jeff Zbar of ChiefHomeOfficer.com will be featured in more than two million copies of TIME, Fortune and Money magazines and Time Inc. websites beginning this week.

In a unique promotional campaign for Marriott International Inc.'s Residence Inn brand, Zbar provides two dozen tips on remote work strategies, "cloud" computing and online security. The tips are presented on "bookmarks" bound into the magazines and linked to from the websites. Read more

Acer's New Veriton All-in-One Desktop PC


 Acer Veriton Z280G-EA271CP all-in-one PC

Acer just announced the new Acer Veriton Z280G-EA271CP all-in-one PC. Designed for the commercial market, or any office/home office that is short on space, the new energy-efficient PC starts in price at only $499.

This new AIO PC features an 18.5-inch widescreen LCD monitor and measures just 19-inches (W) by 15-inches (H) by 2.14-inches (D). With an Intel Atom ultra-low-voltage processor and fan-less operation, the Veriton Z280G is cool, quiet and Energy Star qualified.

Other features include a Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader, 160GB hard drive, 2 GB Memory, Built-in 802.11b/g wireless, and it runs on Windows XP. The Super Multi Double-Layer drive is located on the side of the display for easy access. The system also comes with integrated speakers and a matching keyboard and mouse. Read more

Home Office Home Again: Random Observations After 2 Weeks on the Road


 Home Office Highway collage

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

After two weeks on the road, it's the simple observations that bring clarity to the home office adventure. Like…

- Sponsor or no, the Verizon Mifi 'personal hotspot' won the day — hands down. It was a true fan favorite and winner of the HOH'09 Product of Choice. Hey, anything that keeps the hoards from beating me up for my Internet connection is worthy of praise. Teleworkers and road warriors alike will find this tool extremely useful.

- Yes, family, we WILL survive two weeks without a TV. And we did. We talked, played more Yahtzee and Racko than we ever thought possible, and watched burning embers in the fire pit. And yes, we surfed the Web. A lot. Truth be told, we watched a few DVD movies on Zack's HP laptop. But that's NOT TV.Read more

The Apps to Use to Work Like You're in Your Home Office


 laptop

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

To meteorologists and remote workers alike, The Cloud is a beautiful thing.

One makes his living off cloud formations. The other has discovered a mobility, flexibility and an untethered experience working in the cloud. These include teleworkers, telecommuters, road warriors and others released from place-based work.

For those not clear, the "cloud" — according to Wikipedia — "is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the cloud that supports them." In other words, all your applications — and even your documents, if you want — are stored and hosted via a computer with an Internet connection and a Web browser.Read more

Ten Must-Pack Home Office RV Tools and Accessories


 Must-Pack Home Office Tools

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

To paraphrase the once-almost-ubiquitous line from a popular credit-card commercial, 'What's in your backpack'?'

Whether a family cruise or a two-week road trip, I make sure to pack my backpack with all the essentials needed to create a home office from the road. And with every trip, I find something new to stash in my travel case. I'm sure road warriors and teleworkers go through the same exercise.Read more

The Most Compact, Energy Saving 4-Bay NAS on the Market


 Synology DS409slim

Synology has just announced its new 2.5-inch 4-bay Disk Station DS409slim. It brings lower power consumption, virtually quiet operations and an extremely small footprint both physically and financially. The 2.5-inch hard drives increase shock tolerance and reduce power consumption, while the DS409slim only consumes 19 watts of power when running 4 2.5-inch HDDS under normal operations.

Specs:

  • 4 hot-swappable hard drives
  • A 1.2 GHz CPU
  • 128MB DDRII RAM
  • One Gigabit LAN port
  • Two USB2.0 ports
  • One eSATA port

The DS409slim supports up to 2 TB with the combination of four 2.5" SATA or SSD hard drives of 500GB each. The physical footprint of the DS409slim remains stylish and compact with the total size being just larger than a 12 oz coffee cup (120 x 105 x 142 mm). The DS409slim is shipping in the U.S. right now.

Keeping the Mobile Office and Home Officer Online and Un-Harassed From the Road


Verizon MiFi in hand

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

More on the MiFi...

It's every home office, telework and road warrior's lament. At least those with kids (and a wife in search of 'net-time): How to get online, without attracting attention from the little scoundrels, who'll then want the Internet-connected laptop for their own.

Of course, RV parks across America promise "Free Wifi." Good luck finding a network that works...

Here's one review of the MiFi personal hotspot. Specifically, Daniel Terdiman said of mobile hot spot, it "converts the carrier's EV-DO signal into a Wi-Fi connection that up to five people can share. I had already used the MiFi to provide a signal for the iPod Touch at the very beginning of the trip so that, while sitting on a boarding airplane, I could download a large file from iTunes...Now, I realized that by turning the MiFi on and sticking it in my back pocket, I could become, in essence, a walking hot spot, allowing me to get online on the iPod Touch, no matter where I was. That meant that I could use the Skype app to make a phone call, run several other apps for one reason or another, and look up good places to eat using the device's browser..."

My two cents: This device has made working remotely seamless and breezy.Read more

Home Office Surfing in a Personal Hotspot


Surfing at night with Verizon MiFi and MSI U123 netbook

By Jeff Zbar;
www.homeofficehighway.com

Years ago, surfing in public meant first paying $15 an hour for a user ID and password hand-written on a scrap of paper so you could log on to some cyber cafe's network.

Now, it's as easy as hitting the MiFi, powering up the netbook — and in less than a minute, you're up.

This year's home office highway is shaping up as an exercise in simplified surfing. Last year, setting up a network meant powering up and wiring in a router the size of a cigar box. This year's "access point" is a business card-sized device that enables five Internet devices — netbooks, laptops, MP3 players, an iTouch — to log on simultaneously.Read more

New Netbook-Ready Office Suite from Corel


 Corel Home Office

Corel Home Office is a new office suite designed specifically to address the needs of consumers and home-based businesses. Corel Home Office is excellent for netbooks due to its low memory requirements and small footprint. Corel Home Office includes Corel Write for word processing, Corel Calculate for spreadsheets, and Corel Show for presentations.

Some features are:

  • Sleek and simple interface
  • File compatibility and document sharing: With extensive file format support (including Microsoft Office) and the ability to create PDFs in all three applications.
  • Multi language support: Toggle between 13 available languages.
  • Portability: Delivery on a USB stick makes Corel Home Office easy to install on the go
  • Customization: Netbook owners can use manual or auto configuration options to easily adjust their settings and maximize screen real estate

Corel Home Office is available immediately and is priced at $69.99. For more information, to download a free trial version or to purchase Corel Home Office, please visit www.corelhomeoffice.com.

QNAP Announces Atom-based Pro Turbo NAS


 SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS

The SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS will feature an Intel Atom N270 (1.6GHz) CPU, 1GB DDRII memory and DOM (Disk on Module) architecture. You can store up to four 2.5" HDDs in this NAS, which supports RAID 0/1/5/6/5+hot spare configurations. If you're worried about power consumption, don't. The Pro Turbo NAS only consumes 18W!

The SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS also features a built-in iSCSI target service (max 8 iSCSI devices) with Thin Provisioning, Online RAID Capacity Expansion, Online RAID Level Migration, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, Wake on LAN, automatic policy-based IP blocking, instant SMS and email alert, plus more. Additionally, you can make use of the included "Surveillance Station" (network surveillance) with a maximum of four IP-based cameras for office security monitoring.

Currently, there is no information regarding the release date or price. You can get the full press release here.

[QNAP]

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