Setting Up a Small or Home Office

Introduction

Like a lot of people, I like to work from home. When I decided to set up my study at home as an extension to my office, I found many free or reasonably priced products and services that allow smaller businesses or home offices to have all the communication power and flexibility of big companies.

This might not be the best possible set up, but it works for me and just in case my research into this could prove valuable to anyone else, here are some of the details.

Telephony

In recent years the cost of making calls seems to have dropped and dropped and there are some good deals out there if you look. Currently our main line is with TalkTalk. As we have friends, family and clients abroad, we use the International package which for £20 gives us free UK, European and US landline calls (except 'premium' numbers such as 0845 and 0870 which annoy me no end - go to http://www.saynoto0870.com/ to find 'normal' alternatives to these expensive numbers). The downsides are that you have to enter a prefix to get the free international calling and calls to mobiles are expensive (aren't they always?). On the up side, when TalkTalk finally get their kit into our local exchange our broadband will be free (and jump from 2 to 8Mps).

Competition seems to be intense right now with more services being bundled together (e.g. mobile calls and cable tv in the same tarrif) so hunt around and stop giving all your cash to BT.

I am also making use of VOiP (see below) but I am not quite ready to make the jump to a VOiP only solution and £20 per month for line rental, pretty much all calls and (in the future) broadband) is not unreasonable.

VOiP

One line was not enough for our needs but we did not want to pay monthly line rental for a second number. The answer is VOiP (Voice Over IP) which uses our broadband connection for phone calls. Many VOiP services (including the www.draytel.org service that we use) have no rental charges and no cost for incoming calls. For outgoing calls you purchase credits in advance which do not expire and which you can 'top up' over the internet at any time.

Many people assume you must leave your PC on in order to be able to use VOiP or use one of those horrid USB handsets, but that is not the case. Many modem/routers now have VOiP capability and, after a little configuration, you can simply plug a normal phone (including Dect base stations) into your router. As long as your router is on (and your internet connection is working), your phone is available.

Normal calls

I can only speak for the set-up that I use (Draytek VG2800 router and www.draytel.org SIP account) but once you have spent a few minutes configuring the system, making and receiving calls is exactly the same as a normal phone and the quality is indistinguishable. Draytel will allocate you a phone number but you can choose the area code - so if you wish, you can appear to be based in central London while actually enjoying the fresh air (and lower property prices) of the country - perfick!

Free calls to other VOiP users

As well as the cost saving on line rental, there are many other advantages. You can make free calls to other VOiP users, although you must dial them via their SIP address rather than their phone number and some providers (such as Skype - booh, hiss!) run closed 'networks' that mean free calls are only available to users of the same system.

Voicemail

Draytel has a free voicemail service which emails any messages left on your number to an address of your choosing. This is fantastic if you have push email on your mobile phone (see later). You can then play these back on your PC (or smartphone). You can also dial a number and enter your account/pin to pick up any messages left for you.

Sign in from anywhere, on multiple devices

With the service provided by Draytel (and others) you can have multiple devices linked to your VOiP account at the same time. How is this useful? Well I have a normal phone connected to my router at home and at the office, so both phones will ring when someone dials my number. I also have a software VOiP client on my laptop (the excellent X-Lite, a free download from http://www.counterpath.com/) so wherever I am (hotel, airport, staying with friends or relatives) as long as I am connected to the internet, my laptop will also 'ring' and I can take the call there.

It is also possible to get VOiP client software for mobile phones. I have tested this and did not find the reliability and call quality to be sufficient, but the latest generation of smartphones have this built in (unless the operator removes/cripples it, so check before you purchase) and coupled with 3G, this should make this a viable option.

Video Conferencing

Some software VOiP clients (such as X-Lite) allow video conferencing assuming that the VOiP call you have placed has been picked up by someone using a PC and compatible software. Just hit the webcam button to add video to your call.

Most software VOiP solutions (i.e. where you take the call on your computer) allow you to easily record the conversation if you wish to. Simply click the record button during your conversation.

Printing, Scanning and Faxing

For this I use a Dell 1850dn. It is not perfect (envelopes get creased in the feeder and the automatic document feeder often puts paper through at a slight angle) but the good points outweigh the bad for me. This is a multi-function network laser printer for an astonishingly low price.

Setup for printing is easy as you might expect. Scanning is excellent as you can load the scanner and on the LCD of the device, decide to which PC on your network you want to send the scanned image (a pin number prevents you sending to the wrong PC). You can set up the client software on the PC so that you can select which folder to send the scan to and you can set different defaults for different folders (e.g. a Photos folder can be set to scan in colour while a Documents folder can be set to scan in black and white).

I scan to mdi format (Microsoft Document Imaging) as this has an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) function. If you are running Windows Vista or Windows XP with the free MSN Desktop Search software, your scanned document will be indexed so that you can search your hard drive for all documents containing certain keywords and if those words appear in the text of the document you scanned, it will be included in the search results!

I can't stress how useful desktop search is. I can generally find any email I can recall from the 5 years or so worth on my PC (I hate deleting things!) in just a few seconds with a few keywords. If you don't like Microsoft, try Google Desktop Search. If you use a Mac or Vista I believe it is built into the desktop already.

I have taken to scanning a lot of the business documentation I get (invoices, POs, Remittance Advices, Bank Statements, etc) so that these are available at the entering of a few keywords on my PC. All that is required is, before placing the document in my filing cabinet, I run it through the scanner (sitting on top of the filing cabinet) and then save the file that automatically pops up on my screen seconds later in the appropriate directory.

The 1850dn is also a fax machine. You can either fax directly from it, or, if you set up the client software, you can fax from any PC on your network by 'printing' to the Dell Fax option on your list of printers.

Receiving Faxes

While the 1850dn works great for receiving faxes, I use a fax to email service. For a one-off cost of £6 I get a fax number (only London area codes are available from Draytel). Any fax sent to this number is turned into a pdf document and forwarded to the email address I specify allowing me to pick up faxes sent to me wherever I happen to be in the world (and even on my smartphone when out visiting clients). The only limitation is that you must receive one fax every 90 days or your number may be re-allocated - so set a reminder in your calendar or you will be reprinting your business cards!

Email

There are many ISPs who will provide you with email functionality and many will help you to register a domain name or to move an existing domain name. One ISP I have heard good things about is www.amenworld.com. If you also want web hosting you might want to check out the new Microsoft Office Live service, especially if you are short on time and web design experience (a simple on-line web site design package is part of the basic service which is free). There are so many services and suppliers that I'm not going to attempt to cover them here.

Mobile Email

The ability to pick up email on the move is essential for me, but I found that the Blackberry service is just too expensive and complex for a small business to set up and maintain. Instead I use a Windows Mobile (MDA Vario) on T-Mobiles 'Web-n-Walk' package (£7.50 per month on top of normal talk package) which I can set to check all my email accounts once every 15 minutes (which I think is more than sufficient for email). I can reply to emails, open a number of formats of attached files (e.g. PDF, Doc, Xls) and even modify Word and Excel files (so one up on Blackberry).

For reviews of the latest Windows Mobile devices and information on how to best configure them, see www.coolsmartphone.com.

Having an 'unlimited' data connection also allows you to make use of the web while on the move and MSN Instant Messenger (branded Windows Live Messenger this week!). I also recommend the Copilot SatNav add on that can use your data connection to check the traffic ahead, report your location (via a website) to colleagues or family and allow colleagues and family to send you messages and destinations via the web.

If you would like to comment on this article (good or bad) please send me an email at the address at the top of the page.