How to Set Up a Home Office: 5 Steps
Being an active person, I never thought the day would come when I actually missed being in an office. After the stay-at-home orders by governor Abbott back in April 2020, I found myself working for 8 hours a day at my kitchen table. It didn't take long before I was daydreaming of my nice comfy office chair and realizing how much more productive I was with two monitors. Naturally, I went on the website I manage and started shopping!
Weeks later, equipped with a mask, gloves and plenty of hand sanitizer, I ventured over to a friend's house. To my horror, she had been working on a window sill at the end of her couch on an old glitchy chromebook without any way to navigate but a 2-inch square of mildly responsive trackpad.
If you, like me, are one of the many office refugees forced to work in less than work-conducive conditions, here are a few tips that are going to make your weekday life feel like heaven!
Step 1: Laptop Vs. Desktop
Laptops are undoubtedly the go-to when it comes to remote IT equipment. With a laptop you get a screen, keyboard, trackpad, computer and sometimes even a webcam. Naturally, laptops are in high-demand during this time, as they should be. With kids, spouses, parents, and partners all home, a quiet place to work can be hard to come by for some of us. This makes the portability factor of a laptop extremely valuable if migrating from room to room to escape noise and chaos in shared spaces becomes a frequent event.
Here are our best-value, highest quality, in-stock laptops for Zoom meetings, Google Hangouts, work, shopping, work-out videos, and everything else you can think of during quarantine:
My desktop changed my quarantine-life. Seriously, sometimes a little laptop just doesn't cut it. As a graphic designing, video editing, 3D animating, PC gaming, web developing nerd, a souped-up desktop is a must have. If purchasing a $6,000 Alienware laptop isn't in the budget, a Discount PC custom configured desktop can be a life-saver. Having the hook-up at Discount PC has it's perks. Personally, I own a laptop with a webcam I use when I need to move around, and an awesome, maxed-out desktop for when I have cpu-intensive tasks to complete. Feeling crowded? Discount PC offers desktops called "Tiny's" or "Micro's" that are the size of a sandwich and can be mounted under a desk or to the back of a monitor!
Our tech-genius representatives are on stand-by from 8am-5pm Monday-Friday if you need help ordering the right form factor, type of RAM, Hard Drive, Operating System, Video Card, or even stand alone webcam.
Check out these high-performance professional grade desktops, on super-sale right now for July 4th:
Lenovo ThinkCentre M93P i5 Tiny
Step 2: Not One, But Two Monitors
Having two monitors will streamline your workflow and push you to the next level of productivity. As someone who does not have a photographic memory, I work with reference windows open, and the program I am working in open. Splitting screens is a great, until the hair-pulling process of scrolling left, right, up, down, maximizing, and minimizing adds unnecessary time to simple tasks. Having two monitors means two full size windows or programs can always be open. If you're at a tiny desk or table, consider wall mounting your monitors with an adjustable VESA mount.
Monitors are selling out FAST! Discount PC sells equipment that you will find in executive offices across the world at a consumer price. These are our best selling monitors, available NOW:
Dell 22-Inch Professional P2212 Monitor
Dell 20-Inch Professional P2016 Monitor
Step 3: Docking Station
For most office work, the average professional grade laptop is more than sufficient, except for that tiny screen. The solution to a home office that can easily convert from portable to stationary is a docking station. With a docking station, your multiple displays and all other peripherals are ready to go with one simple connection.
This is our favorite, most convenient docking station:
Step 4: Keyboard & Mouse
There are two things to consider when choosing a keyboard & mouse. Do you want to deal with wires or refilling batteries? At my nice giant desk at work wires never bothered me, but at home a wireless keyboard and mouse has been worth the "hassle" of changing out batteries. Compared to my Xbox controllers, feeding the keyboard & mouse batteries is nothing.
Step 5: Get Creative
You need a desk & comfortable chair. Despite their name, working on your lap with a laptop cannot compare to having an office-like setup. When COVID-19 first hit Texas, I expected to work from home for a couple weeks at most, so I was not about to invest in pricey furniture. Being a bargain hunter, I went to the "Free" sections of Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. Soon I found myself with an office chair and a desk that actually belongs to my existing furniture set. After months of quarantining the future is pointing to more remote jobs. With the current world climate, an affordable, reliable home office setup is worth your time, and we are here to help!
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