A Tale of Two Houses

If you have a vacation home or plan to spend significant time in a semi-permanent location this article will give you the benefit of some lessons learned the hard and a systematic approach to help you set up a second office with a minimum of problems.

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There’s quite a difference between being a mobile worker and having two home bases. The name of the game when setting up a second home office is to mirror as much as you can from your primary location, but apply any lessons you’ve learned to making office #2 more pleasant to work in and perhaps more productive.

My main residence is in Silicon Valley, CA which is in the center of virtually all things technical. It’s easy to get almost any kind of technology within a short drive and because of the high socio-economic profile; there is a myriad of service providers ready to provide the latest gizmo. Even on site tech support help is available on reasonably short notice, not cheap of course, but available.

This is quite a contrast with my second home in Idaho. The town boasts a population of about 4,000 people and probably 13,000 cows. The nearest big city has a population of a bit over 50,000 and is over twenty miles away. All of this means my second home office had to be easy to install, modular and dependable.

The first decision was which ISP to use. Given the rural nature of the town, I felt it made more sense to install a traditional land line and use the DSL broadband that provider offered. I tagged along when the Verizon rep came to install the phone and found out the house only had two live phone jacks. The broadband modem would have to be near one of them and the fax machine would have to be located near the other jack in the guest room and plugged in when needed.

There were a number of power outlets, but we needed a couple of power strips and a power center with back-up battery power for the office PC.

I opted for an XP based PC because my experience with Vista was less than optimal and because I didn’t want to deal with a flakey PC in a rural environment. A more critical decision was the printer. The key was that it had to be wireless because I would be working on selected projects using my laptop on our dining room table and my wife would be using her laptop as well. Our local VAR recommended a Dell all in one printer with wireless capability. We accepted his recommendation and in retrospect I would have gotten an HP. The Dell required special software on each computer seeking to use the printer and there was a conflict with my Vista powered laptop which required a two hour tech support call with Dell’s printer specialist to get it running. Dell ink jet cartridges are available directly from Dell or only from Staples – not as convenient as I would have liked.

I used a portable hard disk to replicate key files from the desktop computer in my main office and transferred them to the PC in office number two. I’m also using Picasa web-based albums and private links as a way of sharing photos conveniently.

The satellite office has worked out well and overall, I’m pretty pleased with the way it’s working out, alas the fax machine has not been installed yet – saving that for a fall project.

A Tale of Two Houses

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