Finding the gear your new office needs is a matter of peripheral interest.
Posted by : Keith Mansfield
When setting up an office for the first time, whether for yourself
or for 50 others, a good portion of your time will go toward making sure
everyone is properly equipped. Naturally, if your business has any kind
of office component, computer equipment will be a must.
But, as one quickly learns during such an endeavor, the PC is only
the beginning. Once that's picked out, what then follows is a long
shopping list of other stuff, aka peripherals. Some are necessary for
virtually all set-ups (such as printers and monitors), while some will
be necessary only for certain types of offices and certain types of
folks.
But don't let yourself get sweet-talked into buying extras you don't
need. Keeping in mind who and what certain peripherals are used for will
keep you from overspending unnecessarily.
Monitors: You can easily spend hundreds on a luxury LCD monitor, but
unless fine-tuned attention to color and detail are crucial to your work
(say, if you work in graphic design), it's not necessary to lay out that
much cash. But of course, unless you're running a fleet of laptops, you
do need monitors.
Fortunately, decent LCD models (which take up less space and are
easier on the eyes) don't cost much more than a couple of hundred
dollars each these days. If all you need from a monitor are the bare
essentials, a good refurbished CRT model can be had for less than $50.
Scanners: This is an example of something that was once a luxury
item, but is now within everyone's price range. Baseline flatbed
scanners seldom surpass the three-figure price range, and while it might
seem like a frivolity at first, it won't if you find yourself having to
spend hours manually keying in a text document because no electronic
version of it exists. As scanners have dropped in price, specialized
types (such as sheet-fed scanners, handheld models, and business-card
scanners) have cropped up. But even if it's something you use only a few
times a year, a basic scanner (such as HP's Scanjet 3670, which runs
about $80) quickly pays for itself.
Printers: No peripheral needs to be more exactly tailored to its
owner than a printer. You might grind out one memo a week, or you might
generate dozens of high-res photo prints each day, and where you fall on
that spectrum might mean a budget difference of thousands of
dollars--not even counting consumables. But printers are a category in
which many offices tend to overreach, shelling out for a $1,400 color
printer when all they need is a good, dependable laserjet model.
The typical office generates tons of plain old monochrome documents,
and what they need is a sturdy laser model such as the Konica Minolta
PagePro 1350W ($160 street). Laser printers are built for high-volume
black-and-white jobs, while inkjet models are solid for low-cost,
low-volume color printing. Many small businesses are taking advantage of
pricing trends and springing for both.
Storage: Storage is a multi-tentacled beast, with a dozen different
varieties and formats from which to pick, from 200GB portable hard
drives on down. Fortunately, storage and storage media have never been
cheaper, and so there's no need to pick just one format. Flash drives
have replaced floppies (and, in many cases, ZIP and JAZ drives) as the
vehicle of choice when doing the sneaker-net routine of transferring
files too big to e-mail, while in many offices, CD-R drives are taking
over the back-up chores formerly held by complicated tape drives.
Carefully equip your office with only the storage tools you really
need now, because when the time comes to upgrade, it's almost certain
that what's needed then will be cheaper than it is today.
Projectors: For most business, projectors are dazzling but
irrelevant (and expensive) toys. But prices are dropping; a decent SVGA
projector (such as Sharp's PG-B10S) can be had for less than $600. If
you dazzle clients with PowerPoint presentations, or if you do any
in-house video training, it's no doubt worth it to splurge on a decent
projector.
Speakers: Yeah, they're cheap--usually no more than $30 for a decent
pair. But unless audio is a part of your business (or unless you do some
hardcore gaming after work), dedicated computer speakers are still a
luxury. If speakers came bundled with your PC, odds are they'll do just
fine for everyday use.
Input devices: Of course, everyone on your staff needs the
basics--mice and keyboards. But here's a category on which few business
owners splurge, and more should. Input devices are light-years beyond
their rickety forefathers, and all that progress and innovation has
barely caused a bump in prices.
When keyboard shopping, consider models that are antimicrobial and
ergonomically sound. Think about an optical mouse to cut down on cord
tangles. And if you're in the idea business, look into a USB digital
tablet that can transfer your handwritten notes and sketches to your PC.
Wacom's $200 Intuos3 tablet comes with its own pen and mouse, and is
Photoshop-compatible.
Networking gear: If you're running more than one PC, there's no
longer any excuse for not networking them. That's how cheap and easy the
process has gotten. If you want to keep things simple in a small office,
look for an all-in-one networking device, such as WebPoint's 500
four-port Broadband Sharing Gateway. An item like this should provide
you with a built-in print server, COM ports for Internet connections,
and a secure firewall, all for around a hundred bucks.
All-in-ones: Multifunction peripherals combine a print, scanning,
copying, and fax functions. Conventional wisdom has long held that not
many MFPs do each job as well as a dedicated peripheral does, but that's
not always the case anymore. And in the case where space or budget
constraints are dictating your choices, they're a nice option to have.
Lexmark makes a specialty of MFPs, and offers models ranging in price
from less than $100 to more than $10,000.
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DVD titling; and digital audio, Adobe Photoshop CS3 extended, Adobe illustrator CS3,Adobe indesign CS3,Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3,Adobe Contribute CS3,Adobe Fireworks CS3,Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional, Adobe Premiere Pro CS3,Adobe Soundbooth CS3,Adobe Encore CS3,Adobe OnLocation,Adobe Bridge CS3,Adobe Version Cue CS3,Adobe Device Central CS3,Adobe Stock Photos, Intel Pentium 4 (1.4GHz processor for DV; 3.4GHz processor for HDV), Intel Centrino, Intel Xeon, (dual 2.8GHz processors for HD), or Intel Core, Duo (or compatible) processor; SSE2-enabled processor required for AMD systems Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (certified for 32-bit editions) 1GB of RAM for DV; 2GB of RAM for HDV and HD; more RAM recommended when running multiple components 10GB of available hard-disk space (additional free space required during installation) Dedicated 7,200 RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing; striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD; SCSI disk subsystem preferred Microsoft DirectX compatible sound card (multichannel ASIO-compatible sound card recommended),1,280x1,024 monitor resolution with 32-bit color adapter Blu-ray burner required for Blu-ray Disc creation OHCI compatible IEEE 1394 port for DV and HDV capture, export to tape, and transmit to DV device QuickTime 7.1.2 software required to use QuickTime features Broadband Internet connection required for Adobe Stock Photos* and other services
