Home Offices That Work for You

I rarely give out three-star recommendations, but the HP OfficeJet Pro 1150C is an exception. This $1,000 peripheral looks like a personal copy machine. Actually it includes a color printer, scanner, and copier. The 1150C will crank out clean sheets at eight pages per minute. For scanning business graphics, the internal scanner churns out 24-bit color images that are sharp enough for most work needs. HP software is included, along with Adobe PhotoDeluxe LE for manipulating scanned photos and Caere's OmniPage LE for turning scanned text into word-processing files. If that's not enough, the copier part of the OfficeJet 1150C works just like an office copier (except that it doesn't jam). Put the paper in, use the control panel to adjust darkness or zoom in, hit the button, and out comes the copy.

If you're launching a full-fledged business from home, don't forget some accounting software. Intuit produces the best software package for this task, QuickBooks Pro 5.0 for $199. It tracks invoices, bill payments, payrolls, checking accounts, and your time. An introductory, interactive interview process helps you set up the software so it's tailored to your business needs.

So now you've got the office loaded for a 24 (hours) x 7 (days) workweek. But you still need a professional phone. Check out Northern Telecom's $325 PowerTouch 350. It has more features than Exxon's switchboard and yet it's pretty easy to use. The PowerTouch 350 handles two separate phone lines without the voice "leaking" that occurs on cheaper models, so your personal calls won't be overheard by a customer who's holding on the other line. To complete your communications center, the PowerTouch 350 also works with Caller ID and Voice Messaging services, should you decide to order them from your regional Bell.

All of these phone lines may cause confusion as to which machine takes which call. An inexpensive solution is the $90 ComSwitch 3500. The little gray box can take a single line and direct incoming calls to voice mail, a fax machine (internal on your PC), or even another phone.

Geek Factor: The Pentium II is the fastest PC on the market. Period. Just a few short years ago, only minicomputers possessed this kind of speed.

Weak Factor: Nearly everything in this setup, even the phone, requires a fairly steep learning curve. It will take about a month to get comfortable with this equipment.

Coordinates: G6-266 XL, Gateway 2000, 800-846-2000, www.gw2k.com ; HP OfficeJet Pro 1150C, Hewlett-Packard, 800-552-8500, www.hp.com ; Supra NetCommander ISDN, Diamond Multimedia Systems, 800-468-5846, www.diamondmm.com ; PowerTouch 350, Northern Telecom, 800-466-7835, www.nortel.com ; QuickBooks Pro 5.0, Intuit, 800-446-8848, http://www.intuit.com/quickbooks ; ComSwitch 3500, Command Communications, 800-288-6794.

John R. Quain (jquain@mcimail.com) , a contributing editor at Fast Company, appears regularly on the CBS News program "Up to the Minute."