While more and more people are setting up a business from home or are doing more of their companies office work from home, there is becoming a well defined set of tools that the information worker requires if he or she will be productive at home. We will explore a few of these in this short article.

There are many business opportunities for small business owners who want to work out of their homes. These include the hobbyist whose hobby grows into a small business as well as the entrepreneur who starts a business out of his garage or basement to the tradesmen who has his office at home to coordinate all of the customer projects that he may be involved in. We are focusing on the growing field of information worker in this article, although many of the above professions will also need these same tools.

Included on the list of tools or requirements are a place to work were you can focus on whatever your function is. Setting up your office on the dining room table may give you the room, however if you are continuously interrupted and distracted, you may want to consider a more permanent location in your home with a desk and a comfortable office chair to work from.

Next is communications. This includes a separate phone line if you will be on the phone a lot, with an appropriate long distance plan, a fax line and fax machine. Note that there are excellent low cost all in one printers that include a fax, printer, copier and scanner capabilities, however if you will be doing any high volume work a more expensive high volume machine may be in order. Included with communications needs are a cell phone, again with a reasonable long distance and local calling plan. Some companies also offer 1st minute incoming call plans for those people who receive a lot of calls. Finally high speed internet is a must. Whether it is a cable modem service from your cable company or from the telephone company, make sure that you also receive reliable service with email and web space service.

The last item that many home workers need to consider is a fast computer with lots of storage and back up capability. Information workers who are using many applications cannot afford to be slowed down by an unresponsive computer that cannot support operating several memory hogging applications at the same time. Always ensure you have a backup plan and backup up your data on a regular basis. Even new computers will crash at the most inopportune moments!