Quick wins for your home tech setup

A taste of Digital Dragonfly’s non-geeky home tech expertise

In this short extract from her FREE 45-page Ultimate Guide to Technology for Independent Professionals Francesca Geens at Digital Dragonfly highlights some essential quick wins for your home tech setup.

In the other sections she covers your home wifi setup, buying advice, productivity tips, cloud essentials for working on the go and much more. If you are a freelance business owner working in a home office this is essential bed-time reading!

Francesca’s quick wins for your home tech setup:

• Clean your monitor with some specialist screen cleaning wipes. It can make the world of difference. Do this regularly.
• If you have a computer system that is a couple of years old (and not due an upgrade for a while) – splash out on a large monitor with greater resolution. This can be reused when you do upgrade in a couple of years.
• Consider buying a new keyboard – one with a bit more spring in the keys. The one that came packaged with your computer probably wasn’t the best quality and if you’ve been using it for a couple of years then it won’t be in great shape. A new keyboard can be reused when you get your next computer so is a decent investment.
• If you are using a ball mouse – upgrade this to an optical mouse straight away. It’s far more accurate. If you are at a fixed desk with a tower PC then a wired mouse is better than a wireless one. (In our experience wired mice give greater accuracy than wireless ones.) A good mouse mat is important too. Again it can be reused with your next computer so is worth the investment.
• If your main computer is a laptop then the above advice still holds. If you have a fixed work space then consider splashing out on the peripherals along with a docking station for the laptop. If you can only work from the dining room table then treat yourself to a good mouse and mat.
• Wireless printers can sometimes be a real pain. Always keep a cable plugged into it (tucked away and hidden) just in case it has ‘one of those days’.
• Buying a cheap printer generally turns out to be a false economy; reliability isn’t usually that great and you’ll pay a premium for replacement printer cartridges.
• In your printer preferences there is normally a ‘Draft Mode’ that can be set that reduces the amount of ink used per print. Use this as a default. If you have a colour printer then also set the default to print in Black and White. Both will save you a fair amount in printing costs over the long term.
• Always have a spare set of printer cartridges to hand. Buy these when you’ve just put a new set in the printer. Murphy’s law states that the printer will always run out of ink when you need it most.
• If you are looking at upgrading your printer – consider those that offer duplex printing (printing on both sides of a piece of paper) and are also AirPrint and/or Google Cloud Print compatible. Colour Inkjet All in One printers with this type of feature set can be purchased for less than a hundred pounds now.