At work there was always coffee in the coffee maker.  How did it get there?  Who made it?  Who knew?  You get to work and you get a coffee,  an hour or so later you go down and get more, maybe grab a cookie or two.  It was just there.  At home the coffee maker is empty, there isn't even coffee in the cupboard, and who ate all the cookies.

Sometimes working from home sucks.  You have to make coffee, but first you have to go out and buy the coffee.  You have to buy cookies too.  If you're lucky your kids might make cookies, but then you eat them all nice and warm from the oven, and you still don't have any cookies.

This raises an interesting point, while working at the office you have perks, like coffee and cookies, which the company pays for, and an endless stream of paper and supplies, computers that you don't have to worry about, lights and heat and even furniture.

So are you better off working for yourself at home?  While there seems to be more cons, like you have to buy and make your own coffee, buy your own paper and supplies, pay for the utilities and possibly even even buy furniture for yourself.  Working from home as benefits too that the office doesn't have (at least the office where I once worked)  such as setting my own hours, wearing what ever I want, when I'm not seeing clients,  going on field trips with my children's class,  being home when they are sick and believe it or not, doing the laundry.  Sure I work a lot at night at the dining room table, but the sense of freedom and being in control of what and when I do things far out weighs having coffee and cookies available all day long.

 
 

Working from home presents many challenges and opportunities.  One of the challenges I am going to open with is backup.  When you work at at office, someone else looks after backing up the office network.  it just happens and you don't have to think about it.

At home, this should be your number one priority.  Backup isn't for if your hard drive crashes it is for when your hard drive crashes.  Because it is going to happen at some point. 

In the last few days three people I know hard drives have crashed.  They were all able to retrieve their data, but it wasn't easy and they had to bring in professional help.

this subject is dear to my heart at the moment because I need to back up my computer.  its not that I haven't backed up at all, I back up my client files to 2 gb flash drives.  Its my pictures that worry me.  I have 16gb of pictures that aren't backed up.

I have been looking at online backup systems and desk top external hard drives.  Both have pros and cons.  Pros of an online back up are that you can set it and forget about it and all your files are backed up automatically all the time.  There is a monthly or yearly fee, with is neither a pro nor a con because no matter what you do it will cost you.  Cons of an online backup is that this type of service is still in its infancy and raises lots of questions about security. 

There are pros and cons with desktop or portable external hard drives as well.  Cons are that if someone breaks into your house and steels your computer chances are they are going to steel your external hard drive too, same if your house burns down.  Though I think the odds of someone breaking into your house are greater than your house burning down. Another con is that you have to remember to actually do the backup.  One of my dear friends keeps thier hard drive in a safe...hmmm, wonder how often they take it out and back up?  Pros of the desktop external hard drive - you have control of your own data, and the frequency of backups.

Right now I am swaying towards the external hard drive backup, the question now is how big do you go?