Creating a Portable Home Office
Americans are working remotely more now than ever before. Indeed, some recent estimates indicate that nearly a quarter of all U.S. workers now work from home, with still many more people working remotely at least part of the time.
Instead of shutting themselves into a guest-bedroom-turned-home-office for eight hours a day, many remote workers prefer a portable home office. A portable office makes it easier to relocate from a home office to the kitchen table, back yard, local coffee shop, or back to the corporate office.
With reliable, high-speed Internet from Greenlight Networks, you can work on a strong connection from anywhere in your home. Feeling too tied to your desk? Check out these tips to create the perfect portable office for you!
Gear and Tech Your Portable Home Office Needs
The starting point for any remote work setup is a laptop capable of multitasking for office needs, a webcam for video conferencing, and some reliable headphones. But you can really take your home office to the next level with the following gear.
1. Portable External Hard Drives
No matter where you work, whether at your home office or the coffee shop, protecting and backing up your work can save you from a very bad day. If you’re only working when connected to the internet, you can perform cloud-based backups. But if you like to work offline from time to time, having a reliable external hard drive for regular backups is a must.
Fortunately, portable hard drives can do the trick while still being small and lightweight enough to fit in your laptop bag and take along with you. We strongly recommend SSD hard drives—or “solid-state drives”—which are more dependable and durable than other external hard drives. Just don’t forget to use it!
2. Power Banks
Another useful item every portable home office should have is a portable power bank. A power bank lets you plug your laptop into a compact battery pack that stores energy to keep your laptop up and running without needing to be plugged into a wall outlet. They’re perfect for using your laptop on the go or even in the backyard!
3. Portable Charging Station
Similar to the power bank above, your cell phone, tablet, and any other device need to stay charged, too. Consider a portable charging station to keep your phone, earbuds, and similar tech charged and ready to go at all times. Portable charging stations vary in the number and variety of ports built into them, so double-check what you need for your most important devices before making a purchase.
4. Lap Desk
Sometimes you need to take advantage of the comforts of your home and just sit back in a more comfortable chair (or lay out on the sofa!) and work with the laptop on your actual lap. Choosing a well-contoured and pleasantly cushioned lap desk can make a huge difference, even if just for short spurts.
Just make sure you select a good size and fit. For example, if you prefer to use a mouse instead of your laptop’s touchpad, pick out a lap desk that is broad enough to fit both the laptop and your mouse—and mouse pad—safely on it, while still being manageable in your lap.
Optimizing Your Portable Home Office’s Wi-Fi
After setting up your portable home office with the recommendations above, take the next step to improving your remote working productivity by optimizing the Wi-Fi in your home. Greenlight Networks’ fiber Internet is the fastest, most reliable you can get, but make sure your speed tier offers enough bandwidth for everything you do online.
For example, many homeowners have multiple devices running online simultaneously, whether it’s the smart devices used throughout the home, or someone else doing a video call in another room, or the kids streaming a movie or online gaming in their free time. This may require more speed than your current speed tier provides.
When the above tips are taken together, you can feel confident that you’ll have a reliable and efficient home office that you can take on the go. Don’t have Greenlight Networks? Check availability today to see if fast, affordable, fiber Internet is available in your neighborhood!