In continuing the series about “The Paperless Home Office”, Part 1 and Part 2 were an introduction and what software you should consider. Part 3 will be about the hardware I use for my paperless home office.

The first piece of equipment is a must have and one I would just not live without. The Fujitsu ScanSnap is without a doubt the best color image sheet feeder scanner I have ever used. And you can get the scanner for either the PC or a Mac. It is one of those pieces of hardware you can plug in and know it is going to work. It will scan double sided paper without any effort on your part. It automatically eliminates blank pages. And, it takes up a very small footprint on your desk.

Next in my list of must have hardware for the paperless home office is a good backup. I use a Western Digital external hard drive. Western Digital has a huge selection to pick from and they all are very reliable. If you are looking at moving to a paperless office or if you are already working in a paperless office, you have to have reliable backup. Back up is a must!!! Backup, backup, backup.

Another piece of hardware that is vital to a paperless office is a second display. Wide screen at that. Since I use a laptop computer as my main computer, a second display is a must. I use the Acer AL1916w. Biggest reason, it was cheap. I do plan to upgrade in the near future to all Dell flat panel displays. While they are a bit more expensive, the reviews on the displays are usually very high.

The second display works great since you are viewing documents on your computer and not in hard copy. I usually have my word processor open on my MacBook and the documents I am working with on the second display.

Since walls of file cabinets are not present in a paperless home office and since you are not going to keep piles and piles of paper, what is a person to do with it. For me, I have to have a good shredder under my desk. Even if you are not paperless, every home office should have a paper shredder. I don’t have a favorite one. In fact, we usually buy a new one almost yearly. We use them hard and daily.

And finally, my computer is the MacBook. When I decided to move to a paperless office, one of the requirements I knew I had to have was a reliable computer. I had nothing but troubles with the windoze machines, so it was natural to switch to the Mac. It has been five years and I don’t regret it one little bit. While I backup daily all of my client files and all of the PDF’s on my computer, I have not had to worry about any lost data. And, the laptop is also the logical choice for a paperless home office. I am not always in my office. And when I leave my office, I take my MacBook with me and my entire office is also with me. No matter where I am at or where I am working, I have my entire office with me and can conduct business from my laptop.

No matter what computer hardware you decide to use, all of the other hardware options I have mentioned above will work. And, it is not expensive to set up a paperless home office. A paperless office also saves you money. And you don’t need the square footage for all those stupid 4-drawer file cabinets. A paperless office goes hand in hand with a home office.

I would be happy to visit with anyone via email or by phone about a paperless home office. And, please leave your comments here about your own paperless office and what hardware you use. Lets keep the conversation going.