If you're still in the planning stages of moving to a rural property, or are simply dreaming, it's easy to get all caught up in the romance of it all. Beautiful rolling hills, babbling brooks, the smell of leaves and the chirp of birds.
And the quiet... ahhhhhh... so delightful.
But if you plan on working from home on a new rural property, here are three things you need to have in place before signing that real estate offer.
3 Things to Check BEFORE Buying Your Dream Country Property
1. Make sure you can get high speed internet (or at least a reasonable fascimile).
Don't make the same mistake I did and delay your ability to work from home because you didn't do your homework. Call local internet service providers (ISPs) as soon as you fall in love with that homestead property. Find out what packages are available, and what they cost. In many rural areas, especially here in Canada, the services are pret ty limited. I ended up with a satellite service through Barrett Xplore using their upper end home package. In hindsight, I should have had one of their business packages installed, but the price difference was substantial: on the low end, $ 59; the package I'm on is $ 79 a month, plus 12% tax. The lowest price business package, which isn't a whole lot faster than my current package is $ 119 a month. Not cheap. In short, make sure you get the right package for your work, or it will cost you in the long run.
2. Check the power outage history in the area.
I grew up in the same area I'm now living, so I'm used to power outages. I always found them sort of comforting, in a cozy sort of way. The candlelight, the fire in the woodstove, the quiet. A chance to reconnect with family over a board game without the distraction of media. But if you're running a business from home, a power outage loses it's cozy factor pretty quickly.
Before you decide on a property, check with your local electrical utility, neighbours, old guys in the coffee shop - whoever will talk to you about the history of power outages in the area. Not only will they interrupt your work (the power outages, not the old guys in the coffee shop - but they can be chatty... I'd be careful!), but they can wreak havoc on your computer equipment. I lost the hard drive of my iMac and my laptop this past winter from what we think were too many power sags. Which put a bit of a crinkle in my work schedule.
Bottom line - if the power in the area is super unreliable and you'll be working from home, you'll need to either reconsider the property, or spend some time and money ensuring you have stable back-up power systems. We'll be talking about this in a future post, as it's not something I've done yet, but plan on it this winter.
Even if the electrical outage history in your area is pretty good, get yourself a high quality surge/sag prote ctor. After I lost both my computers, the satellite dish installer (yes, a component of the dish went shortly after I got the computers back) told me that it's the power sags in our area, not spikes, that take out electrical equipment.
Apparently they're caused by branches on the lines, or something. And there are a lot of branches drifting onto the lines around here, especially with any sort of wind. It's amazing to me our hydro company doesn't do more maintenance. Maybe it's cheaper for them to just fix things when they have a massive outage than to trim the trees regularly. Either way, it can affect your work in a big way, so make sure you check into all of this before you move. At least then you'll know why your brand new iMac needs a new hard drive.
3. Scout out the nearest town for a cafe or office hub with reliable high speed internet.
For all of the reasons above, you'll want to find another place to work on those days the po wer isn't restored within a few hours. If you're planning a back-up power source, or your new property will be running on solar power or some other system, you won't need this as much. But for the rest of us who don't have those options at the moment, an alternate 'office' is critical.
Before you buy your new property, check out around the nearest town to see if there are any cafes or small business hubs with wireless internet. The local library is another spot to check. Now, of course there is the possibility that if the power is out at your house, it will be out in town, too, but usually the grid is set up in such a way that everything doesn't go out at once. That's something to ask the power company. In our case, we're on a trunk of about 1600 homes across a huge area. So if one tree falls across a line at the edge of town, or a car hits a pole, or there's a fire, we're all out of power - including the local ferry terminal (though they have back-up systems). The last outage here was an entire day. Before that, I think it was two days. Some areas were without power for a week. Worth checking into.
Does Your Dream Property Pass the Test?
This is just the beginning, of course, but if these three things are checked off your 'to-do' list before you decide on a property, chances are your home office adventure will roll out without a hitch. At least until the fog rolls in.
Find More Your Country Home Office: Does Your Dream Homestead Property Have What It Takes? IssuesQuestion by Neil: Whats Better? Computer VS Laptop? Hey There, I will be going off to university this fall, and was wondering what I should have for university. Should I get a laptop or a desktop computer? Presently, laptops are more convenient due to their ease of mobility compared to their counterpart which is not. I have several scenarios- 1) Buy a powerful laptop which will do everything from MS Office to power video games. It will also be used for media purposes- Ex: television, music movies. Programs such as CS4 will be used as well. Drawback with this idea- Expensive, especially if I would need 4GB ram, 512mb video card, and min 320GB hard drive. Also, I would be using it non-stop so I would be scared that I would destroy my battery due to over exposure. *Could someone confirm this statement whether it be true/false "When your laptop is plugged in, it does not affect the battery whatsoever meaning that if your computer is on and plugged in, and your using it nonstop, it will not wear the battery out unless it is not directly plugged into an electrical socket* Also, it may be heavy due to the fact it would be powerful and possibly bulking. 2) I would buy a desktop computer which would be stored in my dorm room meaning that I wouldn't have a laptop at my disposal in class. I would have a powerful PC, 4GB at least, terabyte hard drive, 1GB video card, etc. 3) Buy both desktop PC and Laptop. It would be rather expensive, but I wouldn't go all out on an expensive laptop. I would just buy a mini laptop. Something that would do me over for university only. It would be light, portable, fast and efficient, and definitely wouldn't be unresponsive in class since I would only be running MS Office and would store documents etc. I would than have a PC back in my dorm room which I would build to defer the costs. Newegg.ca supplies parts for low prices, so that means I could that as a main computer for gaming, video, music, movies etc. Also, if there was a file I needed to access from my PC in my dorm room, I could remotely via laptop. What do you think would be the better choice. I want something that's going to give me a bang for my buck, but also be piratical as well. Also, because I live in Canada, anyone know of some good suppliers, or know where I could get a miniature laptop? Examples: http://labs.vnunet.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/05/25/asus_and_hp.jpg Also, if you have any other alternatives, I'm open! Thanks! Neil Best answer for Whats Better? Computer VS Laptop?:
Answer by James F
Computer
Answer by Jedi Master <
IF you are going to use it for school alone, get a good laptop and build a decent desktop for the dorm room. The desktop really only needs to be a word processor and an internet surfer. Then network the two together and carry the laptop. Use a sync tool to copy any changes to your files to either machine... if you are planning gaming, then get a laptop with a fast CPU and build a gaming rig....
Answer by Miagi99
Bottom line is a Desktop PC will be cheaper and give you better parts and is not limited to expansion if needed in the future. The reality is if your laptop fails then you are very restricted to what you can do and the type of parts you can install or configure. Unless, if the mobility factor is a big issue then a Desktop PC is the way to go. Good luck.
Answer by Jerry J
Sounds like you need both. Get a Notebook for about $ 350 or less and desktop with monitor for less than $ 600, so you have less than $ 1,000 invested
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