Photo by Bill Green Staff photo by Bill Green Lynda Wagner, owner NewTeQ Computer Services, Inc., works at a local nursing home installing a network accessible video monitoring system. The system will allow staff to monitor activity in the facility from remote locations.

Home-based businesses focus their technological needs on their customers.

Telecommuters work at home as if they were at the office, so their equipment needs to be compatible with their business or government employers.

"What we provide to our home-based business customers is central to what goals they want to accomplish, said Lynda Wagner, president and owner of NewTeQ Computer Services.

"We analyze their needs and help clients spend their money intelligently," Ms. Wagner said. "For example, if the company has three people, the owner doesn't need a $1,000 router.

"We want them to get the most bang for the buck for the greatest productivity and efficiency in the long run."

John Dickerson runs his business, SOHO Systems Inc., out of his Urbana home. His company focuses on small business clients, and technology follows need, he said.

For example, Mr. Dickerson installed all the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment for his wife, Erica, who has an interior design business, based in their home.

"Erica needs to take pictures, figure measurements, use AutoCAD (a suite of computer-assisted design products); and her work with customers is collaborative," Mr. Dickerson said

One of his customers is an Urbana farmer, and there is 100 acres between the old farm house and the new house.

"It was difficult to get technology into the 1700s-era farmhouse, but the new house had a cable modem. So we put directional antennas on both roofs to create a wireless bridge that enabled us to hook up to a server and three work stations," he said.

Telecommuters need their equipment at home to be compatible with the equipment at the business or government agency, Ms. Wagner said.

"We analyze the equipment, and the equipment at home doesn't have to match exactly the equipment at work, only be compatible," she said. "A piece of equipment at the telecommuter's home that more closely resembles that of a small business may be able to tie into the workplace."

There are two good technologies used for telecommuters, Mr. Dickerson said: a virtual private network, or VPN, and a Citrix technology where applications are installed on services in a central computer room.

The VPN establishes a secure and encrypted tunnel to the office. Once established, traffic can pass just as if on a local network, he said.

The Citrix product allows any computer to access Microsoft applications without having to install the applications on every desktop in the system, Mr. Dickerson said. "It uses a Citrix platform but the applications run on Microsoft servers in a central computer room.

"It's like the old days when terminals were linked to a mainframe. All the work is done on the Microsoft servers, not on the telecommuters' desktops," Mr. Dickerson said.

As for hardware costs, buying quality now saves on headaches later, said Nick Damoulakis, co-owner with wife, Amy, of Orases Consulting Corp. "You get what you pay for in customer service.

"I have a plan with Dell that guarantees that a service professional will be at my door in four hours. I would never buy generic; it's a headache if something breaks. I want to be able to call, and 1-2-3, it's done and they (service reps) are out of here."

Mr. Dickerson said users should buy the best products they can afford. "Do you want to buy cheap or keep your business up and running?" he said. "Take a switch. You can buy a cheap thing, and it works. Let's say the switch has eight connections; that's fine, but your entire enterprise may depend on that one switch.

"That single-point failure can take you down. Or, you could spend several hundred dollars on a switch that will last for the next 10 years."

The best software is free, Mr. Damoulakis said.

That would be software from the Open Source Initiative at www.opensource.org.

"We use and build from open source," he said. "It's the client's option. For example, if we tailor open source code for a real estate agent and improve the software, we'll put it out for the public to use.

"Using open source software can save a client thousands of dollars," he said.

Open source is very nice, but you have to have people locally who can support it and make it work correctly, Mr. Dickerson said. With a licensed product, there is a much broader support mechanism.

"If you use an open source word processor on a Linux platform, it can work well with a very nice look and functionality; but if you don't know Linux and its applications, and don't have a support contract, and the platform goes down, you're stuck," he said.

Ms. Wagner always recommends standard software products because the specialized software for her clients doesn't work with open source, she said.

"Title companies are a big part of our business, and we use TitleExpress software (from TSS Corp.)," Ms. Wagner said. "We take the software and customize it for our clients.

"We create merge docs and merge sets using their software," she said. "We can print out, in order, the documents needed for a settlement agent at the time of settlement. It makes the settlement very efficient."

Advances in computer technology are rapid, but Ms. Wagner takes it slow when introducing new technology to her clients.

"We are always watching what I call the bleeding edge of technology," she said. "We do not incorporate this technology among our clients because more often than not there are bugs that need to be massaged through to make the hardware and software stable.

"Instead, we use what I call cutting-edge technology, but it's been tested and is stable."

As a partner of Microsoft, NewTeQ gets Microsoft products before the general public because the software giant wants its partners to test and work out any bugs, Ms. Wagner said.

"For example, I never used Windows Millennium in any of my products because Microsoft was never able to stabilize it. Eventually, Microsoft pulled it."

Mr. Damoulakis believes that if a business buys a high-end computer of good quality, it can last six years. "Usually, it's the software rather than the hardware that we would more likely upgrade," he said. "It's tricky. For us, having the newest software allows us to do the newest things on the Web, and the software is compatible with the older hardware."

Mr. Dickerson says obsolescence is always a factor in PC technology. "Five years ago, in 2001, the average speed of a machine was less than 1 gigahertz. Now, the machine in Erica's office contains eight processors at 3.8 gigahertz per processor," he said. "That machine today costs $2,500, similar to what it cost five years ago for the single processor."

There are so many orders of magnitude, he said. An application on a machine five years ago that took five minutes could take one second today on a newer machine.