1 of 3 
How to stop tech ruining your home life
Posted on 16 Feb 2010 at 11:12
Paul Ockenden reveals how to prevent work smartphones and laptops from disrupting your home life
Seriously, though, what’s the worst that could happen if you don’t respond to that urgent email from your boss at 9pm tonight? Chances are, by morning a) your boss will have completely re-written his PowerPoint presentation anyway; and b) the way you’ll respond after a good night’s sleep will be very different to how you’d handle it at the end of a stressful day. Don’t ignore that metaphorical off button!
Now let’s take a look at my three laptop tips:
Laptop tip 1
Get good broadband. Mobile broadband is adequate for when you’re out and about, but in most cases when you’re working from home a fixed line will be a far better bet. A recent test showed that 40% of mobile broadband users have to scrape by with a speed below 0.5Mbits/sec, way below the headline figure that you’ll see touted in the ads. But I think that’s only the half of it, because with mobile broadband you’ll also get more frequent line drops, longer round-trip times, and if you’re unlucky your mobile network will suck all the life out of any images in an attempt to make their file size smaller. You’re much better off with fixed-line broadband.
This might either be ADSL (delivered via your phone line) or cable, which despite what the advertising says also comes down a copper cable, albeit from a fibre-optic-equipped green cabinet in the street. If you live in a cabled area and take your TV service from the cable operator (usually Virgin Media) then you’ll probably find you can upgrade to a package that includes broadband for hardly any extra cost on your monthly bill. Bear in mind, though, that this will only be for a basic offering: for the headline-grabbing 50Mbits/sec service, you’ll need to shell out between £28 and £38 extra per month. Ouch!
Other providers also bundle basic broadband packages for free or at low cost. If you get your TV from Sky, check out its broadband upgrade, which can be quite competitive. Mobile networks, too, often offer their customers cheap broadband deals (with Orange it was actually free until a few weeks ago, but it’s just pulled the plug on that one). You’ll almost certainly be able to find a good deal, so there’s really no excuse to put up with patchy mobile broadband coverage while working from home.
Laptop tip 2
This one also involves broadband speeds, but not the advertised headline speed, which is for downloads. That “A” in ADSL stands for asymetric, meaning that upload and download speeds aren’t the same, and the same is true for cable broadband – upload will always be far slower than download.
For “normal” internet activities such as web browsing, watching BBC iPlayer, checking email and so on, this mismatch isn’t too serious since most of the traffic is coming to you, but once you start doing work-based tasks then upload speed becomes equally important. When you send your boss back a copy of his monster PowerPoint with all its spelling errors corrected, it travels up your broadband line, and when you access online apps using RDP (remote desktop) technology, it’s the speed of your back (upload) channel that makes the session feel either snappy or sluggish.
So when comparing broadband providers, don’t just look at the attention-grabbing download speeds; check out upload too.
Laptop tip 3
This one is more for IT administrators, to make life easier for your end-users. The more hoops you make them jump through with multiple layers of authentication and complex access protocols, the more you hamper their productivity. The key is to establish their credentials once in a reliable and secure manner, authenticate them and then use this single session authentication to allow them access to their email, files, and server-based apps.
An important part of this process will be establishing a VPN (virtual private network) between the home worker’s machine and your corporate IT infrastructure. Many smaller companies are still using old-fashioned protocols such as PPTP (point-to-point tunnelling protocol) for this, presumably because the client and server software to support it has been built into Windows for the past 15 years or so. Others employ complex IPsec-based VPNs, but if you have an army of remote workers you’ll find they all have different makes and models of routers at home, and not all of them will behave well with PPTP or IPsec.
Some will need tweaks such as port-forwarding, some will need MTU adjustments, some will simply sulk. So I’d urge all IT administrators setting up remote access systems to consider using SSL VPNs, which are secure, and because login is via a standard https:// connection in a web browser, they’ll pass through even the most retarded of home routers and firewalls.
So those are my tips to make life easier for home-workers. Now, does anyone fancy predicting where we’ll all be working in 15 years’ time?
Download a year of Paul Ockenden's Mobile & Wireless columns by heading to our Free Downloads site
From around the web
Just a note...
"off the top of my head I can’t actually think of a single smartphone that has a physical switch to turn it off"
Look harder. I have Windows Mobile smartphones in service from multiple manufacturers, and the vast majority can be powered off completely by holding down the off switch (usually the end call key) for 5-10 seconds. The only exception I've found has been the Palm Treo Pro.
By nichomach0 on 16 Feb 2010 
That's not what I meant
> Look harder
Ouch!
The switch you are talking about isn't truly a physical off switch. It's simply a sensor that's read by the operating system - a soft switch, if you like.
What I meant by a "physical switch to turn it off" is a hard switch - something which cuts the power.
By PaulOckenden on 16 Feb 2010
I know what you mean...
...but if it completely powers off the device, which in all Windows Mobiles that I've used apart from the Treo Pro it does, doesn't that do what you want anyway? Whether it's my own Touch Dual, the Kaisers we have in service or the new Samsung Omnia Pros we have (hell, even the crappy Eten Glofiish M810s we had) they all do the same thing - warn you that you may lose unsaved data, and ask you to confirm that you wish to power off. Upon selecting "Yes", the phone is physically powered off. Dead. Off. No ring, no mail, no text, no screen, nothing. No power. Isn't that what you were after?
By nichomach0 on 17 Feb 2010
SSL VPNs
We have one of these (a Netgeat SSL Concentrator), but I'm currently looking at replacing it as it won't work with Macs, and doesn't work properly with Windows 7.
Any chance of a comparative review of SSL VPN devices? There seems to be a lack of much like this on the internet and without real-world comments it's difficult to choose between them.
By davidbryant4 on 18 Feb 2010
take the xxxxing battery out then!
By invalidscreenname on 18 Feb 2010
Try an E90
I think its is exactly that.
By Gz_jimadams24122 on 18 Feb 2010
Secure Login's
If Secure Logins were used more by big organisations - who DO have the IT chops to make it work - then the Government and Socail Services wouldn't lose all those CD's with personal details on! I thought it was obvious that making a COPY of data would make it twice as lose-able, especially if they were CD's in the post, or a laptop in a taxi. Personally I use Hamachi, and can get to my data from pretty much anywhere in the world, through my own secure tunnel, without taking CD copies to lose everywhere. Isn't modern technology amazing?
By Wilbert3 on 18 Feb 2010
Secure Login's
If Secure Logins were used more by big organisations - who DO have the IT chops to make it work - then the Government and Socail Services wouldn't lose all those CD's with personal details on! I thought it was obvious that making a COPY of data would make it twice as lose-able, especially if they were CD's in the post, or a laptop in a taxi. Personally I use Hamachi, and can get to my data from pretty much anywhere in the world, through my own secure tunnel, without taking CD copies to lose everywhere. Isn't modern technology amazing?
By Wilbert3 on 18 Feb 2010
Secure Login's
If Secure Logins were used more by big organisations - who DO have the IT chops to make it work - then the Government and Socail Services wouldn't lose all those CD's with personal details on! I thought it was obvious that making a COPY of data would make it twice as lose-able, especially if they were CD's in the post, or a laptop in a taxi. Personally I use Hamachi, and can get to my data from pretty much anywhere in the world, through my own secure tunnel, without taking CD copies to lose everywhere. Isn't modern technology amazing?
By Wilbert3 on 18 Feb 2010
Push off!
When I get home or before I go to bed, Push gets switched off. It gets turned on again once I've made my morning coffee and I am reading my personal emails...
By big_D on 9 Mar 2010
I really like tech ruining my life
I like reading mails, briefly reading news lines, reading and writing some manuscripts and talk to loving ones. Therefore I like my laptop and smartphone. We need communication and to be aware around the world. Otherwise home to work, work to home this is 20th century routine that suffocates me and cause feeling of entrapment. However if you have resources it would be equally (!) good to have a weekend vacation with your yacht or fly directly to your loving ones...
By HopeLESS on 15 Mar 2010
Paul Ockenden
Paul is a contributing editor to PC Pro specialising in smartphones, mobile broadband and all things wireless. He's technical director of a combined IT and marketing company, which works on websites and intranets for several blue-chip clients.
advertisement
- Why you have to be left in the dark on OS patches
- Is Microsoft mismanaging Windows on ARM?
- Dealing with spam surrogates
- Why 3G broadband can be better and cheaper than ADSL
- Is Twitter bad for business?
- Publishing your email address isn't a security disaster
- Why you'll need a fax machine to develop iOS apps
- Learning to adapt to the mobile web
- Why you shouldn't use WPS on your Wi-Fi network
- Disabled users suffer when software breaks the rules
- Laptop bag reviews: nine tested
- Sony VAIO T Series Ultrabook review: first look
- Revealed: the military standards and robots HP uses to test its laptops
- Windows 8: multi-monitors and double standards?
- Why is TalkTalk's year-old porn filter suddenly big news?
- Why are laptop screens so far behind mobiles?
- HP EliteBook Folio review: first look
- The shoebox-sized all-in-one printer
- Forget the Ultrabook: here comes the HP Sleekbook
- HP Spectre XT review: first look
- Autonomy's Lynch joins 27,000 on way out of HP
- ICO: no fines for breaking cookie rules
- HP set to slash up to 30,000 jobs
- Government sites to miss cookie deadline
- Microsoft tweaks multi-monitor support in Windows 8
- Apple patches Leopard, despite ending support last year
- Defra opens rural broadband funding applications
- BT's broadband sales surpass calls revenue
- Apple patches multiple security issues
- FBI warns travellers to beware attacks via hotel Wi-Fi
advertisement
