The Ultimate Home Office

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Ultimate Home Office

  • Have you posted a photo of your light ring?

    Which model did you buy?

  • HomeOfficeLeftHomeOfficeRight

    This is my home office shared with my wife who owned a graphic design studio.  The modular furniture been used in three different homes so far, but in this one we were not able to install all the work surface.  Even though we've been retired for over ten years, this is a major area of daily activity for us.  Besides our main working machines, we include a system for a collection of 80k digital music tracks, including a Bose speaker system, and a digital picture system.  On the far right behind the digital picture frame is the router/modem and a NAS storage device for backups.

    The pictures on the right wall are of my self-designed retirement log cabin and some fall Aspen color from our mountain hideaway.  When we moved in, we had a tiny window removed and replaced with the two large ones that give a view of our back yard with blue spruce trees and wild bird feeders.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by  skeleton567.
    • This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by  skeleton567.

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • Nice looking office. Way neater than mine.

     

  • The light ring is just a ring, on the tripod stand that came with it. Nothing special, but it's this one. Has a couple light settings, but I tend to just use it on the default white - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0875M31PL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    It does make me more visible, especially early/late if the sun isn't brightening the room.

  • Of course I did hide a few piles of paper before the picture...

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • Rick, what NAS are you using.  I've been reviewing them lately and haven't been able to make a definitive decision.

  • richardm-1037631 wrote:

    Rick, what NAS are you using.  I've been reviewing them lately and haven't been able to make a definitive decision.

    I decided on a D-Link DNS-343, thought it was a pretty good thing for the price.  It will take up to 4 3.5" drives of any size currently available.  it comes with a pretty good management application, and can be configured for RAID if you want.  I just map the drives from all our other systems, but you could probably partition and make shares and private drives.  Has a built-in cooling fan that only runs when needed. To add a drive, you just lift off the front panel, release one of the rear levers, slide the drive in, and put the lever back in place.  (click on the small print to see the rear panel)IMG_1246

    Update:  I have since this time replaced the D-Link with a WD 4-drive NAS that allows larger capacity drives.  AThe D-Link had problems running via a surge suppressor, kept reporting a 'power failure'.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by  skeleton567.
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    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • I don't have a NAS, but I know Glenn Berry recommend Synology ones. Might ping him on Twitter and get some thoughts and compare with Rick's recommendation.

  • Thanks for the replies.  I'll do some research into both the D-Link and the Synology offerings tonight to see whether either has a distinct advantage over the other.  I've tried one of the WD My Cloud Home ones previously.  It barely lasted a year with minimal use, so I'm looking for something that's a little more "durable".

     

  • Home office setup is looking well organised. After Pandemic home office has become a trend. You can create beautiful home office with Fast Office Furniture.

  • Can you please share some more ideas?

  • Well, zaydenwood42, you ask for it, so here goes.  I was fortunate in that my wife operated a graphic design business at home for ten yeas or so, after taking an early retirement from HON Company, the office furniture manufacturer in eastern Iowa.  As an employee she received fantastic discounts on their furniture, so we had one of their sales/service people do a custom design for us with lots of open workspace and filing.   Now you would expect being custom it would be difficult to use elsewhere.  We are now in our third home location and using the same modular pieces as the original.

    I've implemented my second 4-drive NAS device, this time a WD EX4100.  And I just pretty much completed my latest project of running Ethernet through my basement ceiling 40 feet from the office to the LR and putting 30 feet of 8K HDMI from my Lazy Boy to the 65" TV.  Now we can enjoy thousands of digital pictures there using a retired laptop with screen sharing.   Blew $1100 on the best batch slide scanner I could find to digitize 80 years of 35mm slides and 100-year-old B&W pictures from two families.   I'm scanning the originals to .TIF format at 10,000 dpi so they take lots of space, file size is typically near 7mb each, best quality for Photoshoping out defects, then I'll convert to .JPG for transmitting over the cables.

    The WD EX4100 NAS originally had intermittent problems saying there was a 'power supply failure'.  They replaced it, and I still had the failures.  I finally figured out that if I took it off the surge protector, it works well.  So I do regular backups!

    So our home office is still my regular hang-out at 80 years old!  Five computers (plus three awaiting upgrades), two printers, two extra monitors, two NAS devices, and a good Bose sound system for 80k digital tracks and satelite radio.  But I still have to walk to the other end of the house to get my coffee (read that also wine, beer, hootch, cheese, crackers, summer sausage).

    We added those two large windows which, when the sun isn't too bright, allow me to look out on our lawn with lots of pine trees, rose bushes, rabbits, geese, ducks, and my wild bird feeder.

    My wife's sewing room hangout is at the other end of the house, and is actually about twice the size of the office, near the kitchen and laundry.  We added large windows there too.  It is also outfitted with the modular office furniture for her two machines, another laptop and lots of work space.  And another Lazy Boy for when I go down there.

    Lastly, we added a large deck in back and a beautiful custom designed patio in front for sitting outside with laptops, and for sharing late afternoon 'merlot time' with neighbors after their work day.  I keep a good supply of snacks and drinks for that.  When we moved in, we set aside $50k for improvements to make this 'house' our 'home'.

    There is still one tiny spare bedroom, but typically when friends and family visit we house them in nearby hotels which maintains our late night/early morning  relaxation and privacy.  Two grandkids can still use the spare room.  Dining out saves all the food prep and cleanup involved giving more time to visit.

    As my typical morning goes, it's past 11:30 so time to go get some breakfast and my third mug of coffee.

     

     

     

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by  skeleton567.

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

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