THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Home offices present a chance to create new types of spaces built around the person

Phill Wildman, Technical Consultant at SY Electronics Ltd offers some thoughts on the ‘New Normal’.

So, we’ve all heard all the stories talking about how we will be working now under the ‘New Normal’. The reality is there is no such thing as normal anymore. Everything is hybrid and looks set to stay that way from now on. If the normal means ‘flexible and adaptable’, then the working environment at home has to change.

Not everyone can, or wants to work at home, but for the many that do, they will have already found out that is not as simple as moving the stuff along the kitchen table and placing a laptop there.

Many people started out in early 2020 with the intention of ‘getting by’ for a few weeks in a makeshift corner of the house with an extension lead and perhaps an ethernet cable plugged into the home router.

But then of course it got serious, and people thought about moving into a dedicated spare room, so that they could spread out all their working accoutrements more permanently - without fear of the pets, the kids or worse still their partner doing a bit of a tidy up and losing all their carefully laid out documents.

One day after straining the eyes for a couple of weeks on a 15inch laptop screen most will decide to try connecting the laptop to a larger display, to help with being able to see properly once again.

Foiled by the multitude of cables and expired Sky Cards tucked behind the lounge TV cabinet, they think, “I know, I will get the company to send me a nice 4K 28inch computer monitor to me, so that I can work more efficiently in my home office area.”

Well, there it began, the quest to furnish a new home office with all the modern-day trappings that are now an absolute must for the person ‘WFH’.

After struggling for a few weeks, most people work out that simply placing a laptop in a ‘spare space’ is not going to work. Any good home office should have this tick list as the bare minimum.

• Good quality Webcam • Better Microphone • Headphones or Desktop Speakers • Keyboard and Mouse • Laptop Docking Station • Data Network Switch • Better Broadband deal • Long USB cable and Phone Charger • Office Chair

If you are anything like me and the rest of us, you have the whole lot, and more. These once ‘nice to haves’ are now ‘must have’ items and the opportunity for installers to supply and fit this and a much wider choice of kit too is obvious.’ Supplying more inputs into a monitor for things like FireStick HD, ATV, TV Set-top-box, Work PC/Home PC and the like. So now you can add an HDMI switch to easily interface all the source devices. From our own range a SY ‘MS42’ 4x input 2x output HDMI matrix switcher will enable the user to plug in a work laptop, home PC, Apple TV and games console and connect to both a main TV and that shiny new 4K 28inch company display. ‘Any Input’ to ‘any output’ with easy switching or auto sensing, much slicker and ergonomic. Connect everything together with pro quality slim HDMI cables and you are all set. Work from Home efficiently, peacefully and easily. Better connectivity is just one area of course, better lighting and good quality audio are other areas to be explored.

The new normal. Who’d of thought it would be so straight forward? Right, now time to put the kettle back on. I’ve work to do.

There is a growing group of new home workers looking for better solutions