Posted by Laurie | November 17th, 2008

I call myself a work at home mom, and I mean, I am.  But I do not spend all my time AT HOME!! Life is too busy to always be tied to my house! So I have a few tools that make it easier for me to be out and about and still stay in touch with my clients and work.

Right now my best tool when I’m out is my Samsung Instinct semi-smartphone (lol!) It’s not a full smartphone but it lets me check my email, keep in touch with Twitter and make notes for later if I don’t have my notebook with me. This is essential for me, as I’m often out during “normal” business hours and I feel it’s important to be reachable.

Another handy tool is my laptop. I just have a standard laptop right now, but still it means that if I’m away overnight or for several hours I can take my work with me. We only had a desktop until about a year ago, then when I was starting to plan for opening up my virtual assistance practice my DH bought me a laptop. Wow, it opened up a whole new world! I never realized how helpful a laptop would be, even just at home! And the option to take it with me is fabulous.

A tool I want, but don’t currently have, is a netbook. Like a laptop but smaller, lighter and fairly inexpensive ($350 to $500 should get you a reasonable one) For me a full keyboard and a somewhat decent sized screen (9″ to 12″) means I can do a lot more than I can with a smartphone, but it is still easy to carry in my purse when I’m at say, soccer practice. I read a great post today over at Mark Evan’sTech blog about whether netbooks or smartphones are the wave of the future – but as I said there – I definitely think both have their place! Personally I’m hoping to get an MSI Wind or maybe the Acer Aspire One.

Hmmm, anyone want to send me one for review?!

I’ll be doing a future post on great tools for working IN your home office, so stay tuned!

Tags: acer, home office, laptop. smartphone, msi wind, netbook, pink, tools, virtual assistant